August Strindberg on Women
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“The beginning and the end—for us men anyhow. In relationship to one another they are nothing.”
“"To love" is an active verb, and "woman" is a passive noun. He loves—she is loved; he interrogates—she merely answers!”
“Every healthy man is a woman-hater—yet he cannot survive if he does not ally himself with his enemy and bring about strife. All deviates and effeminate perverts among men have an adoration for women!”
“Nothing in themselves; but everything for us, through us! Our honour and our shame; our greatest joy, our deepest pain; our redemption and our fall; our wages and our punishment; our strength and our weakness.”
“Perhaps some sort of larva, or pupa, out of whose somnambulist life a man will be created. She is like a child, yet is not one; she is a sort of child, but is not like one. When the man pulls upward, she drags downward; when the man drags downward, she pulls upward!”
“In woman I sought an angel, who could lend me wings, and I fell into the arms of an earth-spirit, who suffocated me under mattresses stuffed with the feathers of wings! I sought an Ariel and I found a Caliban; when I wanted to rise she dragged me down; and continually reminded me of the fall....”