Dreyer addresses the historic domestic oppression of women squarely in this film about a man who treats his wife as a slave and two women who conspire to change his thinking-and his behavior. Tom Milne writes of The Master of the House, "This is my own personal favorite among Dreyer's films (in) its golden simplicity...Dreyer's control is masterly. The whole film is illuminated by a rich vein of humor, which centers mainly on the character of the ferociously devoted old nanny (a wonderful scathing peformance by Mathilde Nielsen)...Emotion in this film wells from a deep fund of observation." Jonas Mekas writes, "The film is full of the most precise and most beautiful details from the daily life at the beginning of the century. All the little things that people do at home...you can almost smell and touch every smallest activity, detail. In a sense one could look at it as an ethnographic film..."