August Strindberg
Married
The compromise was accepted and Louisa was called in to receive Frithiof’s embrace and timid kiss. They both wept for reasons which neither of them understood. They felt ashamed of themselves for the rest of the day. Afterwards everything went on as before, but the motherliness of aunts and sisters knew no bounds. They furnished the wing, arranged the rooms, settled everything; Frithiof was never consulted in the matter.
The preparations for the wedding were completed. Old friends, buried in the provinces, were hunted up and invited to be present at the ceremony.
The wedding took place.
On the morning after his wedding day Frithiof was up early. He left his bed-room as quickly as possible, pretending that his presence was necessary in the fields.
Louisa, who was still sleepy, made no objection. But as he was going out she called after him:
“You won’t forget breakfast at eleven!”
It sounded like a command.
He went to his den, put on a shooting coat and waterproof boots and took his gun, which he kept concealed in his wardrobe. Then he went out into the wood.
It was a beautiful October morning. Everything was covered with hoar frost. He walked quickly as if he were afraid of being called back, or as if he were trying to escape from something. The fresh air had the effect of a bath. He felt a free man, at last, and he used his freedom to go out for a morning stroll with his gun. But this exhilarating feeling of bodily freedom soon passed. Up to now he had at least had a bedroom of his own. He had been master of his thoughts during the day and his dreams at night. That was over. The thought of that common bedroom tormented him; there was something unclean about it. Shame was cast aside like a mask, all delicacy of feeling was dispensed with, every illusion of the “high origin” of man destroyed; to come into such close contact with nothing but the beast in man had been too much for him, for he had been brought up by idealists. He was staggered by the enormity of the hypocrisy displayed in the intercourse between men and women; it was a revelation to him to find that the inmost substance of that indescribable womanliness was nothing but the fear of consequences. But supposing he had married the doctor’s daughter, or the gardener’s little girl? Then to be alone with her would be bliss, while to be alone with his wife was depressing and unlovely; then the coarse desire to satisfy a curiosity and a want would be transformed into an ecstasy more spiritual than carnal.
He wandered through the wood without a purpose, without an idea of what he wanted to shoot; be only felt a vague desire to hear a shot and to kill something; but nothing came before his gun. The birds had already migrated. Only a squirrel was climbing about the branches of a pine-tree, staring at him with brilliant eyes. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger; but the nimble little beast was already on the other side of the trunk when the shot hit the tree. But the sound impressed his nerves pleasantly.
He left the footpath and went through the undergrowth. He stamped on every fungus that grew on his way. He was in a destructive mood. He looked for a snake so as to trample on it or kill it with a shot.
Suddenly he remembered that he ought to go home and that it was the morning after his wedding day. The mere thought of the curious glances to which he would be exposed had the effect of making him feel like a criminal, about to be unmasked and shown up for having committed a crime against good manners and, what was worse, against nature. Oh! that he could have left this world behind him! But how was he to do that?
His thoughts grew tired at last of revolving round and round the same problem and he felt a craving for food.
He decided to return home and have some breakfast.
On entering the gate which led to the court yard, he saw the whole house-party standing before the entrance hall. As soon as they caught sight of him they began to cheer. He crossed the yard with uncertain footsteps and listened with ill-concealed irritation to the sly questions after his health. Then he turned away and went into the house, never noticing his wife, who was standing amongst the group waiting for him to go up to her and kiss her.
At the breakfast table he suffered tortures; tortures which he knew would be burnt into his memory for all times. The insinuations of his guests offended him and his wife’s caresses stung him. His day of rejoicing was the most miserable day of his life.
In the course of a few months the young wife, with the assistance of aunts and sisters, had established her over-rule in the house. Frithiof remained, what he had always been, the youngest and dullest member of the household. His advice was sometimes asked for, but never acted upon; he was looked after as if he were still a child. His wife soon found it unbearable to dine with him alone, for he kept an obstinate silence during the meal. Louisa could not stand it; she must have a lightning conductor; one of the sisters removed into the wing.
