Book//mark – The Son of a Servant | August Strindberg, 1870

“The ball was held in a middle-class home. The girls were anemic – some of them; the others were red as raspberries. John liked the pale ones best, the ones with black or blue rings round their eyes. They looked so sad and suffering and pitiable, and they cast tender yearning glances at him, such yearning glances.”

“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 didn’t 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.”

“Family … the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.”

August Strindberg 1886 -1909, The Son of a Servant / Tjänstekvinnans son, 1870

[Autobiographical novel in four parts]

Also:
The Ghost Sonata | August Strindberg, 1907
Painters [*/ ) By the sea | Paintings by August Strindberg (1873-1903)