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A Study of Marriage as a Metaphor in August Strindberg’s Plays

Dr. ShahidImtiaz

Abstract

Marriage is a recurrent theme in August Strindberg’s works.Married two volumes of novellas

(1884-86) bring into focus three closely related hot issues of his age, the woman question, the

double standards of morality and particularly the conventional institution of marriage. He looks

at the biological, social, economic and moral aspects of marriage. A critical analysis of his plays

with marriage as the theme reveals the fact that Strindberg hasemployed marriage as a metaphor.

In my article I shall focus on this aspect of his plays. In his naturalist plays marriage is a

metaphor of strife between husband and wife and in expressionist plays it is the metaphor of

nihilistic view of reality. Strindberg also sees human existence as an incessant struggle between

the stronger and weaker wills. This leads him to conceive the battle of brains between superior

male intellect and inferior but deceitful female intellect. His men and women are violent and

volatile. Even in their love making they are determined to annihilate each other.His deep interest

in the theme of marriage ultimately led him to make experiment with his dramaturgy.

Key words:- Marriage, Male, Female, Metaphor, Naturalist, Expressionist, Nihilistic,

Dramaturgy.
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Introduction

Strindberg is one of the most autobiographical of writers whose writings are inseparable from

their life. As a highlyself-conscious artist he searched for form as a means of giving structure and

meaning to his own tumultuous existence. His broken marriage, the torments of his life, the

chronic financial problems literary and scientific adventures and solitude that brought anguish

and inspiration were translated and objectified into brilliantly revealing images of alienation and

anxiety.

Strindberg’s work as a playwright is spasmodic and confined to four periods, 1869-1882, 1886-

1892, 1898-1903 and 1907-1909. During the first period, 1869-1882, his literary career was on

the rise, his private life stable and his efforts at various dramatic forms derivative. Although the

plays of this period take up the theme of marriage, yet, there is no emphasis on the deeply rooted

conflict between the sexes. It was after the rejection of his first play Master Olaf, which he

revised several times, that he came to write about his favorite theme, marriage. By that time he

had seen his own role as a dramatist clearly and was in search of themes and new dramatic

forms. He was not only conscious of the perils to the existing theatre at the hands of the

conventional playwrightspresenting the so called well-made plays, with melodramatic and

meaningless situations and themes, but also had taken the lead in the writing histories. The

inspiration had come from Zola (1840- 1902), French novelist and dramatist. Zola hasted the

facile and optimistic plays by EugeneScribe, French playwright, (1791-1861) and his followers

with “patent leather themes” of the intrigue drama and thought that a play should be a “slice of
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life” thrown on the stage without embellishment. He called the technique Naturalism and the

world had double connotation, one of which was a depiction of reality and became an aspect of

realism at the very obvious level, but the other and more profoundconnotation referred to the

psychological aspects of human nature where the actions of human beings were the result oftheir

basic drives and instincts. Following the lead from Zola, Strindberg with his unusual energy and

novelty deals with the abnormality in human nature in his naturalist playsThe Father(1887) and

Miss Julie.(1887) It is through the metaphor of marriage in his naturalist plays that Strindberg

conceives the battle of sexes primarily a psychological warfare, a battle of brains between the

superior male and inferior female intellect which wins the battle because of her cunningness and

treachery. His men and womenare violent and volatile. Even in their love making they are

determined to annihilate each other. The new life which emerges as a result of their violent

conflict is invariable steeped in guilt; the guilt is inherent in the nature of their relationship. So

what emerges is a tragic self-destructive relationship.

