been!...Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though I saw the Ghosts before me. But I almost think we are all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them...There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light...When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against, as something loathsome. It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn...It was a crime against us both.
Indeed, a crime on which the sacred institution is built, and for which thousands of innocent children must pay with their happiness and life, while their mothers continue to the very end without ever learning how hideously criminal their life is.
Not so _Mrs. Alving_ who, though at a terrible price, works herself out to the truth; aye, even to the height of understanding the dissolute life of the father of her child, who had lived in cramped provincial surroundings, and could find no purpose in life, no outlet for his exuberance. It is through her child, through _Oswald_, that all this becomes illumed to her.
_Oswald._ Ah, the joy of life, mother; that's a thing you don't know much about in these parts. I have never felt it here...And then, too, the joy of work. At bottom, it's the same thing. But that too you know nothing about...Here people are brought up to believe that work is a curse and a punishment for sin, and that life is something miserable, something we want to be done with, the sooner the better...Have you noticed that everything I have painted has turned upon the joy of life? always, always upon the joy of life?--light and sunshine and glorious air, and faces radiant with happiness? That is why I am afraid of remaining at home with you.
_Mrs. Alving._ Oswald, you spoke of the joy of life; and at that word a new light burst for me over my life and all it has contained...You ought to have known your father when he was a young lieutenant. He was brimming over with the joy of life!...He had no object in life, but only an official position. He had no work into which he could throw himself heart and soul; he had only business. He had not a single comrade that knew what the joy of life meant--only loafers and boon companions----...So that happened which was sure to happen...Oswald, my dear boy; has it shaken you very much?
_Oswald._ Of course it came upon me as a great surprise, but, after all, it can't matter much to me.
_Mrs. Alving._ Can't matter! That your father was so infinitely miserable!
_Oswald._ Of course I can pity him as I would anybody else; but---- _Mrs. Alving._ Nothing more? Your own father!
_Oswald._ Oh, there! "Father," "father"! I never knew anything of father. I don't remember anything about him except--that he once made me sick.
_Mrs. Alving._ That's a terrible way to speak! Should not a son love his father, all the same?
_Oswald._ When a son has nothing to thank his father for? has never known him? Do you really cling to the old superstition?--you who are so enlightened in other ways?
_Mrs. Alving._ Is that only a superstition?
In truth, a superstition--one that is kept like the sword of Damocles over the child who does not ask to be given life, and is yet tied with a thousand chains to those who bring him into a cheerless, joyless, and wretched world.
* * * * * The voice of Henrik Ibsen in "Ghosts" sounds like the trumpets before the walls of Jericho. Into the remotest nooks and corners reaches his voice, with its thundering indictment of our moral cancers, our social poisons, our hideous crimes against unborn and born victims. Verily a more revolutionary condemnation has never been uttered in dramatic form before or since the great Henrik Ibsen.
We need, therefore, not be surprised at the vile abuse and denunciation heaped upon Ibsen's head by the Church, the State, and other moral eunuchs. But the spirit of Henrik Ibsen could not be daunted. It asserted itself with even greater defiance in "An Enemy of Society,"--a powerful arraignment of the political and economic Lie,--Ibsen's own confession of faith.
AN ENEMY OF SOCIETY Dr. Thomas Stockmann is called to the position of medical adviser to the management of the "Baths," the main resource of his native town.
A sincere man of high ideals, _Dr. Stockmann_ returns home after an absence of many years, full of the spirit of enterprise and progressive innovation. For as he says to his brother _Peter_, the town _Burgomaster_, "I am so glad and content. I feel so unspeakably happy in the midst of all this growing, germinating life. After all, what a glorious time we do live in. It is as if a new world were springing up around us."
_Burgomaster._ Do you really think so?
_Dr. Stockmann._ Well, of course, you can't see this as clearly as I do. You've spent all your life in this place, and so your perceptions have been dulled. But I, who had to live up there in that small hole in the north all those years, hardly ever seeing a soul to speak a stimulating word to me--all this affects me as if I were carried to the midst of a crowded city--I know well enough that the conditions of life are small compared with many other towns. But here is life, growth, an infinity of things to work for and to strive for; and that is the main point.
In this spirit _Dr. Stockmann_ sets to his task. After two years of careful investigation, he finds that the Baths are built on a swamp, full of poisonous germs, and that people who come there for their health will be infected with fever.
