Mr. Bengt's Wife
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Synopsis: Mr. Bengt's Wife by August Strindberg
First English translation by Malin Tybåhl and Laurence Carr
Mr. Bengt's Wife is the passionate story of Margit, an orphan and rebellious novice who breaks her convent vows to marry her "Knight", Lord Bengt, a wealthy landowner. Her husband's fortunes soon dwindle, and she seeks her freedom from her approaching poverty. As her marriage dissolves. she is hotly pursued by the convent Priest, and a childhood friend who is now the Bailiff of the town. Her love/hate relationship with Bengt also continues, adding to Margit's personal revolution with 19th century society's view of women and the emerging feminist movement. Seeking to end her life, Margit finds herself a "new woman", who will engage with men, women and society on her own terms. Mr. Bengt's Wife is Strindberg's rebuttal to Henrik Ibsen's, A Doll's House, interweaving scenes of realism and dreamscape into a powerful dramatic work from one of the masters of modernism.
August Strindberg
Harry G. Carlson teaches Drama and Theatre at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has written widely on Swedish drama and theatre and has been honored in Sweden for his books, Strindberg and the Poetry of Myth (California, 1982) and Out of Inferno: Strindberg's Reawakening as an Artist (1996), play translations and critical essays.
More by August Strindberg
Malin Tybåhl
Translated by
Malin Tybahl, born in Sweden, is a translator, theatre and film performer and producer/director.
Laurence Carr
Translated by
Laurence Carr teaches creative and dramatic writing at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of Threnodies: Poems in Remembrance, Pancake Hollow Primer: A Hudson Valley Story and The Wytheport Tales, the coeditor (with Jan Zlotnik Schmidt) of A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley, the coeditor (with Joann Deiudicibus, Penny Freel, and Rachel Rigolino) of WaterWrites: A Hudson River Anthology in Celebration of the Hudson 400, and the editor of Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, all published by Codhill Press.
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