The West Virginian. [volume] (Fairmont, W. Va.) 1914-1974, 1915-04-21
NINE. sTRlNDeERG TALKS O
SEX EQUALITY.

THE moment woman begins to
talk advanced ideas about love and
marriage she somehow feels it neces.
sary to neglect her complexion. cut
her hair short. wear heavy boots and
smoke big cigars"
That is the naughty aspersion cast
at certain type. OF modern woman.
hood by Nine. Stringberg. wife of the
great Swedish dramatist, who was
himself such a remorseless critic of
woman's faults and follies. The So
called "morbidity" of Ibsen is as
sunny as Mother Goose rhyme com.
pared. were not big enough for him.
They berg's powerful. poisonous
dramas. On page after page of The
Father" Countless Julie" The
Dance of DEATH" one winces as Al
the scraping of a raw wound with a
file dipped In salt-particularly If one
is woman.
Yet. according to his second wife,
from whom he was divorced as no
was from both of his other wives. he
cherished an exceptionally lofty ideal
OF woman. His flood of dramatic bit.
terness was let loose by his strong
personal reaction against the ultra
modern, feminist type of feminity, for
whom Nine. Strindberg herself has no
manner Of use.
Il began with advanced ideas, you
see." she confessed naively. and
found that in practical experience
they didn't work. Strindberg knew
that. from the beginning. His ideal
Of womanhood was the early Chris.
tian one, combination of the virgin
and the mother. Women today have
so far deteriorated that he could not
accustom himself to the reality
Yet Strindberg did not hate
women. He loved them. What ap-
peared to be hate was merely the
reverse side of his love; if you have
the latter feeling for an object | do
not see how you can escape the
former. The trouble was that his
wives. myself included, were not big
enough for him. They did not give
him enough. They thought of them
selves, rather than of him. He gave
them entire personal freedom and he
was one of the very few men have
ever known who remained absolutely
faithful to his marriage VOWS"
She Left Her Husband.
Which is an unusually generous
tribute from wife who separated
from her husband a year or two after
their marriage out of sheer inability
to get along with him. Nine. Strind-
berg spoke with sincerity in her fluent
If slightly accented English, and in
deed the object of her visit is to make
use better acquainted with the erratic
genius she married.
A daughter of Court Councillor
Friedrich Uhl. of Vienna she herself
is well-known figure in literary and
artistic Europe. She is a woman in
the late thirties, with an olive skin.
knot of dusky hair and long gray
eyes-the pupils SO big and dark that
many must think of her as black
eyed. To her belongs that flexible
witchery of eye and lip and nostril
which makes even a plain woman
charming. And she is not plain.
Then you don't believe in the mod
ern woman?" l asked
Il do not believe in the type or
woman which the woman movement
has developed abroad" she said.
The American woman movement
impresses me as different from any
thing | have seen elsewhere. You do
not seem 10 have women who are
making fools of themselves. You are
working in quiet, orderly, womanly
fashion for good things for what will
benefit children and other women.
But the woman movement with us
is without fruit. Over-educated, over
sophisticated. we are not trying to
make ourselves into men. The very
liberty for love are those least likely
to attract love-"
And then Nine. Strindberg gave the