Strindberg the Man/Chapter 2

IN spite of the fact that so many wise and good words have already been said by others—e.g. by Hermann Esswein and John Landquist—about the pretended woman-hater Strindberg, I, too, am obliged to touch on the subject, not in order to produce more evidence to show that Strindberg's hatred of women is a misunderstanding, but because I need this factor also in order to make the characterization of the poet and the man, which I am endeavoring to present by means of these lines, as complete as possible.

Besides questions pertaining to art, religion, and sociology, in which Strindberg had been the spokesman for the young, there was a field in which we all stood face to face with a chaotic confusion i.e. things erotic.

At first, like Strindberg himself, we had had to fight clear of the maelstrom of misunderstanding upon which the traditional so-called moral conception is based. After we had succeeded by degrees in arriving at our own conclusion in this matter, always with reference to individual characteristics, we suddenly collided with two great icebergs which checked us and became the cause of new confusion.

These were the contributions to the question by the two great Norwegians Ibsen and Björnson. Ibsen was ​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.

​Strindberg once made the following statement to me: "In Switzerland, where I stayed during the period when Married was a burning question, I never felt fully at home. The wives there, as in France, were perfectly free, just like the men, and could choose their lovers according to their own wishes. The wife-cocotte is an irrational combination which I never could tolerate. I felt that I was—in an entirely different atmosphere when I came to Bavaria, where the men are the determining element in wedlock and the women are obedient and true. Just the return to these old fashioned patriarchal conditions was enough to arouse in me my poetic inspiration which during the latter part of my stay in Switzerland had been nearly dormant.”

The fact is that Strindberg had strayed away from himself during the latter part of his sojourn in Switzerland. He published a large number of novels and essays in Swiss and particularly in Austrian dailies and magazines, but they were altogether impersonal and without a sign of the Swedish trait which is so characteristic of everything else he has written. The Strindberg who wrote those novels and articles was a cosmopolitan in whom the Swedish heart had broken down entirely. Neither in contents nor in phraseology is there anything that recalls the poet Strindberg. But as soon as he had settled in Bavaria and found himself in a setting corresponding to the old fashioned Swedish conditions, he rediscovered himself, became just as Swedish as ever before and his productiveness rose so as to form one of the greatest and ​richest of periods, the one which begins with The Father and ends with The Dance of Death.

What lies behind Strindberg's fight against all the outgrowths of the feministic movement is exactly this: he continually clung to the ideal of woman as wife and mother which he had formed in his youth. And what he attacked during the period in which he wrote and defended his work Married was just such conditions as are likely to destroy the altogether too unpopular ideal.

What he attacked was partly Ibsen's false exposition in A Doll's House of man and woman in wedlock and which started a silly discussion about unhappy marriages in general and especially of woman as the one contrahent in wedlock who has been oppressed for centuries; partly he directed his weapons against matrimony under present conditions, as he himself writes in an interview-preface to the first part of Married:

“I have shown that perfect bliss is impossible, I have shown that woman under present conditions has often—not always—become a toad on account of her education, I have thus—write it down. Sir—attacked the education of the female, church marriage and the liberty on the part of the men to play the paramour; consequently I have not attacked woman, but rather—write it down, Sir, in large letters—Present Conditions.

“Woman does not need my defense. She is the fashion and therefore she is the mistress of the world. And the freedom she now demands is the same freedom demanded by all men. This we must acquire as friends, not as enemies, for as such we will get nothing.”

​How the author of Married in spite of these lucid statements of his could be turned into the apostle of absolute hatred of women, seems to me to be a sleight-of-hand trick of the kind that is rather difficult of explanation. Of course, it is quite clear from what quarter the trick proceeds; but to explain and to prove anything about it conclusively is more difficult.

Strindberg's endeavor to appear as the defender of idealistic womanhood displeased all the emancipationists in skirts or pantaloons who had started the “Doll's House cult” and had set up as their high aim: The emancipation of woman. And, strange to say, it seems to have been the educated element of the nation that had been carried away by this cult, this worship of the family cocotte. How many of those who fought bravely against the Ibsen play did not go down on their marrow-bones in face of the perverted cult caused by the very same play?

They did not try to refute Strindberg's logic with counter-proofs and clear arguments. They probably felt that it was rather difficult to argue him off his feet. But they felled the altogether too bold champion by a blow from behind. They declared him an outlaw by christening him The Woman Hater.

Everywhere in Sweden during the years next following the lawsuit occasioned by his Married, around thousands of coffee pots and with the aid of thousands of foul, tattling tongues, they fixed to the name of Strindberg this uncalled-for epithet; and it became so enduringly fixed that even at the present time, nay, on the very day of Strindberg's death, a thoughtless journalistic ​literary light could sit down and use in the obituary of the greatest poet that Sweden has produced, this derogatory term which he ought to have felt to be improper on purely technical grounds in connection with the name of the departed.

