Getting Married

"First published in 1884, when August Strindberg was thirty-five, and never fully translated into English until this lively version of Mary Sandbach's, Getting Married created a furor unequaled even by the heated arguments with which its author's countrymen normally greeted his plays. Strindberg was brought to trial soon after publication, his prosecution instigated by infuriated feminists, for his ridicule of female militants, and by the moralists and pietists, who preferred charges of blasphemy and obscenity. Both groups of complainants- horrified by Strindberg's insistence on introducing the bedroom into his stories, and at his suggestion that sex was necessary and important- were led by influential members of the upper classes and supported by the right-wing press. The trial lasted less than a month, ending in Strindberg's acquittal. These thirty stories about the joys and sorrows of married life, the delights of sex, and the grotesque and cruel effects of sexual repression, expose the issue of Strindberg's famous misogyny as a facile stereotype. He emerges, in fact, as a men's liberationist, believing that men's and women's equality are inextricably linked, and linked just as solidly with the eradication of the class system. He reviles the 'Amazonian' feminists only for their illegitimate abuse and victimization of men. Mary Sandbach's vivid presentation of these stories illumintes the censorship and opprobrium blocking Strindberg's work at every turn, and gives modern readers a chance to experience a buried masterpiece that carries controversies that are still unresovled in the 1970s."- Publisher