An interesting feature of the series of works inspired by marriage theme is the sequence in

which they have been written. In The Father, the first of the series, the husband goes mad and

dies. In AMad Man’sDefense the war between the husband and wife remains unsolved. In

MissJulie it the woman who is neurotic and driven to destruction. Finally comesCreditors(1888)

in which Strindberg ties up the beginning and the end of the series by introducing the first

husband of Tekla, who returns to destroy the couple. In The Father and Creditors, Strindberg has

revealed the brutalizing effects of sexual love. It is through the metaphor of marriage that he has

exposed the true nature of woman. His naturalist plays portray a female character with a variety

of symbolic roles. As wife, she is a vampire jealous of her husband’s accomplishments. She saps

his energy, destroys his talent and will.As mother shedeprives her children of substance and love
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and poisons their minds against their father.As daughter she sides with her mother against the

father in the battle between the spouses. But after the Inferno Crisis, a period of great

transformation the marriage theme assumes another dimension.Strindberg saw life as hell in

which one seeks to expiate sins committed in another existence. To make the pain of guilt and

atonement exquisite Providence bestows eumenides-like powers or chastising spirits which

exploite love- hate as a means of getting men and women to torture each other. Women,

undoubtedly, bring misfortunes to men, but they are now agents operating within larger than

human schema rather than willful and unscrupulous hauteurs whose aim is the destruction of the

male. The captain and his wife in TheDance of the Death(1901) are not only malevolent but also

tied together in the remarkable trilogy To Damascus the stranger and thelady enduresthe

torments of marital hell together. In A DreamPlay (1901),Indra, the Hindu god of sky and storms

sends down his own daughter to ascertainwhether or not the lamentations of mankind are

genuine. She marries and gets a child, thus learning at first hand the bitterness of conjugal love.

Strindberg’s metaphor of marriage as a chain that holds both husband and wife in an

excruciatingly absurd but strangely satisfying relationship has a tremendous influence on the

modern playwrights particular O’Neill.

Strindberg is an experimental playwright. He continued experimenting with form,

characterization and dialogue throughout the course of his dramatic career. His journey from

naturalism to expressionism and dream form is in fact an attempt toferret out new forms for new

contents. The important feature of this is the recurrent metaphor of marriage to explore the nature

of human existence. The metaphor of marriage also provides continuity and links his naturalistic

with expressionistic plays. In the preface to Miss Julie, Strindberg says:

Some countries, it is true have attempted to create a new drama by using the old forms
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with up to date contents, but not only has there been insufficient time for those new ideas

to be popularized, so that the audience can grasp them, but also people have been so

wrought up by the taking of sides that pure, disinterested appreciation has become

impossible. One’s deepest impressions are upset when applauding and hissing majority

dominates as forcefully and openlyas it can in the theatre. Moreover, as no new form

has been devised for these new contents, the new wine has burst the old bottles.(qtd in Williams

81-2 )

Strindberg further says that:

Naturalism is not a dramatic method like that of Becque, a simple photography which

includes everything, even the speck of dust on the lens of a camera. This is realism, a

method lately exalted to art, a tiny art which cannot see the wood for the tress. That is the

false naturalism which believes that art consists simply of sketching an object of nature in

a natural manner, but it is not the true naturalism, which seeks out those points in lifer

where the great conflicts occur, which rejoicing in seeking what cannot be seeneveryday.

(qtd in Williams 83)

The Father elaborates Strindberg’s point of view successfully. The play deals with “experience

intended as a revealed truth. Of course, in this form, it is not an everyday experience … It is on

the other hand, an articulation of the author’s sense of certain facts impinging upon human

relationship”(84).
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The Father brings into focus the marital life of Captainand his wife Laura, the conflict between

man and woman for the control of their daughter, Bertha. Their marriage serves as an emblem

and through it Strindbergexpresses the female psyche and the ruin of a talented man. All those

characters involved with marriage have to perform dual moral roles. They are held together by

these roles, making their lives inevitably miserable. The Captain is adamant in asserting his

power and determined to foil and frustrate Laura’s attempt to undermine them. He is imperious

and autocratic to the extent that he expects a wife to give up her individuality and freedom in

exchange of financial support. The Captain is a male chauvinist. He knows Nojd’s character and

his tricks with the girls, “oh, he’s been mucking about with the kitchen maid again. Damned

nuisance, he is” (27). But he gives him the benefit of the doubt regarding the pregnancy of

