Page:Emma Goldman - The Social Significance of the Modern Drama - 1914.djvu/66

 of Jean was molded in the relentless school of necessity, in which only those survive who have the determination to act in time of danger. For as Jean says, "Miss Julie, I see that you are unhappy, I know that you are suffering, but I cannot understand you. Among my kind there is no nonsense of this sort. We love as we play—when work gives us time. We haven't the whole day and night for it as you."

Here we have the key to the psychology of the utter helplessness and weakness of the Julie type, and of the brutality of the Jeans. The one, the result of an empty life, of parasitic leisure, of a useless, purposeless existence. The other, the effect of too little time for development, for maturity and depth; of too much toil to permit the growth of the finer traits in the human soul.

August Strindberg, himself the result of the class conflict between his parents, never felt at home with either of them. All his life he was galled by the irreconcilability of the classes; and though he was no sermonizer in the sense of offering a definite panacea for individual or social ills, yet with master touch he painted the degrading effects of class distinction and its tragic antagonisms. In "Countess Julie" he popularized one of the most vital problems of our age, and gave to the world a work powerful in its grasp of elemental emotions, laying bare the human soul