_Thomas Stockmann_ is a conscientious physician. He loves his native town, but he loves his fellow-men more. He considers it his duty to communicate his discovery to the highest authority of the town, the _Dr. Stockmann_ is indeed an idealist; else he would know that the man is often lost in the official. Besides, _Peter Stockmann_ is also the president of the board of directors and one of the heaviest stockholders of the Baths. Sufficient reason to upbraid his reckless medical brother as a dangerous man: _Burgomaster._ Anyhow, you've an ingrained propensity for going your own way. And that in a well-ordered community is almost as dangerous. The individual must submit himself to the whole community, or, to speak more correctly, bow to the authority that watches over the welfare of all.
But the _Doctor_ is not disconcerted: _Peter_ is an official; he is not concerned with ideals. But there is the press,--that is the medium for his purpose! The staff of the _People's Messenger_--_Hovstad_, _Billings_, and _Aslaksen_, are deeply impressed by the _Doctor's_ discovery. With one eye to good copy and the other to the political chances, they immediately put the _People's Messenger_ at the disposal of _Thomas Stockmann_. _Hovstad_ sees great possibilities for a thorough radical reform of the whole life of the community.
_Hovstad._ To you, as a doctor and a man of science, this business of the water-works is an isolated affair. I fancy it hasn't occurred to you that a good many other things are connected with it...The swamp our whole municipal life stands and rots in...I think a journalist assumes an immense responsibility when he neglects an opportunity of aiding the masses, the poor, the oppressed. I know well enough that the upper classes will call this stirring up the people, and so forth, but they can do as they please, if only my conscience is clear.
_Aslaksen_, printer of the _People's Messenger_, chairman of the Householders' Association, and agent for the Moderation Society, has, like _Hovstad_, a keen eye to business. He assures the _Doctor_ of his whole-hearted coöperation, especially emphasizing that, "It might do you no harm to have us middle-class men at your back. We now form a compact majority in the town--when we really make up our minds to. And it's always as well, Doctor, to have the majority with you...And so I think it wouldn't be amiss if we made some sort of a demonstration...Of course with great moderation, Doctor. I am always in favor of moderation; for moderation is a citizen's first virtue--at least those are my sentiments."
Truly, _Dr. Stockmann_ is an idealist; else he would not place so much faith in the staff of the _People's Messenger_, who love the people so well that they constantly feed them with high-sounding phrases of democratic principles and of the noble function of the press, while they pilfer their pockets.
That is expressed in _Hovstad's_ own words, when _Petra_, the daughter of _Dr. Stockmann_, returns a sentimental novel she was to translate for the _People's Messenger_: "This can't possibly go into the _Messenger_," she tells _Hovstad_; "it is in direct contradiction to your own opinion."
_Hovstad._ Well, but for the sake of the cause-- _Petra._ You don't understand me yet. It is all about a supernatural power that looks after the so-called good people here on earth, and turns all things to their advantage at last, and all the bad people are punished.
_Hovstad._ Yes, but that's very fine. It's the very thing the public like.
_Petra._ And would you supply the public with such stuff? Why, you don't believe one word of it yourself. You know well enough that things don't really happen like that.
_Hovstad._ You're right there; but an editor can't always do as he likes. He often has to yield to public opinion in small matters.
After all, politics is the chief thing in life--at any rate for a newspaper; and if I want the people to follow me along the path of emancipation and progress, I mustn't scare them away. If they find such a moral story down in the cellar, they're much more willing to stand what is printed above it--they feel themselves safer.
Editors of the stamp of _Hovstad_ seldom dare to express their real opinions. They cannot afford to "scare away" their readers. They generally yield to the most ignorant and vulgar public opinion; they do not set themselves up against constituted authority. Therefore the _People's Messenger_ drops the "greatest man" in town when it learns that the _Burgomaster_ and the influential citizens are determined that the truth shall be silenced. The _Burgomaster_ soundly denounces his brother's "rebellion."
_Burgomaster._ The public doesn't need new ideas. The public is best served by the good old recognized ideas that they have already...As an official, you've no right to have any individual conviction.
_Dr. Stockmann._ The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We live by trafficking in filth and garbage. The whole of our developing social life is rooted in a lie!
_Burgomaster._ Idle fancies--or something worse. The man who makes such offensive insinuations against his own native place must be an enemy of society.
_Dr. Stockmann._ And I must bear such treatment! In my own house.
Katrine! What do you think of it?
