the mother, and in her place had set up the loathsome, sterile,
degenerate amazon--the blue-stocking!"

Earnestly pondering these matters, Strindberg at length decided to
write a book about woman, a subject, he declares, which up to this
time he had not wanted to think about, as he himself "lived in a
happy erotic state, ennobled and beautified by the rejuvenating and
expiatory arrival of children." But nevertheless he decided to
write such a book, and so with sympathy and much old-fashioned
veneration for motherhood the task was undertaken.

Regarding the mother as down-trodden, he wanted to think out a
means for her deliverance. To obtain a clear vision he chose as a
method the delineation of as large a number as possible of marriage
cases that he had seen--and he had seen many, as most of his
contemporary friends were married. Of these he chose twelve, the
most characteristic, and then he went to work. When he had written
about half that number, he stopped and reviewed the collection. The
result was entirely different from what he had expected.

Then chance came to his aid, for in the pension where he was
living, thirty women were stopping. He saw them at all meals,
between meals, and all about, idle, gossiping, pretentious, longing
for pleasure. "There were learned ladies who left the Saturday
Review behind them on the chairs; there were literary ladies, young
ladies, beautiful ladies." When he saw their care-free, idle life,
with concern he asked himself: "Whom do these parasites and their
children live on?" Then he discovered the bread-winners. "The
husband sat in his dark office far away in London; the husband
was far away with a detachment in Tonkin; the husband was at work