power. The captain says;
How could they? I want her to live her in the town you want her to live at home. Mathematically, a compromise would mean that she stayed at the railway station—half-way between the two. It is one of those knots that are no untying you see (act1,sc iii)
Being the Strindbergian hero, the captain is not going to give up the fight so easily as he says “the whole house is at sixes and sevens, Laura won’t let Bertha go, and I can’t let her stay in this mad house”. in such a difficult situation, Laura does not have any alternative than telling the deadliest truth to drive any father mad and the captain is not an exception. Laura questions his paternity (simply that you don’t know that you are bertha’s father…..i said Bertha is my child and not yours….suppose I were ready to put up with anything) which destroys the delicate equilibrium of the father’s fatherhood. In addition to that the wicked wife also admits that she doesn’t have any respect for his desires and feelings. Perhaps this was sufficient to drive the captain mad. He becomes an innocent victim under sheer lust for power, driven mad, meets his final destination; death
Throughout the whole play, the captain struggles hard in quest of his identity: identity as a father, identity as a husband, identity as a man with definite points of view and finally identity as a male. He struggles a lot with never ending sufferings. The paradox of this struggle is that when the, male is intellectually and physically superior to women, then he is in danger zone of her treacherous weaknesses. The captain’s revolt against women continues till the end and he never gets his identity back. The captain’s revolt continue till the end, for the