Frithiof made more than one attempt to emancipate himself, but his attempts were always frustrated by the enemy; they were too many for him, and they talked and preached until he fled into the wood.
The evenings held terror for him. He hated the bedroom, and went to it as to a place of execution. He became morose and avoided everybody.
They had been married for a year now, and still there was no promise of a child; his mother took him aside one day to have a talk to him.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a son?” she asked.
“Of course, I would,” he replied.
“You aren’t treating your wife very kindly,” said the mother as gently as possible.
He lost his temper.
“What? What do you say? Are you finding fault with me? Do you want me to toil all day long? H’m! You don’t know Louisa! But whose business is it but mine? Bring your charge against me in such a way that I can answer it!”
But the mother was not disposed to do that.
Lonely and miserable, he made friends with the inspector, a young man, addicted to wine and cards. He sought his company and spent the evenings in his room; he went to bed late, as late as possible.
On coming home one night, he found his wife still awake and waiting for him.
“Where have you been?” she asked sharply.
“That’s my business,” he replied.
“To be married and have no husband is anything but pleasant,” she rejoined. “If we had a child, at least!”
“It isn’t my fault that we haven’t!”
“It isn’t mine!”
A quarrel arose as to whose fault it was, and the quarrel lasted for two years.
As both of them were too obstinate to take medical advice, the usual thing happened. The husband cut a ridiculous figure, and the wife a tragic one. He was told that a childless woman was sacred because, for some reason or other, “God’s” curse rested on her. That “God” could also stoop to curse a man was beyond the women’s comprehension.
But Frithiof had no doubt that a curse rested on him for his life was dreary and unhealthy. Nature has created two sexes, which are now friends, now enemies. He had met the enemy, an overwhelming enemy.
“What is a capon?” he was asked by one of his sisters one day. She was busy with her needlework and asked the question à propos of nothing.
He looked at her suspiciously. No, she did not know the meaning of the word; she had probably listened to a conversation and her curiosity was aroused.
But the iron had entered his soul. He was being laughed at. He grew suspicious. Everything he heard and saw he connected with that charge. Beside himself with rage, he seduced one of the maids.
His act had the desired result. In due time he was a father.
Now Louisa was looked upon as a martyr and he as a blackguard. The abuse left him indifferent, for he had vindicated his honour—if it was an honour and not merely a lucky chance to be born without defects.
But the incident roused Louisa’s jealousy and—it was a strange thing—awakened in her a sort of love for her husband. It was a love which irritated him, for it showed itself in unremitting watchfulness and nervous obtrusiveness; sometimes even in maternal tenderness and solicitude which knew no bounds. She wanted to look after his gun, see whether it was charged; she begged him on her knees to wear his overcoat when he went out.... She kept his home with scrupulous care, tidied and dusted all day long; every Saturday the rooms were turned inside out, the carpets beaten and his clothes aired. He had no peace and never knew when he would be turned out of his room so that it could be scrubbed.
There was not sufficient to do to occupy him during the day, for the women looked after everything. He studied agriculture and attempted to make improvements, but all his efforts were frustrated. He was not master in his own house.
Finally he lost heart. He had grown taciturn because he was always contradicted. The want of congenial company and fellows-in-misfortune gradually dulled his brain; his nerves went to pieces; he neglected his appearance and took to drink.
He was hardly ever at home now. Frequently he could be found, intoxicated, at the public house or in the cottages of the farm labourers. He drank with everybody and all day long. He stimulated his brain with alcohol for the sake of the relief he found in talking. It was difficult to decide whether he drank in order to be able to talk to somebody who did not contradict him, or whether he drank merely in order to get drunk.
He sold privileges and farm produce to the cottagers to provide himself with money, for the women held the cash. Finally he burgled his own safe and stole the contents.
There was an orthodox, church-going inspector on the premises now; the previous one had been dismissed on account of his intemperate habits. When at last, through the clergyman’s influence, the proprietor of the inn lost his license Frithiof took to drinking with his own farm labourers. Scandal followed on scandal.
