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the more significant and the more dangerous, for his Nora-morals had laid a very serious hold on all and were, at the time when Strindberg sat down and wrote his Married, in a fair way to be accepted as a sort of official individual moral code. Björnson's glove-morals on the other hand fell down almost immediately on account of being absolutely unreasonable.

But the Nora-morals or the “Doll's House cult” thrived, and as it was in a fair way of turning our heads perhaps for a long time to come, the lion woke up in Strindberg, and he considered the time had come when it was his duty to appear in the arena and strike a great blow.

He began his attack by indicating that if the feministic movement of that time was bent on liberating woman in such a way that she would grow more and more like a man, then the movement had strayed from the right path. There must be a difference between man and woman, for if all humanity should become masculine, such a state of affairs could have but one consequence: the downfall of the human race. If woman did not wish to submit to motherhood, the human race naturally could not continue.

Strindberg has a totally different ideal from that of the emancipated mannish woman: the love of the good, cheerful housewife, the object of the husband's and the childrens' love—a woman raised almost to the level of a madonna, but who, because of the treasure she possesses in the home, bows before the mate and supporter of the family.