The Social Significance of the Modern Drama/August Strindberg
STRINDBERG
"THE reproach was leveled against my tragedy, 'The Father' that it was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamor for the joy of life, and the theatrical managers order farces, as though the joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something."
The passionate desire to discover something, to learn something, has made of August Strindberg a keen dissector of souls. Above all, of his own soul.
Surely there is no figure in contemporary literature, outside of Tolstoy, that laid bare the most secret nooks and corners of his own soul with the sincerity of August Strindberg. One so relentlessly honest with himself, could be no less with others.
That explains the bitter opposition and hatred of his critics. They did not object so much to Strindberg's self-torture; but that he should have dared to torture them, to hold up his searching mirror to their sore spots, that they could not forgive.
Especially is this true of woman. For centuries she has been lulled into a trance by the songs of the troubadours who paid homage to her goodness, her sweetness, her selflessness and, above all, her noble motherhood. And though she is beginning to appreciate that all this incense has befogged her mind and paralyzed her soul, she hates to give up the tribute laid at her feet by sentimental moonshiners of the past.
To be sure, it is rude to turn on the full searchlight upon a painted face. But how is one to know what is back of the paint and artifice? August Strindberg hated artifice with all the passion of his being; hence his severe criticism of woman. Perhaps it was his tragedy to see her as she really is, and not as she appears in her trance. To love with open eyes is, indeed, a tragedy, and Strindberg loved woman. All his life long he yearned for her love, as mother, as wife, as companion. But his longing for, and his need of her, were the crucible of Strindberg, as they have been the crucible of every man, even of the mightiest spirit.
Why it is so is best expressed in the words of the old nurse, Margret, in "The Father ":
"Because all you men, great and small, are woman's children, every man of you."
The child in man-and the greater the man the more dominant the child in him-has ever succumbed to the Earth Spirit, Woman, and as long as that is her only drawing power, Man, with all his strength and genius, will ever be at her feet.
The Earth Spirit is motherhood carrying the race in its womb; the flame of life luring the moth, often against its Will, to destruction.
In all of Strindberg's plays we see the flame of life at work, ravishing man's brain, consuming man's faith, rousing man's passion. Always, always the flame of life is drawing its victims with irresistible force. August Strindberg's arraignment of that force is at the same time a confession of faith. He, too, was the child of woman, and utterly helpless before her.
THE FATHER
THE FATHER portrays the tragedy of a man and a woman struggling for the possession of their child. The father, a cavalry captain, is intellectual, a freethinker, a man of ideas. His wife is narrow, selfish, and unscrupulous in her methods when her antagonism is wakened.
Other members of the family are the wife's mother, a Spiritualist, and the Captain's old nurse, Margret, ignorant and superstitious. The father feels that the child would be poisoned in such an atmosphere:
The Captain. This house is full of women who all want to have their say about my child. My mother-inlaw wants to make a Spiritualist of her. Laura wants her to be an artist; the governess wants her to be a Methodist, old Margret a Baptist, and the servant-girls want her to join the Salvation Army! It won't do to try to make a soul in patches like that. I, who have the chief right to try to form her character, am constantly opposed in my efforts. And that's why I have decided to send her away from home.
But it is not only because the Captain does not believe in "making a soul in patches," that he wants to rescue the child from the hot-house environment, nor because he plans to make her an image of himself. It is rather because he wants her to grow up with a healthy outlook on life.
The Captain. I don't want to be a procurer for my daughter and educate her exclusively for matrimony, for then if she were left unmarried she might have bitter days. On the other hand, I don't want to influence her toward a career that requires a long course of training which would be entirely thrown away if she should marry. I want her to be a teacher. If she remains unmarried she will be able to support herself, and at any rate she wouldn't be any worse off than the poor schoolmasters who have to share their salaries with a family.
If she marries she can use her knowledge in the education of her children.
