In portraying motherhood, as it really is, August Strindberg is conveying a vital and revolutionary message, namely, that true motherhood, even as fatherhood, does not consist in molding the child according to one's image, or in imposing upon it one's own ideas and notions, but in allowing the child freedom and opportunity to grow harmoniously according to its own potentialities, unhampered and unmarred. The child was August Strindberg's religion,--perhaps because of his own very tragic childhood and youth. He was like Father Time in "Jude the Obscure," a giant child, and as he has _Laura_ say of the _Captain_ in "The Father," "he had either come too early into the world, or perhaps was not wanted at all." "Yes, that's how it was," the _Captain_ replies, "my father's and my mother's will was against my coming into the world, and consequently I was born without a will." The horror of having been brought into the world undesired and unloved, stamped its indelible mark on August Strindberg. It never left him. Nor did fear and hunger--the two terrible phantoms of his childhood. Indeed, the child was Strindberg's religion, his faith, his passion. Is it then surprising that he should have resented woman's attitude towards the man as a mere means to the child; or, in the words of _Laura_, as "the function of father and breadwinner"? That this is the attitude of woman, is of course denied. But it is nevertheless true. It holds good not only of the average, unthinking woman, but even of many feminists of to-day; and, no doubt, they were even more antagonistic to the male in Strindberg's time. It is only too true that woman is paying back what she has endured for centuries--humiliation, subjection, and bondage. But making oneself free through the enslavement of another, is by no means a step toward advancement. Woman must grow to understand that the father is as vital a factor in the life of the child as is the mother. Such a realization would help very much to minimize the conflict between the sexes. Of course, that is not the only cause of the conflict. There is another, as expressed by _Laura_: "Do you remember when I first came into your life, I was like a second mother?... I loved you as my child. But ... when the nature of your feelings changed and you appeared as my lover, I blushed, and your embraces were joy that was followed by remorseful conscience as if my blood were ashamed." The vile thought instilled into woman by the Church and Puritanism that sex expression without the purpose of procreation is immoral, has been a most degrading influence. It has poisoned the life of thousands of women who similarly suffer "remorseful conscience"; therefore their disgust and hatred of the man; therefore also the conflict.