_Mrs. Stockmann._ Indeed, it is a shame and an insult, Thomas----...But, after all, your brother has the power---- _Dr. Stockmann._ Yes, but I have the right!
_Mrs. Stockmann._ Ah, yes, right, right! What is the good of being right when you haven't any might?
_Dr. Stockmann._ What! No good in a free society to have right on your side? You are absurd, Katrine. And besides, haven't I the free and independent press with me? The compact majority behind me?
That's might enough, I should think!
_Katrine Stockmann_ is wiser than her husband. For he who has no might need hope for no right. The good _Doctor_ has to drink the bitter cup to the last drop before he realizes the wisdom of his wife.
Threatened by the authorities and repudiated by the _People's Messenger_, _Dr. Stockmann_ attempts to secure a hall wherein to hold a public meeting. A free-born citizen, he believes in the Constitution and its guarantees; he is determined to maintain his right of free expression. But like so many others, even most advanced liberals blinded by the spook of constitutional rights and free speech, _Dr. Stockmann_ inevitably has to pay the penalty of his credulity. He finds every hall in town closed against him. Only one solitary citizen has the courage to open his doors to the persecuted Doctor,--his old friend _Horster_. But the mob follows him even there and howls him down as an enemy of society. _Thomas Stockmann_ makes the discovery in his battle with ignorance, stupidity, and vested interests that "the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom in our midst are the compact majority, the damned compact liberal majority." His experiences lead him to the conclusion that "the majority is never right...That is one of those conventional lies against which a free, thoughtful man must rebel...The majority has might unhappily--but right it has not."
_Hovstad._ The man who would ruin a whole community must be an enemy of society!
_Dr. Stockmann._ It doesn't matter if a lying community is ruined!...You'll poison the whole country in time; you will bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish. And should it come to this, I say, from the bottom of my heart: Perish the country! Perish all its people!
Driven out of the place, hooted and jeered by the mob, _Dr. Stockmann_ barely escapes with his life, and seeks safety in his home, only to find everything demolished there. In due time he is repudiated by the grocer, the baker, and the candlestick maker. The landlord, of course, is very sorry for him. The Stockmanns have always paid their rent regularly, but it would injure his reputation to have such an avowed rebel for a tenant. The grocer is sorry, and the butcher, too; but they can not jeopardize their business. Finally the board of education sends expressions of regret: _Petra_ is an excellent teacher and the boys of Stockmann splendid pupils, but it would contaminate the other children were the Stockmanns allowed to remain at school. And again _Dr.
Stockmann_ learns a vital lesson. But he will not submit; he will be strong.
_Dr. Stockmann._ Should I let myself be beaten off the field by public opinion, and the compact majority, and such deviltry? No, thanks. Besides, what I want is so simple, so clear and straightforward. I only want to drive into the heads of these curs that the Liberals are the worst foes of free men; that party-programmes wring the necks of all young living truths; that considerations of expediency turn morality and righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous...I don't see any man free and brave enough to dare the Truth...The strongest man is he who stands most alone.
A confession of faith, indeed, because Henrik Ibsen, although recognized as a great dramatic artist, remained alone in his stand as a revolutionist.
His dramatic art, without his glorious rebellion against every authoritative institution, against every social and moral lie, against every vestige of bondage, were inconceivable. Just as his art would lose human significance, were his love of truth and freedom lacking. Already in "Brand," Henrik Ibsen demanded all or nothing, no weak-kneed moderation,--no compromise of any sort in the struggle for the ideal.
His proud defiance, his enthusiastic daring, his utter indifference to consequences, are Henrik Ibsen's bugle call, heralding a new dawn and the birth of a new race.
STRINDBERG "The reproach was levelled against my tragedy, 'The Father,' that it was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamour for the joy of life, and the theatrical managers order farces, as though the joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something."
The passionate desire to discover something, to learn something, has made of August Strindberg a keen dissector of souls. Above all, of his own soul.
Surely there is no figure in contemporary literature, outside of Tolstoy, that laid bare the most secret nooks and corners of his own soul with the sincerity of August Strindberg. One so relentlessly honest with himself, could be no less with others.
That explains the bitter opposition and hatred of his critics. They did not object so much to Strindberg's self-torture; but that he should have dared to torture _them_, to hold up his searching mirror to _their_ sore spots, that they could not forgive.