While the father's love is concerned with the development of the child, that of the mother is interested mainly in the possession of the child. Therefore she fights the man with every means at her command, even to the point of instilling the poison of doubt into his mind, by hints that he is not the father of the child. Not only does she seek to drive her husband mad, but through skillful intrigue she leads every one, including the Doctor, to believe that he is actually insane. Finally even the old nurse is induced to betray him: she slips the straitjacket over him, adding the last touch to the treachery. Robbed of his faith, broken in spirit and subdued, the Captain dies a victim of the Earth Spirit - of motherhood, which slays the man for the sake of the child. Laura herself will have it so when she tells her husband, " You have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner. You are not needed any longer, and you must go."
Critics have pronounced " The Father " an aberration of Strindberg's mind, utterly false and distorted. But that is because they hate to f ace the truth. In Strindberg, however, the truth is his most revolutionary significance.
"The Father" contains two basic truths. Motherhood, much praised, poetized, and hailed as a wonderful thing, is in reality very often the greatest deterrent influence in the life of the child. Because it is not primarily concerned with the potentialities of character and growth of the child; on the contrary, it is interested chiefly in the birthgiver,- that is, the mother. Therefore, the mother is the most subjective, self-centered and conservative obstacle. She binds the child to herself with a thousand threads which never grant sufficient freedom for mental and spiritual expansion. It is not necessary to be as bitter as Strindberg to realize this. There are of course exceptional mothers who continue to grow with the child. But the average mother is like the hen with her brood, forever fretting about her chicks if they venture a step away from the coop. The mother enslaves with kindness,- a bondage harder to bear and more difficult to escape than the brutal fist of the father.
Strindberg himself experienced it, and nearly every one who has ever attempted to outgrow the soul strings of the mother.
In portraying motherhood, as it really is, August Strindberg is conveying a vital and revolutionary message, namely, that true motherhood, even as fatherhood, does not consist in molding the child according to ones image, or in imposing upon it one's own ideas and notions, but in allowing the child freedom and opportunity to grow harmoniously according to its own potentialities, unhampered and unmarred.
The child was August Strindberg's religion,perhaps because of his own very tragic childhood and youth. He was like Father Time in " Jude the Obscure," a giant child, and as he has Laura say of the Captain in "The Father," "he had either come too early into the world, or perhaps was not wanted at all.
" Yes, that's how it was," the Captain replies, "my father's and my mother's will was against my coming into the world, and consequently I was born without a will."
The horror of having been brought into the world undesired and unloved, stamped its indelible mark on August Strindberg. It never left him. Nor did fear and hunger—-the two terrible phantoms of his childhood.
Indeed, the child was Strindberg's religion, his faith, his passion. Is it then surprising that he should have resented woman's attitude towards the man as a mere means to the child; or, in the words of Laura, as " the function of father and breadwinner " ? That this is the attitude of woman, is of course denied. But it is nevertheless true. It holds good not only of the average, unthinking woman, but even of many feminists of to-day; and, no doubt, they were even more antagonistic to the male in Strindberg's time.
It is only too true that woman is paying back what she has endured for centuries - humiliation, subjection, and bondage. But making oneself free through the enslavement of another, is by no means a step toward advancement. Woman must grow to understand that the father is as vital a factor in the life of the child as is the mother. Such a realization would help very much to minimize the conflict between the sexes.
Of course, that is not the only cause of the conflict. There is another, as expressed by Laura: " Do you remember when I fIrst came into your life, I was like a second mother? . . . 1 loved you as my child. But . . . when the nature of your feelings changed and you appeared as my lover, I blushed, and your embraces were joy that was followed by remorseful conscience as if my blood were ashamed."
The vile thought instilled into woman by the Church and Puritanism that sex expression without the purpose of procreation is immoral, has been a most degrading influence. It has poisoned the life of thousands of women who similarly suffer " remorseful conscience as ; therefore their disgust and hatred of the man; therefore also the conflict.
Must it always be thus? Even Strindberg does not think so. Else he would not plead in behalf of " divorce between man and wife, so that lovers may be born." He felt that until man and woman cease to have " remorseful consciences " because of the most elemental expression of the joy of life, they cannot realize the purity and beauty of sex, nor appreciate its ecstasy, as the source of full understanding and creative harmony between male and female. Till then man and woman must remain in conflict, and the child pay the penalty.
August Strindberg, as one of the numberless innocent victims of this terrible conflict, cries out bitterly against it, with the artistic genius and strength that compel attention to the significance of his message.
