“Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy.”
Possibly this woman had suggested to Marie the vile idea of "presenting
me with the bill." It must have been so, for the suggestion had not
been made easily and was most unlike her. I tried to make myself
believe it, hope it.
If she had merely asked me for the money which she had invested in the
paper, the money which had been lost through her fault--that would
have been female mathematics. Or, if she had insisted on an immediate
marriage! But she had no wish to be married, I was sure of that. It was
a question of paying for the love, the kisses she had given me. It was
payment she demanded.... Supposing I sent her in my bill: for my work
according to time and quality, for the waste of brain power, of nerve
force, for my heart's blood, my name, my honour, my sufferings; the
bill for my career, ruined, perhaps, for ever.
But no, it was her privilege to send in the first bill; I took no
exception to that.
I spent my evening at a restaurant, wandered through the streets and
pondered the problem of degradation. Why is it so painful to watch a
person sink? It must be because there is something unnatural in it, for
nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step
means the disintegration of force.
The same argument applies to the life of the community where everybody
strives to reach the material or spiritual summits. Thence comes the
tragic feeling which seizes us in the contemplation of failure, tragic
as autumn, sickness and death. This woman, who had not yet reached her
thirtieth year, had been young, beautiful, frank, honest, amiable,
strong and well-bred; in two short years she had been so degraded, had
fallen so low.
For a moment I tried to blame myself; the thought that the fault was
mine would have been a comfort to me, for it would have made her
shame seem less. But try as I would, I did not succeed, for had I
not taught her the cult of the beautiful? the love of high ideals?
the longing to do noble acts? While she adopted the vulgarities of
her theatrical friends, I had improved, I had acquired the manners
and language of fashionable society, I had learned that self-control
which keeps emotion in check and is considered the hall-mark of good
breeding.
“Family... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.”
The child looked at her and despised her. He felt lonely, deserted
by her to whom he had always fled to find comfort and compassion, but
so seldom justice. "Dear papa, forgive," he said, with compressed and
lying lips.
And then he stole out into the kitchen to Louise the nursery-maid, who
used to comb and wash him, and sobbed his grief out in her apron.
"What have you done, John?" she asked sympathetically.
"Nothing," he answered. "I have done nothing."
The mother came out.
"What does John say?" she asked Louise. "He says that he didn't do it."
"Is he lying still?"
And John was fetched in again to be tortured into the admission of what
he had never done.
Splendid, moral institution! Sacred family! Divinely appointed,
unassailable, where citizens are to be educated in truth and virtue!
Thou art supposed to be the home of the virtues, where innocent
children are tortured into their first falsehood, where wills are
broken by tyranny, and self-respect killed by narrow egoism. Family!
thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for
comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for
children.
After this John lived in perpetual disquiet. He dared not confide in
his mother, or Louise, still less his brothers, and least of all his
father. Enemies everywhere! God he knew only through hymns. He was an
atheist, as children are, but in the dark, like savages and animals, he
feared evil spirits.
"Who drank the wine?" he asked himself; who was the guilty one for whom
he suffered? New impressions and anxieties caused him to forget the
question, but the unjust treatment remained in his memory. He had lost
the confidence of his parents, the regard of his brothers and sisters,
the favour of his aunt; his grandmother said nothing. Perhaps she
inferred his innocence on other grounds, for she did not scold him, and
was silent. She had nothing to say. He felt himself disgraced--punished
for lying, which was so abominated in the household, and for theft,
a word which could not be mentioned, deprived of household rights,
suspected and despised by his brothers because he had been caught.
“The hood-winked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband equals betrayed husband. And there are women who look upon jealousy as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.”
The same old use of the term friendship, the inexplicable sympathy of
the souls, and the whole list of the trite and to us both so familiar
words: brother and sister, little mother, playmates, and so on, cloaks
and covers under which lovers are wont to hide, to abandon themselves
ultimately to their passions.
What was I to think? Was she mentally deranged?
Was she an unconscious criminal who remembered nothing of the terrible
experience of the last two months, when the hearts of three people
were on fire for her? And I who had been made to play the part of a
Cinderella, a scape-goat, a man of straw, I was toiling to remove all
obstacles from her way to the irregular life of the theatre.