He developed into a heavy drinker who had epileptic fits whenever he was deprived of alcohol.
He was ultimately committed to an institution where he remained as an incurable patient.
At lucid intervals, when he was capable of surveying his life, his heart was filled with compassion for all women who are compelled to marry without love; his compassion was all the deeper because he had suffered in his own flesh the curse which lies on every violation of nature; and yet he was only a man.
He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family—the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time.
He brought no charge against his wife, for was she not equally unhappy, a victim of the same unfortunate conditions which are honoured by the sacred name of Law?
CORINNA
Her father was a general, her mother died when she was still a baby. After her mother’s death few ladies visited the house; the callers were mostly men. And her father took her education into his own hands.
She went out riding with him, was present at the manoeuvres, took an interest in gymnastics and attended the musters of the reserves.
Since her father occupied the highest rank in their circle of friends, everybody treated him with an amount of respect which is rarely shown to equals, and as she was the general’s daughter, she was treated in the same way. She held the rank of a general and she knew it.
There was always an orderly sitting in the hall who rose with much clanking and clashing of steel and stood at attention whenever she went in or out. At the balls none but the majors dared to ask her for a dance; she looked upon a captain as a representative of an inferior race, and a lieutenant as a naughty boy.
She fell into the habit of appreciating people entirely according to their rank. She called all civilians “fishes,” poorly-clad people “rascals,” and the very poor “the mob.”
The ladies, however, were altogether outside this scale. Her father, who occupied a position above all men, and who was saluted respectfully wherever he went, always stood up before a lady, regardless of her age, kissed the hands of those he knew, and was at the beck and call of every pretty woman. The result of this was that very early in life she became very firmly convinced of the superiority of her own sex, and accustomed herself to look upon a man as a lower being.
Whenever she went out on horseback, a groom invariably rode behind her. When she stopped to admire the landscape, he stopped too. He was her shadow. But she had no idea what he looked like, or whether he was young or old. If she had been asked about his sex, she would not have known how to reply; it had never occurred to her that the shadow could have a sex; when, in mounting, she placed her little riding-boot in his hand, she remained quite indifferent, and even occasionally raised her habit a little as if nobody were present.
These inbred conceptions of the surpassing importance of rank influenced her whole life. She found it impossible to make friends with the daughters of a major or a captain, because their fathers were her father’s social inferiors. Once a lieutenant asked her for a dance. To punish him for his impudence, she refused to talk to him in the intervals. But when she heard later on that her partner had been one of the royal princes, she was inconsolable. She who knew every order and title, and the rank of every officer, had failed to recognise a prince! It was too terrible!
She was beautiful, but pride gave her features a certain rigidity which scared her admirers away. The thought of marriage had never occurred to her. The young men were not fully qualified, and those to whose social position there was no objection, were too old. If she, the daughter of a general, had married a captain, then a major’s wife would have taken precedence of her. Such a degradation would have killed her. Moreover, she had no wish to be a man’s chattel, or an ornament for his drawing-room. She was accustomed to command, accustomed to be obeyed; she could obey no man. The freedom and independence of a man’s life appealed to her; it had fostered in her a loathing for all womanly occupations.
Her sexual instinct awoke late. As she belonged to an old family which on her father’s side, had squandered its strength in a soulless militarism, drink and dissipation, and on her mother’s had suppressed fertility to prevent the splitting up of property, Nature seemed to have hesitated about her sex at the eleventh hour; or perhaps had lacked strength to determine on the continuation of the race. Her figure possessed none of those essentially feminine characteristics, which Nature requires for her purposes, and she scorned to hide her defects by artificial means.
The few women friends she had, found her cold and indifferent towards everything connected with the sex problem. She treated it with contempt, considered the relationship between the sexes disgusting, and could not understand how a woman could give herself to a man. In her opinion Nature was unclean; to wear clean underlinen, starched petticoats and stockings without holes was to be virtuous; poor was merely another term for dirt and vice.