COUNTESS JULIE
IN his masterly preface to this play, August Strindberg writes: "The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exelusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full lifetime; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable."
What a wealth of revolutionary thought,—were we to realize that those who will clear society of the rotting, superannuated trees that have so long been standing in the way of others entitled to an equal share in life, must be as strong as the great revolutionists of the past!
Indeed, Strindberg is no trimmer, no cheap reformer, no patchworker; therefore his inability to remain fixed, or to content himself with accepted truths. Therefore also, his great versatility, his deep grasp of the subtlest phases of life. Was he not forever the seeker, the restless spirit roaming the earth, ever in the death-throes of the Old, to give birth to the New? How, then, could he be other than relentless and grim and brutally frank.
" Countess Julie," a one-act tragedy, is no doubt a brutally frank portrayal of the most intimate thoughts of man and of the age-long antagonism between classes. Brutally frank, because August Strindberg strips both of their glitter, their sham and pretense, that we may see that " at bottom there's not so much difference between people and people."
Who in modern dramatic art is there to teach us that lesson with the insight of an August Strindberg? He who had been tossed about all his life between the decadent traditions of his aristocratic 'father and the grim, sordid reality of the class of his mother. He who had been begotten through the physical mastery of his father and the physical subserviency of his mother. Verily, Strindberg knew whereof he spoke-for he spoke with his soul, a language whose significance is illuminating, compelling.
Countess Julie inherited the primitive, intense passion of her mother and the neurotic aristocratic tendencies of her father. Added to this heritage is the call of the wild, the " intense summer heat when on the blood turns to fire, and when all are in a holiday spirit, full of gladness, and rank is flung aside." Countess Julie feels, when too late, that the barrier of rank reared through the ages, by wealth and power, is not flung aside with impunity. Therein the vicious I brutality, the boundless injustice of rank.
The people on the estate of Julie's father are celebrating St. John's Eve with dance, song and revelry. The Count is absent, and Julie graciously mingles with the servants. But once having tasted the simple abandon of the people, once having thrown off the artifice and superficiality of her aristocratic decorum, her suppressed passions leap into full flame, and Julie throws herself into the arms of her father's valet, Jean -not because of love for the man, nor yet openly and freely, but as persons of her station may do when carried away by the moment.
The woman in Julie pursues the male, follows him into the kitchen, plays with him as with a pet dog, and then feigns indignation when Jean, aroused makes advances. How dare he, the servant, the lackey, even insinuate that she would have him I " I, the lady of the house! I honor the people with my presence. I, in love with my coachman? I, who step down."
How well Strindberg knows the psychology of the upper classes I How well he understands that their graciousness, their charity, their interest in the " common people " is, after all, nothing but arrogance, blind conceit of their own importance and ignorance of the character of the people.
Even though Jean is a servant, he has his pride, he has his dreams. " I was not hired to be your plaything," he says to Julie; " I think too much of myself for that.
Strange, is it not, that those who serve and drudge for others, should think so much of themselves as to refuse to be played with? Stranger still that they should indulge in dreams. Jean says:
Do you know how people in high life look from the under-world? . . . They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above. I lived in a hovel provided by the State, with seven brothers and sisters and a pig; out on a barren stretch where nothing grew, not even a tree, but from the window I could see the Count's park walls with apple trees rising above them. That was the garden of paradise; and there stood many angry angels with flaming swords protecting it; but for all that I and other boys found the way to the tree of life - now you despise me. . . . I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God's earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess' daughter. . . . What I wanted-I don't know. You were unattainable, but through the vision of you I was made to realize how hopeless it was to rise above the conditions of my birth.
What rich food for thought in the above for all of us, and for the jeans, the people who do not know what they want, yet feel the cruelty of a world that keeps the pauper's child out of the castle of his dreams, away from joy and play and beauty! The injustice and the bitterness of it all, that places the stigma of birth as an impassable obstacle, a fatal imperative excluding one from the table of life, with the result of producing such terrible effects on the Julies and the Jeans. The one unnerved, made helpless and useless by affluence, ease and idleness; the other enslaved and bound by service and dependence. Even when Jean wants to, he cannot rise above his condition. When Julie asks him to embrace her, to love her, he replies:
I can't as long as we are in this house. . . . There is the Count, your father. . . . I need only to see his gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse. . . . And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feet like bowing and scraping. . . . I can't account for it but-but ah, it is that damned servant in my back -I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot. . . . Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment.
