The Swedish edition of The Father was followed by a French edition, containing a sympathetic prefatory letter by Zola. The three acts of this tragedy present a drawn-out duel between man and woman for the possession of the soul of the child. The father, a cavalry captain, is intellectual, serious, studious, lovable. His wife is stupid, selfish and diabolically resourceful in the choice of weapons for the final defeat of the ill-used man. He is mentally poisoned by the suggestion that he is not the father of the child. Laura, the wife, has herself administered the poison in order to shatter the man's peace of mind, and break the foundation of his love for the child. Her hatred knows no bounds. She not only seeks to drive him mad, but contrives by skilful intrigue to procure evidence of his insanity. She informs the doctor that her husband suffers from extraordinary delusions regarding the uncertainty of paternity, and that he talks of little else. When the doctor meets the Captain the question which is eating his mind shows itself as an obsessing idea. Everybody and everything conspires to make the man appear a raving lunatic. Finally, even the old nurse who has been a true and good woman is induced to betray him. He believes in her kindness of heart, and allows her to approach him. She slips the strait-jacket over him, thereby adding the last link to the chain of feminine treachery and cruelty which has enslaved him. Subjugated, robbed of his faith and his mind, the man dies—the victim of woman.
In the preface Zola expressed his interest in the boldness of the idea. "Your Laura," he wrote, "is woman as she is in her conceit and in her mystical unconsciousness of her qualities and faults." The Father was one of the few dramatic works which had the power of moving him deeply. But he found a certain want of reality in the characters and the construction of the play. The nameless captain and his cruel entourage were thought-forms, lacking the solid dimensions which Zola identified with reality. In a critical appreciation of Strindberg, published in 1894, Georg Brandes praised The Father as a tragedy of concentrated energy, magnificent in its composition and powerful in its effect. "There is something eternal in The Father," he writes, "an unforgettable psychology of woman, showing typically feminine weakness and vice." Brandes thinks the symbolism of the final scene, in which the man of intellect is ruined by woman, inherently true. He adds: "The strength of the indignation and the hatred which have produced the drama are impressive. This tragedy is a cry of anguish which clings to one's memory, which grips and terrifies through the depth of the passionate suffering that uttered the cry."
Laura may be regarded as the most complete type of Strindberg's Inferno-women. She has not even the beauté du diable which creates an illusion of goodness in some of his types. She is the man-eater, the destroyer of all that is noble, consistent, progressive in man. Strindberg sees a cannibalistic tendency in woman which makes marriage a feast of horror, and this is a theme to which he often returns. In The Father the distraught man says to his child: "You see, I am a cannibal, and I will eat you. Your mother wanted to eat me, but she could not. I am Saturn who ate his children, because it had been prophesied that they would eat him. To eat or to be eaten? That is the question. If I do not eat you, you will eat me, and you have already showed me your teeth." ...
The callous egotism with which Laura kills her husband is shown by the following words, with which she assaults him: "Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and bread-winner, you are not needed any longer, and you must go. You must go, since you have realised that my intellect is as strong as my will, and since you will not stay to acknowledge it."
It is perhaps not unnatural that the Captain should throw a lighted lamp at Laura after listening to this speech. But the speech itself is certainly unnatural, and would be more in keeping with the sentiments of a female spider—if that callous insect could formulate her generative philosophy—than those of a woman. As a self-expository wife Laura severely taxes our credulity.
Lady Julie[1] is a different type. She is the pretty, neurotic, sensual, useless woman, blue-blooded and empty-minded, destined to total extinction in the process of natural selection. Her tragedy is unfolded in a play of one act, which is the quintessence of Strindberg as a "naturalistic" dramatist. The scene is laid in the Count's kitchen. The Count's daughter, Lady Julie, is alone in the house with Jean, the valet, and Christine, the cook. It is St. John's Eve; the farm hands belonging to the estate are assembled for the annual midsummer dance. They do not dance in the kitchen, but there is midsummer madness in the air. Christine is betrothed to Jean who treats the products of her culinary art with epicurean disdain. He knows his value as a man and a servant. Jean is an excellent valet, well-made, well-behaved, who knows when to show self-confidence and when to cringe. Lady Julie has graced the servants' dance with her presence. She has favoured Jean with such marked attention that the people have begun to gossip. Alone with him in the kitchen she encourages him to make love to her. The valet is uneasy; the man is eager to make himself master of the Count's daughter, but the servant shrinks from the sacrilege. But Lady Julie taunts him with his unmanliness, tempts him with her beauty, and the effervescence of her highly-strung nerves. A strange love-scene follows.
The sound of approaching country-folk forces Jean and Lady Julie to hide from their prying eyes. They do not wish to be found alone in the kitchen. Jean's room is near at hand and becomes their refuge, whilst the peasants make the kitchen the scene of their midsummer merry-making.
When the kitchen is deserted, Lady Julie and Jean reappear. There is an autumnal chill in the air. For Lady Julie is no longer Lady Julie. The valet is master. They are both conscious of the monstrous breach of social etiquette which has been committed. And the grey dawn will not only bring the shame of day, but the home-coming of the Count.
Jean is chivalrous. He proposes immediate flight to Switzerland or the Italian lakes. There, he thinks, they can start an hotel—a first-class hotel for first-class guests. He waxes enthusiastic over the joys of the hotel-owner. She will be mistress of the house, queen of the accounts, before whom the guests will humbly lay their gold.
She cannot rise to his enthusiasm. She wants the comfort of love: