It is real life that Strindberg has described in his _Marriages_, that real life which the many live, but of which only the few are conscious. It is the profound inadequacy of the closest relationship, which neither our grandparents nor our fathers and mothers experienced, but only the children of the eighties of the nineteenth century. Everything in our day--joy no less than suffering--leaves a bitter after-taste on the tongue, which neither mineral waters, baths nor digestive pills can rid us of, since the evil is not of the body but of the soul, and proceeds from the incapacity to lead a vegetative life, or to resign oneself to circumstances. Formerly this discontent was general, and in Strindberg’s works the blame was equally divided, but a couple of years after the publication of _Marriages_, a change took place. The universal picture of the age retreated, and everything pointed to woman and man’s relation to her. In the course of a few years there appeared a collection of dramas evincing a hatred of woman quite unparalleled in the literature of the world. It was just at the time when the Scandinavian movement for the emancipation of women was in full swing, with its natural accompaniment of women authors, and the air was filled with cries for equal justice to both sexes, the married woman’s rights of property, the man’s pre-nuptial chastity, etc. It would be impossible to say that the Swedish ladies were graceful in their manner of introducing the new order of Society. Seldom has anything more discouraging been witnessed than the manner in which they enforced their demands upon men--demands which were in part quite reasonable. Woman forgot her womanhood and relied upon the thickness of her skull and her elbows, and in this her masculine phase she was by no one more seriously taken than by Strindberg. He waxed warm in the delight of the conflict. Armed to the teeth with the entire arsenal of superior qualities pertaining to man, brain and pockets filled to overflowing with the latest results of investigation, he went forth to wage war against the Amazons. He went forth because he wanted to be with them, for he loved the emancipated type. The emancipated woman attracted him, which the pious Marthas were never able to do, and because he loved her and because she appealed to his emotions, for that reason he also hated her, for with him hatred is another form of love. He aimed at the wife in three dramas. The first attack took place in _The Father_.