No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth - these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them. Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and overbearing toward those who are below them. For Jean has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon Jean, it is much more terrible in its effect upon Kristin, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when Kristin, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress Julie had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet.
Kristin. I don't want to be here in this house any , longer where one cannot respect one's betters.
Jean. Why should one respect them?
Kristin. Yes, you can say that, you are so smart. But I don't want to serve people who behave so. It reflects on oneself, I think.
Jean. Yes, but it's a comfort that they're not a bit better than we.
Kristin. No, I don't think so, for if they are no better there's no use in our trying to better ourselves in this world. And to think of the Count! Think of him who has had so much sorrow all his days. No, I don't want to stay in this house any longer! And to think of it being with such as you 1 If it had been the Lieutenant -...I have never lowered my position. Let any one say, if they can, that the Count's cook has had anything to do with the riding master or the swineherd. Let them come and say it!
Such dignity and morality are indeed pathetic, because they indicate how completely serfdom may annihilate even the longing for something higher and better in the breast of a human being. The Kristins represent the greatest obstacle to social growth, the deadlock in the conflict between the classes. On the other hand, the Jeans, with all their longing for higher possibilities, often become brutalized in the hard school of life; though in the conflict with Julie, Jean shows brutality only at the critical moment, when it bebecomes a question of life and death, a moment that means discovery and consequent ruin, or safety for both.
Jean. though the male is aroused in him, pleads with Julie not to play with fire, begs her to return to her room, and not to give the servants a chance for gossip. And when later Jean suggests his room for a hiding place that Julie may escape the approaching merry-makers, it is to save her from their songs full of insinuation and ribaldry. Finally when the inevitable happens, when as a result of their closeness in Jean's room, of their overwrought nerves, their intense passion, the avalanche of sex sweeps them off their feet, forgetful of station, birth and conventions, and they return to the kitchen, it is again Jean who is willing to bear his share of the responsibility. "I don t care to shirk my share of the blame," he tells Julie, "but do you think any one of my position would have dared to raise his eyes to you if you had not invited it?"
There is more truth in this statement than the Julies can grasp, namely, that even servants have their passions and feelings that cannot long be trifled with, with impunity. The Jeans know "that it is the glitter of brass, not gold, that dazzles us from below, and that the eagle's back is gray like the rest of him." For Jean says, "I'm sorry to have to realize that all that I have looked up to is not worth while, and it pains me to see you fallen lower than your cook, as it pains me to see autumn blossoms whipped to pieces by the cold rain and transformed into—dirt!"
It is this force that helps to transform the blossom into dirt that August Strindberg emphasizes in "The Father." For the child born against the will of its parents must also be without will, and too weak to bear the stress and storm of life. In "Countess Julie" this idea recurs with even more tragic effect. Julie, too, had been brought into the world against her mother's wishes. Indeed, so much did her mother dread the thought of a child that she "was always ill, she often had cramps and acted queerly, often hiding in the orchard or the attic." Added to this horror was the conflict, the relentless war of traditions between Julie's aristocratic father and her mother descended from the people. This was the heritage of the innocent victim, Julie—an autumn blossom blown into fragments by lack of stability, lack of love and lack of harmony. In other words, while Julie is broken and weakened by her inheritance and environment, Jean is hardened by his.
When Jean kills the bird which Julie wants to rescue from the ruins of her life, it is not so much out of real cruelty, as it is because the character of Jean was molded in the relentless school of necessity, in which only those survive who have the determination to act in time of danger. For as Jean says, "Miss Julie, I see that you are unhappy, I know that you are suffering, but I cannot understand you. Among my kind there is no nonsense of this sort. We love as we play—when work gives us time. We haven't the whole day and night for it as you."
Here we have the key to the psychology of the utter helplessness and weakness of the Julie type, and of the brutality of the Jeans. The one, the result of an empty life, of parasitic leisure, of a useless, purposeless existence. The other, the effect of too little time for development, for maturity and depth; of too much toil to permit the growth of the finer traits in the human soul.
