In the preface to the play he analyses this type of woman. "Lady Julie is a modern character," he writes, "not as if the half-woman, the man-hater, had not existed in all times, but because she has now been discovered, has appeared on the scene, and created a disturbance." In such women he sees a danger to the race, for, as a rule, they attract degenerate men, and transmit their own misery to another generation. They sell themselves for "power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas," and produce beings of undecided sex to whom life is useless. For such psycho-pathological creatures Strindberg sees no hope beyond that of elimination through contact with reality (Jean was "reality" to Lady Julie), or a fatal outburst of long-suppressed sexual instincts. "The type is tragic," he concludes, "offering the spectacle of a desperate struggle against nature; tragic as a romantic inheritance which is now being destroyed by the naturalism which only seeks happiness; and only strong and good species are compatible with happiness." Justin McCarthy translated _Lady Julie_ into English, and expressed his admiration for the unalloyed realism of the piece in an article in _The Fortnightly Review_. The mental intensity with which Strindberg visualised the character of Lady Julie is strangely impressive. There is no extravagant or jejune theorising; it is drama vehemently conceived and true to its creator. But the horror which moved Justin McCarthy when reading the play, and which most readers experience, is a product of Strindberg's peculiar misogyny which, for the purposes of the play, he coupled with the ordinary standard of convention and morality. Lady Julie's disgrace is unpardonable from the point of view of society. She dies in deference to its verdict. We cannot imagine a drama by Strindberg, in which tragedy is woven out of the misconduct of a Lord Julius instead of a Lady Julie. A young "blood," neurotic, suffering from ennui, and seeking temporary distraction in the company of Jeanne, the valet's daughter, would not have inspired a naturalistic drama of sex and caste. There is a wealth of material which can be used to _épater le bourgeois_ in the idea of a well-bred woman's precipitous "return to nature." The commonplace spectacle of a similar descent on the part of a well-bred man affords none. In _Comrades_ we meet the type of woman who surpasses _Lady Julie_ in anti-social attributes. Laura is something of a female tigress, the mother whose claws are ready to tear all but the cub; Lady Julie, with her hysteria I and her caprices is still the womanly woman. But Bertha who is united to her "comrade" Axel in a marriage of equality is worse than they. She is plain, mannish, ambitious; a mental parasite who suppresses her womanhood and simulates her husband's talents. The rival of man, the unsexed, simian-brained shrew, Strindberg's _bête noire_.