Every summer she spent with her father on their estate in the country.
She was no great lover of the country. Nature made her feel small; she found the woods uncanny, the lake made her shudder, there was danger hidden in the tall meadow-grass. She regarded the peasants as cunning and rather filthy beasts. They had so many children, and she had no doubt that both boys and girls were full of vice. Nevertheless they were always invited to the manor house on Midsummer day and on the general’s birthday, to play the part of the chorus of grand opera, that is to say, to cheer and dance, and look like the figures in a painting.
It was springtime. Helena, on her thoroughbred mare, had penetrated into the depths of the country. She felt tired and dismounted; she fastened her mare to a birchtree which grew near an enclosure. Then she strolled along by the side of a ditch and began to gather wild orchids. The air was soft and balmy, steam was rising from the ground. She could hear the frogs jumping into the ditch which was half-full of water.
All at once the mare neighed and, stretching her slender neck over the fence, drew in the air with wide-open nostrils.
“Alice!” she called out, “be quiet, old girl!”
And she continued to gather the modest flowers which so cleverly hide their secrets behind the prettiest and neatest curtains that for all the world look like printed calico.
But the mare neighed again. From behind the hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his teeth. Then he galloped across the grass and approached the railings.
Helena picked up her skirt and ran to her mare; she raised her hand to seize the bridle, but the mare broke away and took the fence. Then the wooing began.
She stood at the fence and called, but the excited mare paid no heed. Inside the enclosure the horses chased one another; the situation was a critical one. The breath of the stallion came like smoke from his nostrils and white foam flecked his shoulders.
Helena longed to escape, for the scene filled her with horror. She had never witnessed the raging of a natural instinct in a living body. This uncontrolled outbreak terrified her.
She wanted to run after her mare and drag her away by force, but she was afraid of the savage stallion. She wanted to call for help, but she was loath to attract other eyewitnesses. She turned her back to the scene and decided to wait.
The sound of horses’ hoofs came from the direction of the highroad; a carriage appeared in sight.
There was no escape; although she was ashamed to stay where she was, it was too late now to run away, for the horses were slowing down and the carriage stopped a few yards in front of her.
“How beautiful!” exclaimed one of the occupants of the carriage, a lady, and raised her golden lorgnette so as to get a better view of the spectacle.
“But why are we stopping?” retorted the other, irritably. “Drive on!”
“Don’t you think it beautiful?” asked the elder lady.
The coachman’s smile was lost in his great beard, as he urged the horses on.
“You are such a prude, my dear Milly,” said the first voice. “To me this kind of thing is like a thunderstorm, or a heavy sea....”
Helena could hear no more. She felt crushed with vexation, shame and horror.
A farm labourer came shuffling along the highroad. Helena ran to meet him, so as to prevent him from witnessing the scene, and at the same time ask his help. But he was already too near.
“I believe it’s the miller’s black stallion,” he said gravely. “In that case it will be better to wait until it’s all over, for he won’t brook interference. If the lady will leave it to me, I will bring her mare home later on.”
Glad to have done with the matter, Helena hurried away.
When she arrived home, she was ill.
She refused to ride her mare again, for in her eyes the beast had become unclean.
This pretty adventure had a greater influence on Helena’s psychic development than might have been expected. The brutal outbreak of a natural instinct, the undisguised exhibition of which in the community of men is punished with a term of imprisonment, haunted her as if she had been present at an execution. It distressed her during the day and disturbed her dreams at night. It increased her fear of nature and made her give up her former amazon’s life. She remained at home and gave herself up to study.
