The choice of naturalistic subjects was to be a contributing factor in the process of rationalism. Of the painful impression created by _Lady Julie_ Strindberg writes:
"When I chose this subject from life, just as it was told to me some years ago when it stirred me deeply, I found it suitable for a tragedy, for it still makes a painful impression to see a happily placed individual go to the wall, and still more to see a family die out. But the time may come when we shall be sufficiently evolved and enlightened to contemplate with indifference the coarse, cynical, and heartless drama which life offers, when we have laid aside the inferior and unreliable registration-machines which we call feelings, and which will be superfluous and injurious when our organs of judgment are fully developed....
"The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full life-time; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable.
"The reproach was levelled against my tragedy, _The Father_, that it was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamour for the joy of life, and theatrical managers order farces, as though the joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's Dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something. Therefore I have chosen an unusual, though instructive, case, in other words, an exception, but a great exception which confirms the rule, and which is sure to offend the lovers of the banal. The simple brain will further be shocked by the fact that my motives behind the action are not simple, and that there is not one view alone to be taken of it. An event in life--and this is a comparatively new discovery--is generally produced by a whole series of more or less deep-seated motives, but the spectator chooses for the most part the one which is easiest for him to grasp, or the one most advantageous to the reputation of his judgment. Take a case of suicide as an example. 'Bad business,' says the bourgeois. 'Unhappy love!' say the women. 'Sickness!' says the disease-ridden man. 'Shattered hopes!' the bankrupt. But it is possible that the motives lay in all of these causes, or in none, and that the dead man hid the real one by putting forward another which has thrown a more favourable light on his memory."