But the impression left on Strindberg's mind by that episode was very serious and distinctly unfavourable. As in his childhood, when he found himself disbelieved though telling the truth, so he felt now more keenly than anything else the questioning of his motives, which he knew to be pure. And the leaders of the feminist movement, then particularly strong in Sweden, turned against him with a bitterness not surpassed by that which Ibsen had to face from directly opposite quarters after the publication of "A Doll's House." Add finally that his marriage, which had begun so auspiciously, was rapidly changing into torture for both parties concerned in it.
Yet his growing embitterment did not make itself felt at once. In 1885 he published four short stories meant to em-body the onward trend of the modern spirit and the actual materialisation of some of its fondest dreams. Collectively he named those stories "Real Utopias," and they went far toward winning him a reputation in Germany, where he was then living.
But with the appearance of the second part of "Marriage" in 1886, it was plain that a change had come over him. Its eighteen stories constituted an unmistakable protest against everything for which the feminist movement stood. The efforts of Ibsen and Björnson to abolish the so-called "double code of morality"—one for men and another one for women were openly challenged on the ground that different results made male and female "immorality" two widely different things. Right here it should be pointed out, however, that Strindberg always, and especially in his later years, has demanded as high a measure of moral purity from men as from women—the real distinction between him and the two great Norwegians lying in the motives on which he based that demand.
The second part of "Marriage" shows a change not only in spirit but in form, and this change becomes more accentuated in every work published during the next few years. Until then Strindberg had shown strong evidence of the Romantic origin of his art. From now on, and until the ending of the great mental crisis in the later nineties, he must be classed as an ultra-naturalist, with strong materialistic and sceptical leanings. At the same time he becomes more and more individualistic in his social outlook, spurning the mass which, as he then felt, had spurned him. And after a while the works of Nietzsche came to complete what his personal experience had begun. His attitude toward woman, as finally developed during this period, may be summed up in an allegation not only of moral and mental but of biological inferiority. And though during his later life he has retracted much and softened more of what he said in those years of rampant masculine rebellion, he continues to this day to regard women as an intermediary biological form, standing between the man and the child.
With the publication, in 1887, of "The Father," a modern three-act tragedy, Strindberg reached a double climax. That work has been hailed as one of his greatest, if not the greatest, as far as technical perfection is concerned. At the same time it presents that duel of the sexes—which to him had taken the place of love—in its most startling and hideous aspects. The gloom of the play is almost unsurpassed. The ingeniousness of its plot may well be called infernal. By throwing doubt on her husband's rights as father of the child held to be theirs in common, the woman in the play manages to undermine the reason of a strong and well-balanced man until he becomes transformed into a raving maniac.
"The Comrades," a modern four-act comedy, portrays the marriage of two artists and shows the woman as a mental parasite, drawing both her inspiration and her skill from the husband, whom she tries to shake off when she thinks him no longer needed for her success. Then came the play of his which is perhaps the most widely known—I mean the realistic drama which, for want of a better English equivalent, must be named here "Miss Juliet." It embodied some startling experiments in form and has undoubtedly exercised a distinct influence on the subsequent development of dramatic technique. On the surface it appears to offer little more than another version of the sex duel, but back of the conflict between man and woman we discover another one, less deep-going perhaps, but rendered more acute by existing conditions. It is the conflict between the upper and partly outlived elements of society and its still unrefined, but vitally unimpaired, strata. And it is the stronger vitality, here represented by the man, which carries the day.
The rest of Strindberg's dramatic productions during this middle, naturalistic period, lasting from 1885 to 1894, included eight more one-act plays, several of which rank very high, and another fairy play, "The Keys to Heaven," which probably marks his nearest approach to a purely negative conception of life.
Paralleling the plays, we find a series of novels and short stories dealing with the people on those islands where Strindberg fifteen years earlier had written his "Master Olof." Two things make these works remarkable: first, the rare understanding shown in them of the life led by the tough race that exists, so to speak, between land and sea; and secondly, their genuine humour, which at times, as in the little story named "The Tailor Has a Dance," rises into almost epic expression. The last of these novels, "At the Edge of the Sea," embodies Strindberg's farthest advance into Nietzschean dreams of supermanhood. But led by his incorruptible logic, he is forced to reduce those dreams to the absurdity which they are sure to involve whenever the superman feels himself standing apart from ordinary humanity.
Finally he wrote, during the earlier part of this marvellously prolific period, five autobiographical novels. One of these was not published until years later. Three others were collectively known as "The Bondwoman's Son," and carried his revelations up to the time of his marriage. The first volume in the series is especially noteworthy because of its searching and sympathetic study of child psychology. But all the novels in this series are of high value because of the sharp light they throw on social conditions. Strindberg's power as an acute and accurate observer has never been questioned, and it has rarely been more strikingly evidenced than in his autobiographical writings. A place by itself, though belonging to the same series, is held by "A Fool's Confession," wherein Strindberg laid bare the tragedy of his first marriage. It is the book that has exposed him to more serious criticism than any other. He wrote it in French and consented to its publication only as a last means of escaping unendurable financial straits. Against his vain protests, unauthorised translations were brought out in German and Swedish.
The dissolution of his marriage occurred in 1891. The circumstances surrounding that break were extremely painful to Strindberg. Both the facts of the legal procedure and the feelings it evoked within himself have been almost photographically portrayed in the one-act play, "The Link," which forms part of this volume. The "link" which binds man and woman together even when their love is gone and the law has severed all external ties is the child—and it is always for the offspring that Strindberg reserves his tenderest feelings and greatest concern.