Strindberg had, as we have said, a certain purpose in view when he wrote his A Book about Women. That purpose he attained only in part. He was able to undermine the Nora-cult so that it collapsed, but to get the feministic movement to progress along lines where it could keep company with reason was an impossibility even for him.

Moreover, a comical incident thwarted the whole purpose of Married. A prominent lady took exception to it and ordered an action to be brought against it. This ought to have been directed, of course, against its “immoral tendencies,” against the lack of respect with which the author speaks of Her Majesty the Mistress of the world, i.e. against those features which ten thousand emancipated housewives had found most objectionable in the book. If that had been done Strindberg would without a doubt have performed a much greater service with his book than he did.

But instead of this, the accusers twisted the whole matter by bringing action against Married for defamation of religion. Such a course Strindberg never could have imagined, and it is to this disappointment he refers when he gives vent to his despair in the historical words: “The shot went off, but my gun did not stand it. The pot is bursted.”

​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 ​about him and chosen him as their chief despite the fact that he never had asked them for that honor.

This was their gratitude for his clear and candid statement pertaining to one of the burning questions of the day and for his having chosen his words so that the statement will be valid for long years to come,—probably as long as men and women shall foolishly get into their heads to give one another—before clergyman or magistrate—the rash promise of partnership for life.

In the obscure circle of a provincial town where I sojourned the year when Married appeared, I had a splendid opportunity to study the remarkable manner in which Swedish society received the work.

A long time before the book appeared and before its contents became known, it had been condemned unanimously. The New Kingdom had not been read in vain. They knew, therefore, how boldly free this social critic was, how little reverence he showed for certain of our time-honored grievances, and they were convinced beforehand that Strindberg would put his foot in it most decidedly, if he actually undertook to discuss such a delicate question as that of woman and marriage.

They knew, therefore, several weeks in advance that Married pleaded for nothing less than “free love,” the more accidental the better. All ties were to be severed, for the parents must not know to whom their children belonged, and on that account all were to be educated by the state in a national institution for foundlings. Thus parental love was to be blotted out of the world. And the women—well, what their fate might be one ​could imagine, when they no longer enjoyed the protection of conjugal ties but instead had to look upon love as their bread and butter. The female sex was destined to form a proletarian class of most despicable creatures, and the last vestige of family life was to be wiped out once for all.

We can imagine what consternation this created in innumerable little homes. Around the family lamp the folks are sitting in an atmosphere which one might almost be justified in calling religious. And then Strindberg's big black hand appears and attempts to snatch the lamp from the table, to disturb that admirable family concord, and drive the different members of the circle into the street.

Strindberg's Married was doomed even before it appeared. People wondered how the publisher, Albert Bonnier, could be bare-faced enough to publish it. And it was expected that the book would be confiscated before it had time to leave the press.

I had heard so much about it myself that, a week ahead of time, I called on the only bookseller in town asking him to send me a copy, well wrapped up, as soon as he had received the first consignment of Married.

One day I returned from my walk and was on the point of settling down among my books to continue my studies.

Suddenly my aunt came rushing in, pale and out of breath, just as if she had been present at some bloody massacre in the immediate neighborhood. She was in such a state of agitation that she spoke with difficulty.

“What have you done, Gustaf? How can you do any​thing like that? I—I thought that you were a decent young man. It is terrible to defile our honorable home in that way.”

—What way? I don't see what you are driving at.

And then she told me how my uncle had come home and by chance found a parcel containing Married which was lying on my desk. His horror had been so great that he had dropped the book and refused to pick it up except with a pair of fire-tongs. He had taken it back to the bookseller and read the riot-act to him for daring to send the book to me.

When I hastened down to the bookseller to get the book again, he refused to sell it to me. I had a sharp encounter with him, but to no purpose. Through the backdoor, however, he sold the book to those special customers of his who belonged to the literary clique of the community, and it had a great run, so much so that when its sale was suppressed, there were but a few copies left.

Those who had read it did not speak of it, but those who had not read it complained that Strindberg had made prostitutes out of all women and reviled all that is sacred.

I myself was treated as a criminal by my relatives, and they did not wish to be seen publicly together with me. They even warned their acquaintances against the Strindberg-friend as against some anarchistic monster.

Such commotion the poor little work, which was misunderstood in advance of its publication, caused all over the country! If there had been a single honest, fearless, influential person who had dared to stand up and to declare that Married was a highly conservative ​book, the aim of which was to defend the only remaining ideal of the author—woman as wife and mother—there would have been no occasion for this second great national injustice which was brought home to the author with such crushing effect.

For in spite of the fact that the journey home caused by the act of injunction, was a great triumph for him, afterwards all deserted him, even those whose vocation it was to represent free speech and who had inscribed “Liberalism” on their colors.