The house boasted a library. But as misfortune would have it, no additions had been made since her grandfather’s death. All books were therefore a generation too old, and Helena found antiquated ideals. The first book which fell into her hands was Madame de Staël’s Corinna The way in which the volume lay on the shelf indicated that it had served a special purpose. Bound in green and gold, a little shabby at the edges, full of marginal notes and underlined passages, the work of her late mother, it became a bridge, as it were, between mother and daughter, which enabled the now grown-up daughter to make the acquaintance of the dead mother. These pencil notes were the story of a soul. Displeasure with the prose of life and the brutality of nature, had inflamed the writer’s imagination and inspired it to construct a dreamworld in which the souls dwelled, disincarnate. It was essentially an aristocratic world, this dreamworld, for it required financial independence from its denizens, so that the soul might be fed with thoughts. This brain-fever, called romance, was therefore the gospel of the wealthy, and became absurd and pitiful as soon as it penetrated to the lower classes.
Corinna became Helena’s ideal: the divinely inspired poetess who like the nun of the middle-ages, had vowed a vow of chastity, so that she might lead a life of purity, who was, of course, admired by a brilliant throng, rose to immeasurable heights above the heads of the petty every-day mortals. It was the old ideal all over again, transposed: salutes, standing at attention, rolling of drums, the first place everywhere. Helena was quite ignorant of the fact that Madame de Staël outlived the Corinna ideal, and did not become a real influence until she came out of her dreamworld into the world of facts.
She ceased to take an interest in everyday affairs, she communed with herself and brooded over her ego. The inheritance which her mother had left her in posthumous notes began to germinate. She identified herself with both Corinna and her mother, and spent much time in meditating on her mission in life. That nature had intended her to become a mother and do her share in the propagation of the human race, she refused to admit her mission was to explain to humanity what Madame de Staël’s Corinna had thought fifty years ago; but she imagined the thoughts were her own, striving to find expression.
She began to write. One day she attempted verse. She succeeded. The lines were of equal length and the last words rhymed. A great light dawned on her: she was a poetess. One thing more remained: she wanted ideas; well she could take them from Corinna.
In this way quite a number of poems originated.
But they had also to be bestowed on the world, and this could not be done unless they were printed. One day she sent a poem entitled Sappho and signed Corinna to the Illustrated Newspaper. With a beating heart she went out to post the letter herself, and as it dropped into the pillarbox, she prayed softly to “God.”
A trying fortnight ensued. She ate nothing, hardly closed her eyes, and spent her days in solitude.
When Saturday came and the paper was delivered, she trembled as if she were fever-stricken, and when she found that her verses were neither printed nor mentioned in “Letters to Correspondents,” she almost broke down.
On the following Saturday, when she could count on an answer with some certainty, she slipped the paper into her pocket without unfolding it, and went into the woods. When she had arrived at a secluded spot and made sure that no one was watching her, she unfolded the paper and hastily glanced at the contents. One poem only was printed, entitled Bellman’s-day. She turned to “Letters to Correspondents.” Her first glance at the small print made her start violently. Her fingers clutched the paper, rolled it into a ball and flung it into the underwood. Then she stared, fascinated, at the ball of white, glimmering through the green undergrowth. For the first time in her life she had received an insult. She was completely unnerved. This unknown journalist had dared what nobody had dared before: he had been rude to her. She had come out from behind her trenches into the arena where high birth counts for nothing, but where victory belongs to that wonderful natural endowment which we call talent, and before which all powers bow when it can no longer be denied. But the unknown had also offended the woman in her, for he had said:
“The Corinna of 1807 would have cooked dinners and rocked cradles if she had lived after 1870. But you are no Corinna.”
For the first time she had heard the voice of the enemy, the arch-enemy, man. Cook dinners and rock cradles! They should see!
She went home. She felt so crushed that her muscles hardly obeyed her relaxed nerves.
When she had gone a little way, she suddenly turned round and retraced her footsteps. Supposing anybody found that paper! It would give her away.
She returned to the spot, and breaking off a hazel switch, dragged the paper out from where it lay and carefully smoothed it. Then she raised a piece of turf, hid the paper underneath and rolled a stone on the top. It was a hope that lay buried there, and also a proof—of what? That she had committed a crime? She felt that she had. She had done a wrong, she had shown herself naked before the other sex.
