Getting Married (collection)

Getting Married (Swedish: Giftas) is a collection of short stories by the Swedish writer August Strindberg.^[1] The first volume was first published on 27 September 1884 and contained twelve stories depicting "twenty marriages of every variety," some of which present women in an egalitarian light.^[2] The volume also contained a long preface, in which, in addition to his support for women's rights, Strindberg offered criticisms of the campaign (such as its class bias), as well as of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play A Doll's House (the collection contains a story entitled "A Doll's House").^[3] Strindberg finished a second volume of stories, dealing in part with "all the less common forms of 'marriage'" such as "pederasty and lesbianism," in the summer of 1885.^[4] After a delay caused by the unwillingness of printers and distributors to handle such a controversial volume, it was published in October 1886.^[5] While the first two stories are as sympathetic to women as some of those in the first volume, many border on misogyny.^[6] Its preface blamed women for religious persecution, war, and all of history's other misfortunes.^[7] Both volumes were written at a time when Strindberg was still married to Siri von Essen, though the publication of the second volume had a disastrous effect on their marriage.^[8]