engage himself so penetratingly and
passionately in the psychology of woman, and love, and the problems of
marriage, as to acquire the reputation, undeserved though it was, of
woman-hater. That this observation and analysis of woman was not induced
by natural antipathy to the sex, nor by unhappiness in his own married
experience, is made clear by the facts of his life up to the time when
such investigation was undertaken. What, then, did sway him to such
a choice of theme? Examination of the data of this period from
Strindberg's own annals reveals the following influences: Ibsen from
his Norwegian throne had hailed woman and the laborer as the two rising
ranks of nobility, and Strindberg asked himself if this was ironic, as
usual, or prophetic. Feminine individualism was the cult of the hour.
The younger generation had, through the doctrines of evolution, become
atheistic. Strindberg tells of asking a young writer how he could get
along without God. "We have woman instead," was the reply. This was
the last stage of Madonna worship! And how had it happened that the new
generation had replaced God with woman? "God was the remotest source;
when he failed they grasped at the next, the mother. But then they
should at least choose the real mother, the real woman, before whom, no
matter how strong his spirit, man will always bow when she appears with
her life-giving attributes. But the younger generation had pronounced
contempt for the mother, and in her place had set up the loathsome,
sterile, degenerate amazon--the blue-stocking!"

Earnestly pondering these matters, Strindberg at length decided to write
a book about woman, a subject, he declares, which up to this time he had
not wanted to think about, as he himself "lived in a happy erotic state,
ennobled and beautified by the rejuvenating and expiatory arrival of
children." But nevertheless he decided to write such a book, and so with
sympathy and much old-fashioned veneration for motherhood the task was
undertaken.

Regarding the mother as down-trodden, he wanted to think out a means
for her deliverance. To obtain a clear vision he chose as a method the
delineation of as large a number as possible of marriage cases that he
had seen--and he had seen many, as most of his contemporary friends were
married. Of these he chose twelve, the most characteristic, and then he
went to work. When he had written about half that number, he stopped and
reviewed the collection. The resul