MARRIED ***
Produced by David Starner, Marc D'Hooghe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
MARRIED
by
AUGUST STRINDBERG
CONTENTS
ASRA
LOVE AND BREAD
COMPELLED TO
COMPENSATION
FRICTIONS
UNNATURAL SELECTION
AN ATTEMPT AT REFORM
A NATURAL OBSTACLE
A DOLL'S HOUSE
PHOENIX
ROMEO AND JULIA
PROLIFICACY
AUTUMN
COMPULSORY MARRIAGE
CORINNA
UNMARRIED AND MARRIED
A DUEL
HIS SERVANT
THE BREADWINNER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Strindberg's works in English translation: Plays translated by Edwin Bjorkman; _Master Olof_, American Scandinavian Foundation, 1915; _The Dream Play, The Link, The Dance of Death_, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912; _Swanwhite, Simoon, Debit and Credit, Advent, The Thunderstorm, After the Fire,_ the same, 1913; _There Are Crimes and Crimes, Miss Julia, The Stronger, Creditors, Pariah_, the same, 1913; Bridal Crown, _The Spook Sonata, The First Warning, Gustavus Vasa_, the same, 1916. Plays translated by Edith and Warner Oland, Boston Luce & Co., Vol. I (1912), _The Father, Countess Julie, The Stronger, The Outlaw_; Vol. II (1912), _Facing Death, Easter, Pariah, Comrades_; Vol. III (1914), Swanwhite, Advent, The Storm, Lucky Pehr_, tr. by Velma Swanston Howard, Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Co., 1912. _The Red Room_, tr. by Ellie Schleussner, New York, Putnam's, 1913; _Confession of a Fool_, tr. by S. Swift, London, F. Palmer, 1912; _The German Lieutenant and Other Stories_, Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co., 1915; _In Midsummer Days and Other Tales_, tr. by Ellie Schleussner, London, H. Latimer, 1913; _Motherlove_, tr. by Francis J. Ziegler, Philadelphia, Brown Bros., 2nd ed., 1916, _On the Seaboard_, tr. by Elizabeth Clarke Westergren, Cincinnati, Stewart & Kidd Co., 1913; _The Son of a Servant_, tr. by. Claud Field, introduction by Henry Vacher-Burch, New York, Putnam's, 1913; _The Growth of a Soul_, tr. by Claud Field, London, W. Rider & Co., 1913; _The Inferno_, tr. by Claud Field, New York, Putnam's, 1913; _Legends, Autobiographical Sketches_, London, A. Melrose, 1912; _Zones of the Spirit_, tr. by Claud Field, introduction by Arthur Babillotte, London, G. Allen & Co.
INTRODUCTION
These stories originally appeared in two volumes, the first in 1884, the second in 1886. The latter part of the present edition is thus separated from the first part by a lapse of two years.
Strindberg's views were continually undergoing changes. Constancy was never a trait of his. He himself tells us that opinions are but the reflection of a man's experiences, changing as his experiences change. In the two years following the publication of the first volume, Strindberg's experiences were such as to exercise a decisive influence on his views on the woman question and to transmute his early predisposition to woman-hating from a passive tendency to a positive, active force in his character and writing.
Strindberg's art in _Married_ is of the propagandist, of the fighter for a cause. He has a lesson to convey and he makes frankly for his goal without attempting to conceal his purpose under the gloss of "pure" art. He chooses the story form in preference to the treatise as a more powerful medium to drive home his ideas. That the result has proved successful is due to the happy admixture in Strindberg of thinker and artist. His artist's sense never permitted him to distort or misrepresent the truth for the sake of proving his theories. In fact, he arrived at his theories not as a scholar through the study of books, but as an artist through the experience of life. When life had impressed upon him what seemed to him a truth, he then applied his intellect to it to bolster up that truth. Hence it is that, however opinionated Strindberg may at times seem, his writings carry that conviction which we receive only when the author reproduces' truths he has obtained first-hand from life. One-sided he may occasionally be in _Married_, especially in the later stories, but rarely unfaithful. His manner is often to throw such a glaring searchlight upon one spot of life that all the rest of it stays in darkness; but the places he does show up are never unimportant or trivial. They are well worth seeing with Strindberg's brilliant illumination thrown upon them.