Especially is this true of woman. For centuries she has been lulled into a trance by the songs of the troubadours who paid homage to her goodness, her sweetness, her selflessness and, above all, her noble motherhood. And though she is beginning to appreciate that all this incense has befogged her mind and paralyzed her soul, she hates to give up the tribute laid at her feet by sentimental moonshiners of the past.
To be sure, it is rude to turn on the full searchlight upon a painted face. But how is one to know what is back of the paint and artifice?
August Strindberg hated artifice with all the passion of his being; hence his severe criticism of woman. Perhaps it was his tragedy to see her as she really is, and not as she appears in her trance. To love with open eyes is, indeed, a tragedy, and Strindberg loved woman. All his life long he yearned for her love, as mother, as wife, as companion. But his longing for, and his need of her, were the crucible of Strindberg, as they have been the crucible of every man, even of the mightiest spirit.
Why it is so is best expressed in the words of the old nurse, _Margret_, in "The Father": "Because all you men, great and small, are woman's children, every man of you."
The child in man--- and the greater the man the more dominant the child in him--has ever succumbed to the Earth Spirit, Woman, and as long as that is her only drawing power, Man, with all his strength and genius, will ever be at her feet.
The Earth Spirit is motherhood carrying the race in its womb; the flame of life luring the moth, often against its will, to destruction.
In all of Strindberg's plays we see the flame of life at work, ravishing man's brain, consuming man's faith, rousing man's passion. Always, always the flame of life is drawing its victims with irresistible force.
August Strindberg's arraignment of that force is at the same time a confession of faith. He, too, was the child of woman, and utterly helpless before her.
THE FATHER "The Father" portrays the tragedy of a man and a woman struggling for the possession of their child. The father, a cavalry captain, is intellectual, a freethinker, a man of ideas. His wife is narrow, selfish, and unscrupulous in her methods when her antagonism is wakened.
Other members of the family are the wife's mother, a Spiritualist, and the _Captain's_ old nurse, _Margret_, ignorant and superstitious. The father feels that the child would be poisoned in such an atmosphere: _The Captain._ This house is full of women who all want to have their say about my child. My mother-in-law wants to make a Spiritualist of her. Laura wants her to be an artist; the governess wants her to be a Methodist, old Margret a Baptist, and the servant-girls want her to join the Salvation Army! It won't do to try to make a soul in patches like that. I, who have the chief right to try to form her character, am constantly opposed in my efforts.
And that's why I have decided to send her away from home.
But it is not only because the _Captain_ does not believe in "making a soul in patches," that he wants to rescue the child from the hot-house environment, nor because he plans to make her an image of himself. It is rather because he wants her to grow up with a healthy outlook on life.
_The Captain._ I don't want to be a procurer for my daughter and educate her exclusively for matrimony, for then if she were left unmarried she might have bitter days. On the other hand, I don't want to influence her toward a career that requires a long course of training which would be entirely thrown away if she should marry. I want her to be a teacher. If she remains unmarried she will be able to support herself, and at any rate she wouldn't be any worse off than the poor schoolmasters who have to share their salaries with a family. If she marries she can use her knowledge in the education of her children.
While the father's love is concerned with the development of the child, that of the mother is interested mainly in the possession of the child.
Therefore she fights the man with every means at her command, even to the point of instilling the poison of doubt into his mind, by hints that he is not the father of the child. Not only does she seek to drive her husband mad, but through skillful intrigue she leads every one, including the Doctor, to believe that he is actually insane. Finally even the old nurse is induced to betray him: she slips the straitjacket over him, adding the last touch to the treachery. Robbed of his faith, broken in spirit and subdued, the _Captain_ dies a victim of the Earth Spirit--of motherhood, which slays the man for the sake of the child.
Laura herself will have it so when she tells her husband, "You have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner. You are not needed any longer, and you must go."
* * * * * Critics have pronounced "The Father" an aberration of Strindberg's mind, utterly false and distorted. But that is because they hate to face the truth. In Strindberg, however, the truth is his most revolutionary significance.
"The Father" contains two basic truths. Motherhood, much praised, poetized, and hailed as a wonderful thing, is in reality very often the greatest deterrent influence in the life of the child. Because it is not primarily concerned with the potentialities of character and growth of the child; on the contrary, it is interested chiefly in the birthgiver,--that is, the mother. Therefore, the mother is the most subjective, self-centered and conservative obstacle. She binds the child to herself with a thousand threads which never grant sufficient freedom for mental and spiritual expansion. It is not necessary to be as bitter as Strindberg to realize this. There are of course exceptional mothers who continue to grow with the child. But the average mother is like the hen with her brood, forever fretting about her chicks if they venture a step away from the coop. The mother enslaves with kindness,--a bondage harder to bear and more difficult to escape than the brutal fist of the father.