August Strindberg, himself the result of the class conflict between his parents, never felt at home with either of them. All his life he was galled by the irreconcilability of the classes; and though he was no sermonizer in the sense of offering a definite panacea for individual or social ills, yet with master touch he painted the degrading effects of class distinction and its tragic antagonisms. In "Countess Julie" he popularized one of the most vital problems of our age, and gave to the world a work powerful in its grasp of elemental emotions, laying bare the human soul behind the mask of social tradition and class culture.
COMRADES
Although "Comrades" was written in 1888, it is in a measure the most up-to-date play of Strindberg,—so thoroughly modern that one at all conversant with the milieu that inspired "Comrades" could easily point out the type of character portrayed in the play.
It is a four-act comedy of marriage—the kind of marriage that lacks social and legal security in the form of a ceremony, but retains all the petty conventions of the marriage institution. The results of such an anomaly are indeed ludicrous when viewed from a distance, but very tragic for those who play a part in it.
Axel Alberg and his wife Bertha are Swedish artists residing in Paris. They are both painters. Of course they share the same living quarters, and although each has a separate room, the arrangement does not hinder them from trying to regulate each other's movements. Thus when Bertha does not arrive on time to keep her engagement with her model, Axel is provoked; and when he takes the liberty to chide her for her tardiness, his wife is indignant at the "invasiveness" of her husband, because women of the type of Bertha are as to fair criticism as their ultra-conservative sisters. Nor is Bertha different in her concept of love, which is expressed in the following dialogue:
Bertha. Will you be very good, very, very good?
Axel. I always want to be good to you, my friend.
Bertha, who has sent her painting to the exhibition, wants to make use of Axel's "goodness" to secure the grace of one of the art jurors.
Bertha. You would not make a sacrifice for your wife, would you?
Axel. Go begging? No, I don't want to do that.
Bertha immediately concludes that he does not love her and that, moreover, he is jealous of her art. There is a scene.
Bertha soon recovers. But bent on gaining her purpose, she changes her manner.
Bertha. Axel, let's be friends! And hear me a moment. Do you think that my position in your house -for it is yours -is agreeable to me? You support me, you pay for my studying at Julian's, while you yourself cannot afford instruction. Don't you think I see how you sit and wear out yourself and your talent on these pot-boiling drawings, and are able to paint only in leisure moments? You haven't been able to afford models for yourself, while you pay mine five hard-earned francs an hour. You don't know how good-how noble-how sacrificing you are, and also you don't know how I suffer to see you toil so for me. Oh, Axel, you can't know how I feel my position. WHat am I to you? Of what use am I in your house? Oh, I blush when I think about it!
Axel. What talk! Isn't a man to support his wife?
Bertha. I don't want it. And you, Axel, you must help me. I'm not your equal when it's like that, but I could be if you would humble yourself once, just once! Don't think that you are alone in going to one of the jury to say a good word for another. If it were for yourself, it would be another matter, but for meForgive me! Now I beg of you as nicely as I know how. Lift me from my humiliating position to your side, and I'll be so grateful I shall never trouble you again with reminding you of my position. Never, Axel!
Yet though Bertha gracefully accepts everything Axel does for her, with as little compunction as the ordinary wife, she does not give as much in return as the latter.. On the contrary, she exploits Axel in a thousand ways, squanders his hardearned money, and lives the life of the typical wifely parasite.
August Strindberg could not help attacking with much bitterness such a farce and outrage parading in the disguise of radicalism. For Bertha is not an exceptional, isolated case. To-day, as when Strindberg satirized the all-too-feminine, the majority of so-called emancipated women are willing to accept, like Bertha, everything from the man, and yet feel highly indignant if he asks in return the simple comforts of married life. The ordinary wife, at least, does not pretend to play an important role in the life of her husband. But the Berthas deceive themselves and others with the notion that the " emancipated " wife is a great moral force, an inspiration to the man. Whereas in reality she is often a cold-blooded exploiter of the work and ideas of the man, a heavy handicap to his life-purpose, retarding his growth as effectively as did her grandmothers in the long ago. Bertha takes advantage of Axel's affection to further her own artistic ambitions, just as the Church and State married woman uses her husband's love to advance her social ambitions. It never occurs to Bertha that she is no less despicable than her legally married sister. She cannot understand Axel's opposition to an art that clamors only for approval, distinction and decorations.