A fresh blow! To see the woman whom I adored wallow in the gutter.
My soul was filled with unspeakable compassion, I had a foreboding of
the fate which awaited her, perverse woman that she was, and vowed to
lift her up, to strengthen and support her, to do everything in my
power to shield her from a fatal catastrophe.
Jealous! That vulgar word invented by a woman in order to mislead
the man she has deceived or means to deceive. The hoodwinked husband
shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous
husband--husband betrayed! And there are women who look upon jealousy
as synonymous with impotence, so that the betrayed husband can only
shut his eyes, powerless in the face of such accusations.
She returned after a fortnight, pretty, fresh, in high spirits, and
full of bright memories, for she had thoroughly enjoyed herself. She
was wearing a new dress with touches of brilliant colouring, which
struck me as vulgar. I was puzzled. The woman who used to dress so
simply, so quietly, with such exquisite taste, was adopting a colour
scheme which was positively garish.
Our meeting was colder than either of us had expected; there was a
constrained silence at first, followed by a sudden outburst.
The flatteries of her new friends had turned her head; she gave herself
airs, teased me, made fun of me. She spread her gorgeous dress over
my old sofa, to hide its shabbiness. Her old power over me reasserted
itself, and for a moment I forgot all resentment in a passionate kiss;
nevertheless, a slight feeling of anger remained at the bottom of my
heart, and presently found vent in a torrent of reproaches. Subdued by
my impetuosity, which contrasted so strangely with her own indolent
nature, she took refuge in tears.
“Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the conventions of society are born with different interests and different points of view.”
When he got home, his grandmother rebuked him sharply for not having
saluted her when she passed, but, of course, she added, he had been
in too grand company to take notice of an old woman! He protested his
innocence, but in vain. Since he had only a few friends, the loss of
her friendship was painful to him.
One summer he spent with his step-mother at one of her relatives', a
farmer in Östergötland. Here he was treated like a gentleman, and lived
on friendly terms with his step-mother. But it did not last long, and
soon the flames of strife were stirred up again between them. And thus
it went on, up and down, and to and fro.
About this time, at the age of fifteen, he first fell in love, if it
really was love, and not rather friendship. Can friendship commence
and continue between members of opposite sexes? Only apparently, for
the sexes are born enemies and remain always opposed to each other.
Positive and negative streams of electricity are mutually hostile, but
seek their complement in each other. Friendship can exist only between
persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman by the
conventions of society are born with different interests and different
points of view. Therefore a friendship between the sexes can arise only
in marriage where the interests are the same. This, however, can be
only so long as the wife devotes her whole interest to the family for
which the husband works. As soon as she gives herself to some object
outside the family, the agreement is broken, for man and wife then have
separate interests, and then there is an end to friendship. Therefore
purely spiritual marriages are impossible, for they lead to the slavery
of the man, and consequently to the speedy dissolution of the marriage.
The fifteen-year old boy fell in love with a woman of thirty. He could
truthfully assert that his love was entirely ideal. How came he to love
her? As generally is the case, from many motives, not from one only.
She was the landlord's daughter, and had, as such, a superior position;
the house was well-appointed and always open for visitors. She was
cultivated, admired, managed the house, and spoke familiarly to her
mother; she could play the hostess and lead the conversation; she was
always surrounded by men who courted her.
“That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of all.”
At the table there
was deathly silence, and the father spoke only a little.
The mother had a nervous temperament. She used to become easily
excited, but soon quieted down again. She was relatively content with
her life, for she had risen in the social scale, and had improved her
position and that of her mother and brother. She drank her coffee in
bed in the mornings, and had her nurses, two servants, and her mother
to help her. Probably she did not over-exert herself.
But for the children she played the part of Providence itself. She cut
overgrown nails, tied up injured fingers, always comforted, quieted,
and soothed when the father punished, although she was the official
accuser. The children did not like her when she "sneaked," and she
did not win their respect. She could be unjust, violent, and punish
unseasonably on the bare accusation of a servant; but the children
received food and comfort from her, therefore they loved her. The
father, on the other hand, always remained a stranger, and was regarded
rather as a foe than a friend.
