in his bureau in Paris; the husband had gone on a business trip to
Australia." And the three men who were there gave him occasion to
reflect about the so-called female slave. "There was a husband who
had a fiercely hot attic room, while the wife and daughter had a
room with a balcony on the first floor. An elderly man passed by,
who, although himself a brisk walker, was now leading his sickly
wife step by step, his hand supporting her back when making an
ascent; he carried her shawls, chair, and other little necessities,
reverently, lovingly, as if he had become her son when she had
ceased to be his wife. And there sat King Lear with his daughter,--
it was terrible to see. He was over sixty, had had eight children,
six of whom were daughters, and who, in his days of affluence, he
had allowed to manage his house and, no doubt, the economy thereof.
Now he was poor, had nothing, and they had all deserted him except
one daughter who had inherited a small income from an aunt. And the
former giant, who had been able to work for a household of twelve,
crushed by the disgrace of bankruptcy, was forced to feel the
humiliation of accepting support from his daughter, who went about
with her twenty-nine women friends, receiving their comfort and
condolence, weeping over her fate, and sometimes actually wishing
the life out of her father."

The immediate result of all this observation and consequent
analysis was the collection of short stories in two volumes called
"Marriages," the first of which, published in 1884, gave rise to
Strindberg's reputation of being a pessimist, and the second, two
years later, to that of woman-hater, which became confirmed by the
portrayals of women in his realistic dramas that soon followed,
notably that of Laura in "The Father." That part of the woman-hater
legend which one encounters most often is that Strindberg was