Emma. Nojd inculcated the seeds of doubt in Captain’s mind about man being the father of a

child. The Captain enquires fromNojd, “out with it! Are you the child’s father or not?” (28). He

replies, “How can I tell?” (28). If a man cannot be certain of his being the father of a child then

no one else can determine the parental responsibilities. The Captain himself seals his fate. Once

aroused, such doubts become an obsession with him. Laura, his wife, very dexterously exploits

then Captain’s obsession against him in the war of the sexes. He not only humiliates Laura time

and again but also misunderstands her feelings for their daughter Bertha. The Captain, therefore,

transforms marriage into a legal prostitution. Laura finds it difficult to put up with such a man.

Her rebellion against the captain is understandable. Both, the captain and Laura fight with each

other over the control of their daughter. Laura, then, is not qualitatively worse than her husband,

the Captain. She carries the day as she is more cunning and treacherous. Both fear each other and

neither intends to succumb. Both are caught up in the web of their existence and tragedy lies in

their being man and woman. Both are capable of being using their daughter to gain victory.
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Granted that Laura derives some pleasure out of the miserable plight of the Captain, yet it is not

whole hearted. She had loved him in her own way. He was like her child. She shows sympathy

for his sad plight and persuades him that Bertha is, undoubtedly his child. Moreover, her triumph

over the Captain does not make her an arrogant woman motivated buy any personal spite. She

plots against her husband only to safeguard her rights as a mother. She is not at all a sadist and

does not injure her husband for he sake of vicarious pleasure, nor does she enjoy the spectacle of

her victim’s agony. Laura gradually devised her scheme to annihilate the Captain and even her

intentions take time to mature.When she informs Dr. Osterin that she feels that her husband

seems to be mentally unstable. She, in fact, is aiming at winning the doctor to her side. She

thinks that the Captain is sick and unwittingly asks, “but it is reasonable for a man to claim to see

in a microscope what is happening on another planet?” (37). Only later in act two sceneone when

the doctor warns her that such an accusation can result in a man being certified as incapable of

managing his affairs that she actually conceives the idea of depriving him of his paternal rights

buy such a device. The ruse which she uses against the Captain, the uncertainty regarding the

paternity of a child is ironically facilitated by the Captain himself. Then unintentional help of the

doctor comes at the most appropriate time when he revels that, “a sick man is receptive to the

slightest impression and therefore, be made to imagine everything” (38). She grasps this heaven

sent opportunity and avails it but even at this stage she gives the impression that she really

believes the Captain is a sick man. She does not put forward that claim to have masterminded all

this but says, “I do not know that I ever planned or intended what you think I have done”(74).

This leads to a significant question. Despite her physical inferiority howdoes Laura succeed in

destroying him? The answer to this puzzling and enigmatic question is to be found in the

Captain’s character. On analysis we discern the cause of Captains’ downfall in his mind. The
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Captain possesses a self-destructive urge which incites Laura to torture him. Unknowingly he

provides his wife with the lethal weapon of his destruction. He throws the lamp at her, a

confirmation of his unhinged mind finally allows the nurse to make him wear straitjacket.

Moreover, the moment he conceives that ruinous idea that no man can be sure of the paternity of

his child we find him on the road to his inevitable defeat. Laura mentions this notion only once:

Laura: Because a mother is closer tom her child it has been recently proved that no one can

be sure who is the child’s father.

Captain: What has that to do with us?c

Laura: You can’t be sure that you are Bertha’s father.

Captain: I can’t be sure.

