August Strindberg's View Of Female

As an outstanding dramatist, novelist, and autobiographer, Strindberg manifested versatile creative ideas. The pioneering and modernizing traits in his creative workmanship enabled him to stand out in modern literature, and earned him an honor as father of Sweden modern literature. It is his view of female that has aroused much attention and disputes. Strindberg's mercury attitude towards female went in accordance with his creative thoughts, thus through the former, we can command Strindberg's creation, whether in extent or depth, has kept ahead among contemporary peers.Strindberg's personal experiences had a close bearing on the formation and development of his view of female. Childhood experiences, the oppressive family environment, as well as longing for maternal love, all of them had made a dual personality, self-conceit and self-contempt, humility and vanity out of the young Strindberg. This dual personality resulted in his contradictory attitudes towards female as well as life. That put his life and love into conflicts of binary separation between soul and flesh, emotion and sexuality. Therefore, more attentions have been called to his spiritual infrastructure of all time, and basically, his character can be categorized to a marginal personality disorder and originated from long economic trouble, dilemma between belief and creation, his works were not accepted for a long time, and he wasn't understand by his family and so on. Three unsuccessful marriage aggravated his extremes attitude towards female, and also affected his view of women both in life and creative work. Besides, his attitude towards female resulted from an imperceptible Christian view of women. For in his early years, Strindberg's view of women could be called subversive, and the idea of original sin played a turning-point role in his attitude towards female. And the influnce of Oriental Buddhist concepts echo with Christian idea of original sin. So in terms of philosophy, he showed immense interest in Swedenborg, and his extremely pessimistic attitude came into being with Schopenhauer's effect. In regard to genology, study of religion and philosophy, the above-mentioned could serve as the origins in Strindberg's view of women.The keynote of Strindberg's ideas and works is his contempt for female. From his works, we can learn that they hold an unshakable foundation, that's to say, the intelligence and physical power of female appear much less than male, so female is an inferior animal. While his attitude towards women came out immutable, his view of women underwent a development process: from women's natural role as a dutiful wife and loving mother, as a practioner of maternity, then her grinding of man, to a savior, etc. In his creative works, he made a developmental definition of female's position and role, with distinctive character at each stage. To set himself in a time of vigorous women's liberation movement, Strindberg was neither a firm opponent of women's liberation, nor a proponent following suit. And his radical ideas towards women's liberation is no less than Ibsen's.With women's liberation as a breakthrough point, he made his entry into society at his early stages of creation, and held a unique view of women's independence. So he was a sober pioneer in his objective view of the mixed reality among feminist movement. And we can see the following three points clearly: Firstly, Strindberg's view of marriage and family could be revealed from conflicting relationships between female and male. In his works, we could know that marriage is the scale of serious imbalance, pointing to the female all the time; Secondly, this view embodies in the importance of family. Family is one of the warm images in his works. In the writer's eyes, family is the only homeland and a way to salvation to obtain acceptance and understanding; Thirdly, it unfolded to be attached to maternity and importance to children. All of these represent his knowledge and criticism about women.His thought about female dominates his drama and other literary creative works. His view of women played a considerable and significant role in his works. So his creation had brought forth an outlook of female images, female subjects and feminist criticism, and added unique wealth for the world literary treasure.