"The Father" portrays the tragedy of a man and a woman struggling for
the possession of their child. The father, a cavalry captain, is
intellectual, a freethinker, a man of ideas. His wife is narrow,
selfish, and unscrupulous in her methods when her antagonism is wakened.
Other members of the family are the wife's mother, a Spiritualist, and
the _Captain's_ old nurse, _Margret_, ignorant and superstitious. The
father feels that the child would be poisoned in such an atmosphere:
_The Captain._ This house is full of women who all want to have
their say about my child. My mother-in-law wants to make a
Spiritualist of her. Laura wants her to be an artist; the governess
wants her to be a Methodist, old Margret a Baptist, and the
servant-girls want her to join the Salvation Army! It won't do to
try to make a soul in patches like that. I, who have the chief right
to try to form her character, am constantly opposed in my efforts.
And that's why I have decided to send her away from home.
But it is not only because the _Captain_ does not believe in "making a
soul in patches," that he wants to rescue the child from the hot-house
environment, nor because he plans to make her an image of himself. It is
rather because he wants her to grow up with a healthy outlook on life.
_The Captain._ I don't want to be a procurer for my daughter and
educate her exclusively for matrimony, for then if she were left
unmarried she might have bitter days. On the other hand, I don't
want to influence her toward a career that requires a long course of
training which would be entirely thrown away if she should marry. I
want her to be a teacher. If she remains unmarried she will be able
to support herself, and at any rate she wouldn't be any worse off
than the poor schoolmasters who have to share their salaries with a
family. If she marries she can use her knowledge in the education
of her children.
While the father's love is concerned with the development of the child,
that of the mother is interested mainly in the possession of the child.
Therefore she fights the man with every means at her command, even to
the point of instilling the poison of doubt into his mind, by hints that
he is not the father of the child. Not only does she seek to drive her
husband mad, but through skillful intrigue she leads every one,
including the Doctor, to believe that he is actually insane. Finally
even the old nurse is induced to betray him: she slips the straitjacket
over him, adding the last touch to the treachery. Robbed of his faith,
broken in spirit and subdued, the _Captain_ dies a victim of the Earth
Spirit--of motherhood, which slays the man for the sake of the child.
Laura herself will have it so when she tells her husband, "You have
fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and
breadwinner. You are not needed any longer, and you must go."
* * * * *
Critics have pronounced "The Father" an aberration of Strindberg's mind,
utterly false and distorted. But that is because they hate to face the
truth. In Strindberg, however, the truth is his most revolutionary
significance.
"The Father" contains two basic truths. Motherhood, much praised,
poetized, and hailed as a wonderful thing, is in reality very often the
greatest deterrent influence in the life of the child. Because it is not
primarily concerned with the potentialities of character and growth of
the child; on the contrary, it is interested chiefly in the
birthgiver,--that is, the mother. Therefore, the mother is the most
subjective, self-centered and conservative obstacle. She binds the child
to herself with a thousand threads which never grant sufficient freedom
for mental and spiritual expansion. It is not necessary to be as bitter
as Strindberg to realize this. There are of course exceptional mothers
who continue to grow with the child. But the average mother is like the
hen with her brood, forever fretting about her chicks if they venture a
step away from the coop. The mother enslaves with kindness,--a bondage
harder to bear and more difficult to escape than the brutal fist of the
father.
Strindberg himself experienced it, and nearly every one who has ever
attempted to outgrow the soul strings of the mother.
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.
Must it always be thus? Even Strindberg does not think so. Else he would
not plead in behalf of "divorce between man and wife, so that lovers
may be born." He felt that until man and woman cease to have "remorseful
consciences" because of the most elemental expression of the joy of
life, they cannot realize the purity and beauty of sex, nor appreciate
its ecstasy, as the source of full understanding and creative harmony
between male and female. Till then man and woman must remain in
conflict, and the child pay the penalty.
August Strindberg, as one of the numberless innocent victims of this
terrible conflict, cries out bitterly against it, with the artistic
genius and strength that compel attention to the significance of his
message.