Laura: No one can be sure. So you can’t. (45)

And the doubt is always brought up by the Captain himself. It is ingrained in his mind and thus

becomes an obsession. Laura only repeats, “what you have taught me” (47). But the Captain is

tormented and his self-inflicted torture continues. Laura is cunning enough to use it for her own

advantage so clearly that a man of his caliber and intelligence should smell a rat. He must see

that she is exploiting it to undo him. She never claims that Bertha is not his child; she just

indicates the possibility, “Suppose I were prepare to do anything to be driven out, anything rather

than to lose my child! Suppose I am telling you the truth now when I say to you Bertha is my

child not yours”(45). This is plain enough and the Captain should realize that she can go to any

length to fabricate any story to win his child. Moreover, the Captain knows her character and

mind, “you have a satanic genius for getting what you want. But that’s always the way with the
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people who are not scrupulous about what means they use” (44). In his heart’s hearts the Captain

knows that she is lying yet he cannot bring himself to believe that she is wrong. This is his

dilemma, tragedy. We may conclude that the Captain himself is the cause of his own ruin and

Laura is merely its agent. It becomes manifest when he refuses to accept any story but that of her

adultery. He “could believe almost anything for you, but not that” (45).She offers to swear by

God and all that is sacred that you are Bertha’s father” (59). But the Captain is caught up in the

web of his own logic. He cannot believe her words as she has told her that a woman can go to

any length to protect her rights as a mother. He expects her to state “everything whose

truthfulness hardly matters, as long as she tells him that he has been betrayed. The self-torture is

not a typically jealous response; there is something too passive in his behavior. The moments of

crisis throughout the play highlight the Captain’s child-mother relationship pattern with women.

When he begs Laura to remove the doubts, he at once assumes the role of a child, a role which is

antithetic to mature masculinity. He babbles like a little child:

Don’t you see that I am as helpless as a child, can’t you hear me crying for pity like a child

crying to his mother,and can’t you forget that I am man, a soldier who with a sword can

tame men and beasts? I ask only for pity you would extend to a sick man. I lay down my

power and cry for mercy for my life. (59)

But now she has Bertha, her own child. She no longer needs him and she tells him very clearly:

Yes, that is how it was, and I loved you as my child, but, do you know I suppose you

noticed it every time your feelings towards changed and you approached me as a lover, I

fell bashful and your embrace was as ecstasy followed by pangs of conscience, as thought
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my blood was ashamed. The mother the mistress- Ugh! (60)

This affected the Captain and made him aware of his weakness, “I thought you despite my lack

of masculinity, and I wanted to win youas a woman by being a man” (60). Laura confirms the

wickedness of a woman when she informs the Captain, “The mother was your friend, you see but

the woman was your enemy. Love between men and women is war” (60). In the war between the

Captain and Laura, Bertha assumes a great significance. She brings into light the strife between

the husband and wife to the latter’sadvantage. Laura as a mother enjoys a special relationship

with Bertha and she passionately cares for her. She has influenced Bertha more profoundly than

the Captain. Her position as a mother is secured. Berthaturns out to be a real battle ground for her

mother and father, a battle which her mother is determined to win.

This gives Laura an added advantage and she enthusiastically proclaims her strength over the

Captain, her real opponent. It forces the Captain to proclaim that the strength is in the right as it

is one with the power. The captain, of course, is not insane but reduced to a state of total despair.

His despair is the outcomeof a realization that Laura is stronger than he is and that he is no match

to her in the intense struggle which finally engulfs him. Margaret, the nurse, a woman with

motherly affection, is perturbed to see the Captain in great agony, yet she is not different from

the other female characters. It is she who ultimately betrays him into the net, the straitjacket and

the Captain utters a painful cry summing up the theme of the play, “strength has been vanquished

by craft and weakness! Curse you, damned womanand all your sex” (75). All she can do is to

urge pities on him, “Humble your proud heart and pray to God to forgive you” (73).When the

Captain breathes his last in her lap, her satisfaction is complete as he prayed to God in the last

moment. Laura she is willing to respond to the Captain as a child, yet unwilling to allow him to

assert his manhood. If he does she would abandon “caught, cropped and cozened as surely as by
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any Delilah” (85).The Captain, therefore, is more than a victim. He has tragic dimensions giving

a sense of inevitable disaster of a prier failure to the portrait of a male-female relationship that it

would never had acquired otherwise.