From this day on a struggle went on in her heart. Ambition and fear of publicity strove within her, and she was unable to come to a decision.
In the following autumn her father died. As he had been addicted to gambling, and more often lost than won, he left debts behind him. But in smart society these things are of no account. There was no necessity for Helena to earn her living in a shop, for a hitherto unknown aunt came forward and offered her a home.
But her father’s death wrought a complete change in her position. No more salutes; the officers of the regiment nodded to her in a friendly fashion, the lieutenants asked her to dance. She saw plainly that the respect shown to her had not been shown to her personally, but merely to her rank. She felt degraded and a lively sympathy for all subalterns was born in her; she even felt a sort of hatred for all those who enjoyed her former privileges. Side by side with this feeling grew up a yearning for personal appreciation, a desire to win a position surpassing all others, although it might not figure in the Army list.
She longed to distinguish herself, to win fame, and, (why not?) to rule. She possessed one talent which she had cultivated to some extent, although she had never risen above the average; she played the piano. She began to study harmony and talked of the sonata in G minor and the symphony in F major as if she had written them herself. And forthwith she began to patronise musicians.
Six months after her father’s death, the post of a lady-in-waiting was offered to her. She accepted it. The rolling of drums and military salutes recommenced, and Helena gradually lost her sympathy with subalterns. But the mind is as inconstant as fortune, and fresh experiences again brought about a change of her views.
She discovered one day, and the day was not long in coming, that she was nothing but a servant. She was sitting in the Park with the Duchess. The Duchess was crocheting.
“I consider those blue stockings perfectly idiotic,” said the Duchess.
Helena turned pale; she stared at her mistress.
“I don’t,” she replied.
“I didn’t ask your opinion,” replied the Duchess, letting her ball of wool roll into the dust.
Helena’s knees trembled; her future, her position passed away before her eyes like a flash of lightning. She went to pick up the wool. It seemed to her that her back was breaking as she stooped, and her cheeks flamed when the Duchess took the ball without a word of thanks.
“You are not angry?” asked the Duchess, staring impertinently at her victim.
“Oh, no, Your Royal Highness,” was Helena’s untruthful reply.
“They say that you are a blue-stocking yourself,” continued the Duchess. “Is it true?”
Helena had a feeling as if she were standing nude before her tormentor and made no reply.
For the second time the ball rolled into the dust. Helena pretended not to notice it, and bit her lips to hold back the angry tears which were welling up in her eyes. “Pick up my wool, please,” said the Duchess.
Helena drew herself up, looked the autocrat full in the face and said:
“I won’t.”
And with these words she turned and fled. The sand gritted under her feet, and little clouds of dust followed in the wake of her train. She almost ran down the stone steps and disappeared.
Her career at court was ended; but a sting remained. Helena was made to feel what it means to be in disgrace, and above all things what it means to throw up one’s post. Society does not approve of changes and nobody would believe that she had voluntarily renounced the sunshine of the court. No doubt she had been sent away. Yes, it must be so, she had been sent away. Never before had she felt so humiliated, so insulted. It seemed to her that she had lost caste; her relations treated her with coldness, as if they were afraid that her disgrace might be infectious; her former friends gave her the cold shoulder when they met her, and limited their conversation to a minimum.
On the other hand, as she stooped from her former height, the middle-classes received her with open arms. It was true, at first their friendliness offended her more than the coldness of her own class, but in the end she preferred being first down below to being last up above. She joined a group of Government officials and professors who hailed her with acclamations. Animated by the superstitious awe with which the middle classes regard everybody connected with the court, they at once began to pay her homage. She became their chosen leader and hastened to form a regiment. A number of young professors enlisted at once and she arranged lectures for women. Old academic rubbish was brought out from the lumber-room, dusted and sold for new wares. In a dining-room, denuded of its furniture, lectures on Plato and Aristotle were given to an audience which unfortunately held no key to this shrine of wisdom.