Strindberg himself experienced it, and nearly every one who has ever attempted to outgrow the soul strings of the mother.
In portraying motherhood, as it really is, August Strindberg is conveying a vital and revolutionary message, namely, that true motherhood, even as fatherhood, does not consist in molding the child according to one's image, or in imposing upon it one's own ideas and notions, but in allowing the child freedom and opportunity to grow harmoniously according to its own potentialities, unhampered and unmarred.
The child was August Strindberg's religion,--perhaps because of his own very tragic childhood and youth. He was like Father Time in "Jude the Obscure," a giant child, and as he has _Laura_ say of the _Captain_ in "The Father," "he had either come too early into the world, or perhaps was not wanted at all."
"Yes, that's how it was," the _Captain_ replies, "my father's and my mother's will was against my coming into the world, and consequently I was born without a will."
The horror of having been brought into the world undesired and unloved, stamped its indelible mark on August Strindberg. It never left him. Nor did fear and hunger--the two terrible phantoms of his childhood.
Indeed, the child was Strindberg's religion, his faith, his passion. Is it then surprising that he should have resented woman's attitude towards the man as a mere means to the child; or, in the words of _Laura_, as "the function of father and breadwinner"? That this is the attitude of woman, is of course denied. But it is nevertheless true. It holds good not only of the average, unthinking woman, but even of many feminists of to-day; and, no doubt, they were even more antagonistic to the male in Strindberg's time.
It is only too true that woman is paying back what she has endured for centuries--humiliation, subjection, and bondage. But making oneself free through the enslavement of another, is by no means a step toward advancement. Woman must grow to understand that the father is as vital a factor in the life of the child as is the mother. Such a realization would help very much to minimize the conflict between the sexes.
Of course, that is not the only cause of the conflict. There is another, as expressed by _Laura_: "Do you remember when I first came into your life, I was like a second mother?...I loved you as my child. But...when the nature of your feelings changed and you appeared as my lover, I blushed, and your embraces were joy that was followed by remorseful conscience as if my blood were ashamed."
The vile thought instilled into woman by the Church and Puritanism that sex expression without the purpose of procreation is immoral, has been a most degrading influence. It has poisoned the life of thousands of women who similarly suffer "remorseful conscience"; therefore their disgust and hatred of the man; therefore also the conflict.
Must it always be thus? Even Strindberg does not think so. Else he would not plead in behalf of "divorce between man and wife, so that lovers may be born." He felt that until man and woman cease to have "remorseful consciences" because of the most elemental expression of the joy of life, they cannot realize the purity and beauty of sex, nor appreciate its ecstasy, as the source of full understanding and creative harmony between male and female. Till then man and woman must remain in conflict, and the child pay the penalty.
August Strindberg, as one of the numberless innocent victims of this terrible conflict, cries out bitterly against it, with the artistic genius and strength that compel attention to the significance of his message.
COUNTESS JULIE In his masterly preface to this play, August Strindberg writes: "The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full lifetime; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable."
What a wealth of revolutionary thought,--were we to realize that those who will clear society of the rotting, superannuated trees that have so long been standing in the way of others entitled to an equal share in life, must be as strong as the great revolutionists of the past!
Indeed, Strindberg is no trimmer, no cheap reformer, no patchworker; therefore his inability to remain fixed, or to content himself with accepted truths. Therefore also, his great versatility, his deep grasp of the subtlest phases of life. Was he not forever the seeker, the restless spirit roaming the earth, ever in the death-throes of the Old, to give birth to the New? How, then, could he be other than relentless and grim and brutally frank.
"Countess Julie," a one-act tragedy, is no doubt a brutally frank portrayal of the most intimate thoughts of man and of the age-long antagonism between classes. Brutally frank, because August Strindberg strips both of their glitter, their sham and pretense, that we may see that "at bottom there's not so much difference between people and--people."