In Creditors(1888) “the sex-war is still further developed, and in a form even more abstract …

the lesson of the play is that the woman has made her reputation by sucking the strength of

Gustav and is now similarly sapping Aldolph’s power.” (Nicoll467)The dramatic aim is to find

the crisis, the moment of struggle and to reveal normal experience in its light. In Creditors

Strindberg has introduced two marriages of the same woman, Tekla. Tekla, a typical

Strindbergian woman emotionally mangles not only her first husband, Gustav, but also her

second one, Adolf. She dries up the virility, dignity and ideas of both the men. Gustav her first

husband knows her art of chicanery. He says to Adolf, “The woman has eaten your soul, courage

and yourlearning” (185).Adolf had lost his respect in the eyes of Tekla as she has taken away the

initiative and male prerogative from him and reduced their marriage to a pseudo incestuous

brother sister association. She refers to him as a little brother and herselfa squirrel. He is a child

who cannot satisfy her sexual desires. She has already dried up Adolf’s artistic talents by

usurping his ideas and develops her at the cost of his genuine talent for painting. As Gustav says,

“you educated her. But she was clever enough to make you think that it was the other way

round” (186).After exhausting his artistic talents and drying his manliness she growls for more

victims. Strindberg’s A Blue Bookillustrates the kind of womanTekla is, “she desires his virile

powers in order to become the husband and make him into passive wife” (188). Gustav has

already suffered the same kind at her hands. He, therefore, caneasily predict the relationship

Tekla and Adlof have as husband and wife, “she calls you brother, I see. Do you still play that

comedy for each other?with the fig leaves still in place, though withered. Aren’t you less formal
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when you address her?”(131) Experience has taught him that “children play at being papa and

mamma, but when they are older they play at being brother and sister, in order to hide what must

be hidden … and they took a vow of chastity, and then they hide and seek, till they found one

another in a dark corner where they are sure of not being seen!” (130)

The two marriages enable Strindberg to demonstrate the idea of eternal recurrence, central to

Nietzsche’sphilosophy.Nietzsche inWill to Power states, “everything becomes and recurs

eternally – escape is impossible! … To endure the idea of the recurrence one needs; freedom

from morality; new means against the fact of pain (pain conceived as a tool, as the father of

pleasure…” ( 545-46).Creditorsthen, is about the nature of marriage and female sexuality. It

depicts a successful male in action, a Nietzschean superman. The character of Gustav provides

an ample testimony that married men can not only survive but also reconstruct their lives despite

all the humiliation and spearhead a war against the female domination by utilizing such

commonplace men Adolf, a woman’s slave.Fundamentally the play deals with the battle of

brains. Gustav before he encounters Tekla for the final showdown proves his power and strength

to Adolf. Through the power of will and superior mental discipline, he inculcates a series of

ideas into the mind of a weaker person persuading him to avoid sex with Tekla and drives him to

an epileptic attack. By a process of suggestion and hypnotism, Gustav fulfills his promise to

“pass some electricity into” Adolf. Gustav now possesses so much power that Adolf says after a

physically touching him, “itslike gripping an electric machine.”(135) He himself was once a

weak human being. Adolf, on the other hand, was a strong man who exercised tremendous

influence upon Tekla and stuffed her mind with ideas on art and painting. He, therefore, is

Tekla’s creditor as well as Gustav’s debtor. After the collapse of his marriage with Tekla, the

change in Gastav is so profound that even Adolf failed to recognize him from a painting of his
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with Tekla. The reason for this change is to found in Zarathustra’s words, “he who cannot obey

himself be commanded.”(Nietzsche 137 )This has sustained him and made his return possible to

pay the emotional debt which both Tekla and Adolf owe to him. Bitter experience had also

taught him that “even he commands himself then also must become judge and avenger and

victim of his own law.”(136)He has gained his strength from his sufferings and from the fact that

the right is on his side. Tekla has victimized him and Adolf has taken awayhis wife.He is,

therefore, justified in destroying Tekla even though he feels that it would involve the destruction

of Adolf. This amazing transformation is outcome of his assertion of will to power.Gastav

resembles Nietzsche’s superman. If the captain in The Father stands for Strindberg’ mania for

persecution, his desire to be destroyed by woman, Gastav is then the emblem of his delusions of

grandeur for revenge and his need to consider himself capable of inflicting revenge on women.

