In 1911 Wedekind published the satiric and still more symbolic drama, _Franziska: A Modern Mystery_, in which the primary theme is a woman’s struggle for individual independence. The protagonist Franziska, a girl just under twenty when the play opens, has been irrevocably prejudiced against the traditional feminine lot by childhood circumstances. She has also refused marriage with two men, one a physician who assumed that her surrender to him meant abject adoration, the other an elderly nobleman from whom she accepted an insurance policy securing the future of any child her free life might produce. She is bent upon living with all the independence of a man. Opportunity offers when she meets Veit Kunz, a theatrical manager whose sudden bursting into her drawing room out of a thunderstorm marks him as Mephistopheles to her Faust. He sees in her boyish bravura the possibility of exploiting her in the world of entertainment. Until lately, he says, audiences wanted women with lovely breasts, shoulders and arms. But his hunch is that taste is changing, and his business is to keep one jump ahead of the mode. Interestingly enough, it is as a singer he means to feature her, indicating a taste for feminine tenors a good decade earlier in Europe than in the United States, where they were not fashionable until the Twenties. While studying voice and posing as a man, ‘Franz’ has a tavern affair with a young prostitute which is cut off at its zenith when the girl is shot by a jealous lover. Her next adventure is as the husband of a middle-class heiress, who wants, not a romantic hero, but a respectable husband and _pater familias_. When children fail to appear, the woman blames her husband’s fondness for a young dancer, and threatens to kill the girl unless she lets “Franz” alone. From a scene between Franziska and Veit Kunz, however, it appears that he and she have been intimate for a year, and a child is on the way. Franziska is resentful. Marriage has proved irksome because of her wife’s desire for a family, and has limited her freedom with both sexes. A child will be the final handicap. Kunz tells her that her wife is a much worthier soul than she, and that motherhood will bring more maturity than multiple adventures or his own dramatic training. However, he says that if she persists on her chosen path, vanity, selfishness and ambition such as hers are the drives that produce successful artists. An enemy informs her wife that Franziska is a woman, and the shock of the revelation causes the wife to commit suicide, setting Franziska free.