son of original gifts.

I have little doubt that Strindberg, at the time he wrote this
play--and bear in mind that this happened only a year before he
finally decided to free himself from an impossible marriage by an
appeal to the law--believed _Tekla_ to be fairly representative of
womanhood in general. The utter unreasonableness of such a view
need hardly be pointed out, and I shall waste no time on it. A
question more worthy of discussion is whether the figure of _Tekla_
be true to life merely as the picture of a personality--as one out
of numerous imaginable variations on a type decided not by sex but
by faculties and qualities. And the same question may well be
raised in regard to the two men, both of whom are evidently
intended to win our sympathy: one as the victim of a fate stronger
than himself, and the other as the conqueror of adverse and
humiliating circumstances.

Personally, I am inclined to doubt whether a _Tekla_ can be found
in the flesh--and even if found, she might seem too exceptional to
gain acceptance as a real individuality. It must be remembered,
however, that, in spite of his avowed realism, Strindberg did not
draw his men and women in the spirit generally designated as
impressionistic; that is, with the idea that they might step
straight from his pages into life and there win recognition as
human beings of familiar aspect. His realism is always mixed with
idealism; his figures are always "doctored," so to speak. And they
have been thus treated in order to enable their creator to drive
home the particular truth he is just then concerned with.

Consciously or unconsciously he sought to produce what may be
designated as "pure cultures" of certain human qualities. But
these he took great pains to arrange in their proper psychological
settings, for mental and moral qualities, like everything else,
run in groups that are more or less harmonious, if not exactly
homogeneous. The man with a single quality, like Moliere's
_Harpagon_, was much too primitive and crude for Strindberg's art,
as he himself rightly asserted in his preface to "Miss Julia."
When he wanted to draw the genius of greed, so to speak, he did it
by setting it in the midst of related qualities of a kind most
likely to be attracted by it.

_Tekla_ is such a "pure culture" of a group of naturally correlated
mental and moral qualities and functions and tendencies--of a
personality built up logically around a dominant central note.