It is through the metaphor of marriage that Strindberg shows his attitude towards woman, “do

not be afraid later when you see me at work dissecting a human soul and laying out the bits and

pieces here on the table. It soundsw very nasty if you are beginning, but once you have seen it

you won’t regret the experience.” (192) He is the woman tamer who can assert, “but you do

knowwhy you two drew the short straws in this context? Why you were fooled by me? Because I

am stronger than you and clever, you and he were the idiots not I.” (217)

Characteristically, Gastav is the superman who has to be humbled before he triumphs and

should have what Nietzsche would denounce as vulgar moral right on his side before he can act

and whose whip is not his inherent superiority. To justify his treatment of Adolf, Gustav has to

incite him into unwittingly slandering him a motivational ploy which hardly seems to indicate

any transvaluation of values. Moreover, Gustav does not destroy Tekla in a straight battle of

wills but by forcing her to expose her true character in the presence of Adolf, whom she has
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cheated. In fact, Gustav’s character is more complex than being a mere cold superman bent upon

revenge. He is not only motivated by a sense of justice but also by a strong passion for Tekla and

a feeling of inadequacy which is revealed by his aggressive actions. When Adolf encounters him,

he is already collapsed, broken and the credit for his breakdown should go to Tekla. So we can

say that the demonstration of Gustav’s strength is not impressive at all. He feels that Adolf does

not need his help as he says, “I am like a legless child and my brain lies open while Gustav is a

teacher of dead language and a widower”( 189) the only one who can speak the language of

masculinity in a feminist world. Nor does Gustav appear to be a towering figure. Whenever, he

faces Tekla he falls back upon ironic tone and trickery to induce her to reveal herself to Adolf.

Even when he has achieved his desired aim, “I have come to take back what you have stolen

from me not I gave you freely. You stole my honor, and the only wayI could get it back robbing

you of yours.” (218).He also fails to humble and humiliate her the way he was insulted. Tekla’s

reaction is not wild, but meager, “You are a vindictive beast I despise,” (210 ). She further states,

“ How can you who must regard me as innocent because my hereditary and environment drove

me to act as I did, how can you think yourself entitled to take revenge on me” (210). She breaks

down only when she learns of the death and complicity of Adolf. If we compare Gustav with

Tekla, the former turns out to be a weaker person. In fact, Tekla brings about the ruin of two

men, Gustav and Adolf. For his restoration, Gustav requires the help of someone like Adolf. As

Nietzsche says in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “let man fear woman when she hates for man is at

the bottom of his soul only wicked, but the woman is base” ( 92).Tekla is an instinctive vampire

who cannot set herself free from what she has done to both the men. At times she abhors Adolf

and other times she feels pity for him and when and when his life is engendered she is really

terrified. Strindberg agrees to Nietzsche’s notion inThus Spoke Zarathustra that “ everything
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about woman is a riddle, everything about woman has one solution; it is called pregnancy.”

(91).Tekla is a more complex character than Laura in The Father is. She finds herself thrown

into the world of men which does not allow her maternal instinct to develop through her child.

They turn into Adolf whom she tried to dominate to the full. Adolf admits “I could not tell if she

were I or I she when she smiles, I smile when she weeps I weep and when she can you imagine

it? When she was giving birth to a child, I felt the pains in my own body!” (178).Her character

would best yield to an analysis that concentrates on her childishness and the manner in which she

has tried to compensate for it. “Have you ever seen a naked woman? Yes of course, a half

developed man, a child stunted in mid growth, a youth with udders on his chest, a case of chronic

ammonia who has regular hemorrhage thirteen times a year.” ( 87).