That is the thankless position of the father in the family--the
provider for all, and the enemy of all. If he came home tired, hungry,
and ill-humoured, found the floor only just scoured and the food
ill-cooked, and ventured a remark, he received a curt reply. He lived
in his own house as if on sufferance, and the children hid away from
him. He was less content than his wife, for he had come down in the
world, and was obliged to do without things to which he had formerly
been accustomed. And he was not pleased when he saw those to whom he
had given life and food discontented.
But the family is a very imperfect arrangement. It is properly an
institution for eating, washing, and ironing, and a very uneconomical
one. It consists chiefly of preparations for meals, market-shopping,
anxieties about bills, washing, ironing, starching, and scouring. Such
a lot of bustle for so few persons! The keeper of a restaurant, who
serves hundreds, hardly does more.
The education consisted of scolding, hair-pulling, and exhortations to
obedience. The child heard only of his duties, nothing of his rights.
“I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it was the other side of love.”
Marie met me with evident misgivings; I
learned more from the expression of her face than I had learned during
the whole of my melancholy journey.
For two months I champed upon the bit; then I fled for the fourth time,
in the height of summer, this time to Switzerland. But the chain which
held me was not an iron chain which I might have been able to break;
it was rather an indiarubber cable, elastic and capable of infinite
expansion. The stronger the tension, the more irresistibly I was pulled
back to the starting point.
Once more I returned, to be rewarded with open contempt; she was sure
that another attempt to free myself from her net would kill me, and my
death was her only hope.
I fell ill, severely ill, so that I believed myself to be dying; I
made up my mind to write the whole story of the past. I could see
plainly now that I had been in the power of a vampire. I only wanted to
live long enough to cleanse my name from the filth with which she had
sullied it. I wanted to live long enough to revenge myself; but first
of all I must have proofs of her infidelity.
I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it
is the anthithesis of love. I hated her because I loved her.
It was on a Sunday, while we were dining in the summer-arbour, that the
electric fluid which had gathered during the last ten years discharged
itself. I cannot remember my actual motive, but I struck her, for the
first time in my life. I struck her face repeatedly, and when she
tried to defend herself I seized her wrists and forced her on her
knees. She gave a terrified scream. The temporary satisfaction which I
had felt at my action gave way to dismay, for the children, frightened
to death, cried out with fear. It was a horrible moment! It is a crime,
a most unnatural crime, to strike a woman, a mother, in the presence of
her children. It seemed to me that the sun ought to hide his face.... I
felt sick to death.
And yet there was peace in my soul, like the calm after a storm, a
satisfaction such as is only derived from duty done. I regretted my
action, but I felt no remorse. My deed had been as inevitable as cause
and effect.
In the evening I saw her walking in the moonlit garden.
“People who keep dogs are cowards who havent got the guts to bite people themselves.”
“I love her and she loves me, and we hate each other with a wild hatred born of love”
“People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life - to learn something is a joy to me.”
“Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentiment of its end destroys it at its very peak.”
At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet’s fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women
Family ... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
Yes, I am crying although I am a man. But has not a man eyes! Has not a man hands, limbs,senses, thoughts, passions? Is he not fed with the wine food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a woman? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? And if you poison us, do we not die? Why shouldnt a man complain, a soldier weep? Because it is unmanly? Why is it unmanly?
You do much worse things- you who can see to other planets.- Bertha, The Father
There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.
He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for talking with them, no, no! Then he felt as though he were dealing with another species of human being, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired the weak, pale, little girl and had picked her to be his wife. That was still the only way he could think of a woman - as a wife. He danced in a very chaste and proper manner, but he heard awful stories about his pals, stories he didnt understand until later. They could dance the waltz backwards around the room in a very indecent way, and they told naughty stories about the girls.
Those who wont accept evil never get anything good.
Growing old - its not nice but its interesting.
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who havent got the guts to bite people themselves.
I see the playwright as a lay preacher peddling the ideas of his time in popular form.