Who in modern dramatic art is there to teach us that lesson with the insight of an August Strindberg? He who had been tossed about all his life between the decadent traditions of his aristocratic father and the grim, sordid reality of the class of his mother. He who had been begotten through the physical mastery of his father and the physical subserviency of his mother. Verily, Strindberg knew whereof he spoke--for he spoke with his soul, a language whose significance is illuminating, compelling.
_Countess Julie_ inherited the primitive, intense passion of her mother and the neurotic aristocratic tendencies of her father. Added to this heritage is the call of the wild, the "intense summer heat when the blood turns to fire, and when all are in a holiday spirit, full of gladness, and rank is flung aside." _Countess Julie_ feels, when too late, that the barrier of rank reared through the ages, by wealth and power, is not flung aside with impunity. Therein the vicious brutality, the boundless injustice of rank.
The people on the estate of _Julie's_ father are celebrating St. John's Eve with dance, song and revelry. The Count is absent, and _Julie_ graciously mingles with the servants. But once having tasted the simple abandon of the people, once having thrown off the artifice and superficiality of her aristocratic decorum, her suppressed passions leap into full flame, and _Julie_ throws herself into the arms of her father's valet, _Jean_--not because of love for the man, nor yet openly and freely, but as persons of her station may do when carried away by the moment.
The woman in _Julie_ pursues the male, follows him into the kitchen, plays with him as with a pet dog, and then feigns indignation when _Jean_, aroused, makes advances. How dare he, the servant, the lackey, even insinuate that she would have him! "I, the lady of the house! I honor the people with my presence. I, in love with my coachman? I, who step down."
How well Strindberg knows the psychology of the upper classes! How well he understands that their graciousness, their charity, their interest in the "common people" is, after all, nothing but arrogance, blind conceit of their own importance and ignorance of the character of the people.
Even though _Jean_ is a servant, he has his pride, he has his dreams. "I was not hired to be your plaything," he says to _Julie_; "I think too much of myself for that."
Strange, is it not, that those who serve and drudge for others, should think so much of themselves as to refuse to be played with? Stranger still that they should indulge in dreams. _Jean_ says: Do you know how people in high life look from the under-world?...They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above. I lived in a hovel provided by the State, with seven brothers and sisters and a pig; out on a barren stretch where nothing grew, not even a tree, but from the window I could see the Count's park walls with apple trees rising above them. That was the garden of paradise; and there stood many angry angels with flaming swords protecting it; but for all that I and other boys found the way to the tree of life--now you despise me...I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God's earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess' daughter...What I wanted--I don't know. You were unattainable, but through the vision of you I was made to realize how hopeless it was to rise above the conditions of my birth.
What rich food for thought in the above for all of us, and for the Jeans, the people who do not know what they want, yet feel the cruelty of a world that keeps the pauper's child out of the castle of his dreams, away from joy and play and beauty! The injustice and the bitterness of it all, that places the stigma of birth as an impassable obstacle, a fatal imperative excluding one from the table of life, with the result of producing such terrible effects on the Julies and the Jeans. The one unnerved, made helpless and useless by affluence, ease and idleness; the other enslaved and bound by service and dependence.
Even when _Jean_ wants to, he cannot rise above his condition. When _Julie_ asks him to embrace her, to love her, he replies: I can't as long as we are in this house...There is the Count, your father...I need only to see his gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse...And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feel like bowing and scraping...I can't account for it but--but ah, it is that damned servant in my back--I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot...Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment.
No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth--these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them.
Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and overbearing toward those who are below them. For _Jean_ has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon _Jean_, it is much more terrible in its effect upon _Kristin_, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when _Kristin_, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress _Julie_ had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet.
_Kristin._ I don't want to be here in this house any longer where one cannot respect one's betters.
_Jean._ Why should one respect them?
_Kristin._ Yes, you can say that, you are so smart. But I don't want to serve people who behave so. It reflects on oneself, I think.
_Jean._ Yes, but it's a comfort that they're not a bit better than we.
_Kristin._ No, I don't think so, for if they are not better there's no use in our trying to better ourselves in this world. And to think of the Count! Think of him who has had so much sorrow all his days.
No, I don't want to stay in this house any longer! And to think of it being with such as you! If it had been the Lieutenant--...I have never lowered my position. Let any one say, if they can, that the Count's cook has had anything to do with the riding master or the swineherd. Let them come and say it!
Such dignity and morality are indeed pathetic, because they indicate how completely serfdom may annihilate even the longing for something higher and better in the breast of a human being. The Kristins represent the