Creditor, therefore, is a bitter comment on man, marriage and woman. Sexual love has been seen

as an object of contempt. It is “carnal excess”, “boils that are being lanced, “a fig leaf”. This

bitterness is overwhelming what may involve all relationships and both the sexes. Gustav not

only abhors Adlof but also Tekla, “perhaps someone has left a dog there”( 240). He is devoid of

compassion and sympathy for Adolf. When he breathes his last, the playwright appears to have

condemned life, “Don’t you realize there are false notes in life which can never be turned? The

only thing you do is to stop your ears with wax and grow old, pile as many new impressions as

you can into the cupboard to keepthe skeleton from rattling.” (250) When Tekla and Gustav put

the blame on the forces of hereditary and environment for their cupidity and revenge, Strindberg

being a naturalist seems to accept it. But he does not have any sympathy for these three

characters which he has for the Captain in The Father.

After composing the naturalist plays with marriage as the basic theme Strindberg soon came to

realize the inadequacy of naturalism as a tool of exposing the true nature of marriage, human
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relationship and existence. So his idea of naturalism “as the moment of crisis was caught up in

the incongruous naturalism of the general dramatic movement, and was communicated in the

apparent texture of normality” (Williams 91). He, therefore, turned to expressionism and dream

form. It is important to note that the marriage metaphor cements the expressionistic plays with

the naturalistic plays. To some degree every playwright who departs radically from realism can

be regarded as tending to be more or less expressionistic and the term expressionism, therefore,

is used rather loosely at times to differentiate an expressionistic play from that of realistic one.

Expressionism is less confusing when it is used to describe a single, more or less distinct style of

play righting and theatrical production.

Strindberg struck the keynote of the expressionist theory of theatre when he wrote in his

preface to The Dream Play (1902) that in this play as in To Demascus :

Anything may happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist.

On an insignificant background of reality, imagination spins and weaves new patterns: a

mixture of memories, experiences unfettered fancies, absurdtities, and improvisations.

several patterns, a medley of memories, experiences, free fantasies, absurdities and

improvisations. The characters are split, doubled, and multiplied: they evaporate and are

condensed; are diffused and concentrated. But a single consciousness holds sway over

them all – that of the dreamer.(qtd in Williams 91)

To Damascus exhibits “the primary characteristic of Strindbergian expressionism, that of

splitting a single personality into several characters, each representing a facet of the whole and

together illustrating the conflicts in the mind” (Styan25). Dreams always fascinated him to a
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greater extent. Consequently, in To Damascus (which with its unnamed characters having the

status neither of types nor individuals but acting rather as indices of mental and emotional

states), as well as in A Dream Play, Strindberg reached out ‘the disconnected but seemingly

logical form of a dream’ (Bradbury and McFairlane 524).

In The Dance of Death Strindberg has fused naturalism with expressionism. The purpose of

the play is to highlight the Captain’s role as a military officer to develop the marital strife.

Marriage as a unit has been depicted as destructive and annihilating. It is through the metaphor

of marriage that a chaotic and nihilistic view of reality is presented. The Captain takes delight in

wearing his military uniform with a sword in his hand as if ready to fight. He imagines himself to

be surrounded by his enemies trying to fight for his survival, “It is not frightful at all. All my life

I’ve had enemies and they’ve helped rather than harmed and when my time comes to die, I shall

be able to say “I owe nobody anything and I’ve never had anything as a gift. Everything I’ve got

I’ve had to fight for” (360). This naturalistic milieu, of course, does not interfere with the

symbolic undertones, the Capstan’s extinguished cigar, the storm, the old woman, the changing

colour of Alice’s hair, the telegraph clicking outdiabolic messages. The expressionistic features

of the The Dance of Death are not as obvious and prominent. They are to be found in the

characters. Alice and Edgar and the Captain, in fact, are not real human beings of flesh and

blood, they are on the other hand, expressionistic amalgams of critical human attitudesThey also

stand for human weaknesses and vices. Alice and the Captain function on so many integrated

levels. Edgar is demonic, brutal, superman and psychotic and Alice pure egoist animal and

neurotic. They no interest in life whatsoever. They pass their time by playing trivial games,

unamusing and quite boring. In fact, both, the husband and wife are partners in the ugly game of

life, glued together in the perpetual torture. They house is an inferno, a little hell situated on the
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devil ’s Island, symbol of mankind’s earthly imprisonment. In this inferno, the captain, the prince

of hell is the supreme commander as arrogant and vain as Lucifer, Kurt rightly points out,

