SOURCE: Bellquist, John Eric. “Strindberg's Father: Symbolism, Nihilism, Myth.” Modern Drama 29, no. 4 (December 1986): 532-43.

In the following essay, Bellquist presents a detailed examination of Fadren.

As part of the Strindberg Festival held in Stockholm during May, 1981, the Stockholm Stadsteater presented a putatively polemical version of the play Fadren with the slightly reconstructed title Fadern instead.¹ In the foyer of the theater the play's audiences encountered displays intended to reveal the socio-economic plight of women in Strindberg's day; during the performance they were faced with Laura cast as a harassed, hapless victim rather than an implacable vampire; and upon its conclusion they departed in contemplation of the final image of the daughter Bertha, who had stood at the edge of the stage in order to focus the director's entreaties: the scarred survivor of an unfortunate parental conflict, an innocent victim of yet another skirmish in the “battle of the...