Page:Strindberg the Man (1920).djvu/35

Strindberg writes in the fourth part of The Charwoman's Son (The Author) which was completed in 1886 but not published until 1910, that the celebrated lawsuit was a farce staged by a woman and naturally intended to bring a man (himself) into the lime-light. The action was a comedy badly written by women, and the part which they assigned to Strindberg did not fit him. It proved the wrong one right through. He refused it, but they forced it upon him, as well as a couple of other roles which he liked even less. He was to be a popular tribune, a religious reformer, a party leader, everything except what he was—an author.

And when the prosecution was all over, it had succeeded in its principal aim. Strindberg was clawed to pieces, unable to work and, from an economic point of view, he was ruined.

But it also had other consequences for the author of Married. He had attacked religion, holy matrimony, and emancipated woman. For this he was now to be punished. All that he had written was declared to be immoral, he was no longer the fashionable author, and during the years 1884-1889, while he continued to reside abroad, his enemies succeeded in spreading such a terror about his name that upon his arrival home he felt himself to be an unknown man.

The great popularity which he had once enjoyed was gone. If he had been convicted in the lawsuit over Married, there would have been a revolution in his favor. Now he was discharged, dismissed even by young Sweden, the literary party who had arrayed themselves