“exactly, he really is the most arrogant person I have ever met. I am therefore, God exists.”(370)

Alice his wife has experienced it “look at those boots. He’d trampled the earth flat with them. If

he could.He has trampled other people’s fields and otherpeople’s toes and skulls” (376). Their

financial condition reflects the shallowness and vacuity of their relationship. They have no food

to entertain Kurt for dinner. Their married life has been “twenty five years of misery” ( 350) and

now they are waiting for the inevitable: “It is the end. Just enough left to wheel out on a barrow

and put on a garden plot” (346). The Captain is preoccupied with the fear of death: “I shall just

drop down dead like an old soldier” (378), yet he knows that hisdeath would give his wife

tremendous delight, “Oh rot! I shall die as easily as that, you may be sure. Don’t rejoice

permanently Alice”(378). The Captain is disgusted with the very condition of life, “yes it is

perfectly abominable. The whole life is abominable” (p. 361). Kurt soon gets to the core of the

situation and is horrified … “What’s going on here? The walls smell of prison, one feels sick the

moment one comes in. I’d rather be off if I hadn’t promised Alice to stay. There is corpse under

the floor and such hatred that one can scarcely breathe”(362).

Both Alice and the Captain are welded together through their marriage, a condition thrust

upon them. They are doomed, condemned to death: “Question? Thrice we broke off our

engagement and since then not a single day had passed in which we haven’t tried to separate.

Burt we are welded together we can’t escape. Once we did separate in our home for five years.

Now only death can separate us. We knew it , so we wait for him as a deliverer” (363).

Marriage serves a different purpose in The Dance of Death. It does not aim at developing the

conflict in particular types of heterosexual relationships. It is meant to predict all manners of

marital experience. Strindberg has not only expressed his views in marriage, but also on the very

nature of life. The fierce struggle of the sexes symbolized by Alice and Edgar does not come to

an end with the death of then Captain. It continues in all the married couples and even in their

offsprings. And the tragedy is that even the façade of social sophistication fails to hide it.

Conclusion

Strindberg, therefore, is credited with making decisive contribution to the development of

twentieth century drama. The modern drama is greatly indebted to his concept of marriage,

human relationship and human existence. Strindberg has broken new grounds in the art of

characterization and the form of drama. Playwrights like O’Neil, Arthur Adamov and Ionesco

have brought into focus some of Strindberg’s dream themes, man’s isolation, the failure of

reason to uncover the mysterious of life and the relativity of truth. Strindberg may rightly be

called the pioneer of Dream Theatre.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Strindberg, August.The Father, Trans, N. Erichsen, (1907). Boston: John W. & Co. 1907.

Strindberg, August. Twelve Plays.The Father, Miss Julie, Creditors, The Stronger, TheBond,

Crime and Crime, Easter, The Dance of Death, Swanwhite,A Dream Play, The GhostSonata,

The Great Highway. London: Constable & Co Ltd. 1963.

Secondary Sources

Bradbury, Malcolm & McFarlane, James.Pelican Guides to European Literature: Modernism

1890 – 1930. New York: Penguin Books. 1976.

Nicoll, Allardyce. World Drama. London: Harrap&Co.Ltd. 1949.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Trans, R.J.Hollingdale, London: Penguin Books.

1961.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, Trans, Kaufman, Walter &Hollingdale, J.R. Ney York:

Vintage Books. 1968.

Styan, J. L. Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Expression and Epic Theatre, Vol. 3.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cambridge. 1981.

Williams Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht.New York: Penguin Books. 1973.
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to you Bertha is my child but not yours (45).” This is plain enough and the Captain should

realize that she can go to any length to fabricate any story to win bertha. Moreover, the Captain

knows