However, Axel can not resist Bertha's pleadings. He visits the patron saint of the salon, who, by the way, is not M. Roubey, but Mme. Roubey; for she is the " President of the Woman-Painter Protective Society." What chance would Bertha have with one of her own sex in authority? Hence her husband must be victimized. During Axel's absence Bertha learns that his picture has been refused by the salon, while hers is accepted. She is not in the least disturbed, nor at all concerned over the effect of the news on Axel. On the contrary, she is rather pleased because " so many women are refused that a man might put up with it, and be made to feel it once."
In her triumph Bertha's attitude to Axel becomes overbearing; she humiliates him, belittles his art, and even plans to humble him before the guests invited to celebrate Bertha's artistic success.
But Axel is tearing himself free from the meshes of his decaying love. He begins to see Bertha as she is: her unscrupulousness in money matters, her ceaseless effort to emasculate him. In a terrible word tussle he tells her: " I had once been free, but you clipped the hair of my strength while my tired head lay in your lap. During sleep you stole my best blood."
In the last act Bertha discovers that Axel had generously changed the numbers on the paintings in order to give her a better chance. It was his picture that was chosen as her work. She feels ashamed and humiliated; but it is too late. Axel leaves her with the exclamation, " I want to meet my comrades in the café, but at home I want a wife. "
A characteristic sidelight in the play is given by the conversation of Mrs. Hall, the divorced wife of Doctor Ostermark.. She comes to Bertha with a bitter tirade against the Doctor because he gives her insufficient alimony.
Mrs. Hall. And now that the girls are grown up and about to start in life, now he writes us that he is bankrupt and that he can't send us more than half the allowance. Isn't that nice, just now when the girls are grown up and are going out into life?
Bertha. We must look into this. He'll be here in a few days. Do you know that you have the law on your side and that the courts can force him to pay? And he shall be forced to do so. Do you understand? So, he can bring children into the world and then leave them empty-handed with the poor deserted mother.
Bertha, who believes in woman's equality with man, and in her economic independence, yet delivers herself of the old sentimental gush in behalf of " the poor deserted mother," who has been supported by her husband for years, though their relations had ceased long before.
A distorted picture, some feminists will say. Not at all. It is as typical to-day as it was twentysix years ago. Even to-day some " emancipated " women claim the right to be self-supporting, yet demand their husband's support. In fact, many leaders in the American suffrage movement assure us that when women will make laws, they will force men to support their wives. From the leaders down to the simplest devotee, the same attitude prevails, namely, that man is a blagueur, and that but for him the Berthas would have long ago become Michelangelos, Beethovens, or Shakespeares; they claim that the Berthas represent the most virtuous half of the race, and that they have made up their minds to make man as virtuous as they are.
That such ridiculous extravagance should be resented by the Axels is not at all surprising. It is resented even by the more intelligent of Bertha's own sex. Not because they are opposed to the emancipation of woman, but because they do not believe that her emancipation can ever be achieved by such absurd and hysterical notions. They repudiate the idea that people who retain the substance of their slavery and merely escape the shadow, can possibly be free, live free, or act free.
The radicals, no less than the feminists, must realize that a mere external change in their economic and political status, cannot alter the inherent or acquired prejudices and superstitions which underlie their slavery and dependence, and which are the main causes of the antagonism between the sexes.
The transition period is indeed a most difficult and perilous stage for the woman as well as for the man. It requires a powerful light to guide us past the dangerous reefs and rocks in the ocean of life. August Strindberg is such a light. Sometimes glaring, ofttimes scorching, but always beneficially illuminating the path for those who walk in darkness, for the blind ones who would rather deceive and be deceived than look into the recesses of their being. Therefore August Strindberg is not only " the spiritual conscience of Sweden," as he has been called, but the spiritual conscience of the whole human family, and, as such, a most vital revolutionary factor.