Strindberg

According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, a misogynist is defined as one who has or shows a hatred and distrust of women (1981). Such is the name that many have called Johan August Strindberg. Yet, as seen in his plays and writings, his feelings towards women are much more complex than simple hatred and distrust. In some cases, Strindberg demonstrates a genuine sympathy, if only because it fits in with his worldview at that moment. This paper will discuss the role that women played in the world of August Strindberg, specifically looking at the plays "The Father," "Miss Julie," and "The Ghost Sonata."

Johan August Strindberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1849 to a serving woman and a bankrupt gentlemen. Although he resented his mother's lower class background, he still fought for her attention. She died when he was thirteen, his father married the housekeeper, and for the rest of his life Strindberg vacillated between being attracted to madonna-type motherly women and being repulsed by women that he saw as promiscuous whore-types, often projecting these feelings onto the same woman. His ambivalent feelings towards his mother continued to influence him, causing him to drop out of Uppsala University twice because he felt that he, "a son of a servant" did not belong among the privileged students, as well as contributing to his three failed marriages. The females who are portrayed in "The Father," "Miss Julie," and "The Ghost Sonata"

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Julie describe her own mother as if she were mentally ill. Since Strindberg views this type of behavior as a type of mental illness as can be demonstrated in his preface to the play, calling Miss Julie a victim of her mother's crime and a "man-hating half woman" (Strindberg 54). Although Strindberg casts Kristine in a sympathetic light, it is only because she represents the conscience and is playing the motherly type, a type that Strindberg views is the correct place for a woman (Strindberg 56). According to Strindberg, Miss Julie's suicide is the only way out since she is weaker than man is and has chosen to break society's moral and social codes. The Ghost Sonata "The Ghost Sonata" (1907) is a fusion of the spiritual and gender wars. In Strindberg's view, the world was a place where humans worked off the debt of original sin to pay the penance of guilt, mental anguish, and physical pain (Glenn n.p.). Virtually everybody over a certain age is a "ghost" of some type, and all of them have afflictions they have to work off. Following the example of The Father, none of the children in the play belong to the fathers that their mothers are married to. Additionally, the Colonel's wife, Amelia, is beautiful until she lies about h

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