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Despite offering a different character’s point of view, several of the dramatic techniques resident in Miss Julie are exhibited. Even more importantly, Strindberg again insists on placing the family of the play in the context of a Darwinian battle of the strongest. It is natural for us to expect similarities between The Father and Miss Julie due to the close proximity of their writing, but the points made about Strindberg’s later work help provide an additional insight into the playwright’s main concerns. In The Father, Strindberg raises a further issue concerning family: can any father know (in a time before genetic testing) if his child is truly his? Furthermore, how does the subsequent uncertainty effect the position and authority of a father in a patriarchal household? Perhaps the most important fact to consider is that in this play, Strindberg is consciously focused on an archetypal family role: the play is called The Father not Captain Adolf after all. The direct quotations of Shakespeare the literary references from numerous sources regarding a father’s dilemma, and the echoing of the father’s situation in both his servants as well as the Pastor’s own experiences (he confides “Do you think I haven’t been all through this?” ), are all designed to emphasise that
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He is also a character created with the ability to analyse his own fluctuating position in the household, throughout the narrative. In granting the main character this capacity to recognise his own situation and even occasionally be amused by it, the character is intended to tread the border between serious and comic. Strindberg himself maintained:
I suggest, though I don’t usually interfere in these matters, that the Captain be given to an actor of normally healthy temper who, conscious of his superiority, goes loftily and cynically, almost joyfully, to meet his fate, wrapping himself in death as in a spider’s web which he is impotent to tear asunder. A deceived husband is a comic figure in the eyes of the world, and especially a theatre audience. He must show that he is aware of this, and that he too would laugh if only the man in question were someone other than himself. That is what is modern about my tragedy… no screams, no preachings! Subtle, calm,
He is also a character created with the ability to analyse his own fluctuating position in the household, throughout the narrative. In granting the main character this capacity to recognise his own situation and even occasionally be amused by it, the character is intended to tread the border between serious and comic. Strindberg himself maintained:
I suggest, though I don’t usually interfere in these matters, that the Captain be given to an actor of normally healthy temper who, conscious of his superiority, goes loftily and cynically, almost joyfully, to meet his fate, wrapping himself in death as in a spider’s web which he is impotent to tear asunder. A deceived husband is a comic figure in the eyes of the world, and especially a theatre audience. He must show that he is aware of this, and that he too would laugh if only the man in question were someone other than himself. That is what is modern about my tragedy… no screams, no preachings! Subtle, calm,