Competition for the Male Versus the Female in August Strindberg's the Stronger and Ali Abdulnibi Al-Zadi’s Summer Rain

Introduction

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and socialist humanist whose work bridged the gap between individual psychology and sociological structure. He devoted his intellectual life to discussing and analyzing the complex interaction between individuals and society, exploring how human personalities are shaped by these forces. He argues that human nature has been determined by social and economic aspects but retains a specific independence from them. Erich Fromm is regarded as a founder of Humanistic Psychology because he was the first to use the term “humanistic” to distinguish it from orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis (Helmut, 2015, p. 111). Unlike Freud, who focused on biological drives, Fromm focused on the idea of humanity and read it in a psychological context. One of his favorite quotes was from Terence, the ancient Roman playwright: “I am a human being, and nothing human is alien to me.” This means that all humans have the potential to experience the whole of humanity within.

According to Fromm, human beings are disconnected from their prehistoric union with nature. He theorizes that “humanity‘s separation from natural world has produced feeling of loneliness and isolation a condition called basic anxiety” (Franklin, 2024, p. 2). This separation creates an existential dichotomy that humans must resolve to maintain their sanity. Fromm briefly explains the obligation of humans to fulfill their specific needs to survive this separation:

Whatever the solutions for this dichotomy are, they must fulfill certain conditions. Man must be affectively related to others in order to overcome the anxiety produced by his total isolation; he must have a frame of orientation, a picture of the world that permits him to orient himself in the world and to find his place in it as an acting subject; he must adopt certain norms that make it possible for him to make relatively consistent decisions without much hesitation. As far as the contents of his relatedness, of his frame of orientation, and of his norms are concerned, they are important, but nevertheless only of secondary importance from the standpoint of his mental survival. (Febriyani, 2018, p. 4)

To understand the dramatic struggles of the characters in The Stronger and Summer Rain, one must understand the five basic human needs focused on by Erich Fromm:

1. Relatedness: The need to unite with other living beings.

2. Transcendence: The need to rise above a passive animal state and become a creator.

3. Rootedness: The need to feel a sense of belonging and connection to the world.

4. Sense of Identity: The need to be aware of oneself as a separate entity.

5. Frame of Orientation: The need for a consistent way of looking at the world.

The psychological need for Relatedness is perhaps the most crucial in dramatic literature. When a person fulfills this need, they do so in a productive or a nonproductive way. This depends on the person’s experience in life and their ability to adapt to social conditions. Healthy individuals are able to relate to or unite with the world and their fellow human beings through love, power, and submission. However, the psychological need for relatedness can either be satisfied productively by a loving orientation or non-productively by a narcissistic orientation. The awareness of human separateness from each other and the world causes a particular anxiety. Therefore, a person needs to control and overcome it. Fromm calls for love to maintain and fulfill this need, stating that it “is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self” (Rainer, 1993, p. 5). Hence, the person can transcend separateness without compromising one's individuality.

Secondly, human beings have the ability to Transcend and create. This need can be fulfilled by creativity such as painting, writing, and music. At the same time, “If this need for transcendence is not creatively satisfied, then the individual tries to transcend by means of destructiveness” (Ibid, p. 6). The lack of creativity may lead to man’s frustration and to his spending his energy on destructive activities. In the context of the plays discussed, this destructiveness often manifests in the dismantling of relationships or self-sabotage.

Rootedness is the need to be secure and safe. It is a striving for brotherhood, love, and universal humanism. A person needs to attain a sense of belonging and independence. People cannot live by technological development alone. They need to be directed and controlled by certain values and ideals. They need to be socially, politically, and culturally rooted (Saba, 2002, p. 61). When a character is uprooted—such as by the loss of a husband or a societal role—panic ensues, driving the plot of the drama.

The fourth human need is for a Sense of Identity, or the awareness of being a separate entity. People’s identity still resides in their relations with others or institutions such as a nation, religion, or social group. Without a sense of identity, people cannot retain their sanity, and this threat provides a powerful motivation to do almost anything to acquire a sense of identity (Ibid, p. 62). In both plays, the female protagonists define their identities heavily through their relationships with men, leading to a crisis when those relationships are threatened or absent.

Finally, human beings, as creatures born with self-awareness, reason, and imagination, must possess “an understanding of the nature of both self and the world” (Adler 44). Human beings need a way to navigate and be in contact with nature using a protective Frame of Orientation. Without such a road map, they would be “confused and unable to act purposefully and consistently” (Fromm, 2013, p. 100). When the world stops making sense—as in the surreal environment of Summer Rain or the silent psychological warfare of The Stronger—the frame of orientation shatters.

August Strindberg’s the Stronger

The Stronger is not merely a play about two nameless women, one of them the only speaker (Mrs. X) and the second (Miss Y) the listener who has nothing to say. She can be known through her gestures and reactions. The play dramatizes an intense competition for a man between his wife, Mrs. X, and his friend, Miss Y. This competition is rooted in the human need to maintain physical and psychological oneness. The Stronger reveals the psychological conflict and a woman’s struggle to fulfill her productive psychological needs. The main conflict revolves around a male character (Bob, the husband). Mrs. X is a mother and dedicated wife; Miss Y is a liberated woman who lives in her own way and has an attractive personality. Miss Y (Amelia) becomes a threat to Mrs. X’s life and family unity. This threat is shown by Mrs. X’s words and her emotional tension, as she states: “Keep still! You don’t have to say anything. I comprehend it all myself! It was because, and because, and because. Yes! Yes! Now everything is clear. So that’s it!” (Strindberg, p. 1). Jessie points out that “woman alone could know the heart of a woman which might explain why” (Jessie, 1981, p. 104).

Fromm’s theory is particularly illuminating when applied to the power dynamic between the two women. Mrs. X is seemingly the "stronger" one because she speaks, controls the narrative, and is legally bound to the man they both desire. However, her constant speech betrays a deep insecurity—a failure of rootedness. She is terrified of Miss Y’s silence because silence represents the unknown and, potentially, the truth that Mrs. X’s marriage is a sham. According to Erich Fromm’s theory of psychological needs, Mrs. X is afraid of losing her self-esteem when she loses her own love. In her speech, Mrs. X works hard to regain her self-esteem and respect by provoking Miss Y and justifying her mistrust: ‘ …they (women) must think he has something to say about theatre engagements because he’s connected with the government. Perhaps you were there yourself and tried to influence him! I don’t trust you any too much.’

She believes that her husband’s charming personality is irresistible and that he has a distinctive position in society. She tells Amelia about many women who have tried to get close to him: “but Frederika wasn’t the only one, would you believe it! I don’t know why, but the women are so crazy about my husband.” Mrs. X asserts that Miss Y, like the other women, is trying to have an affair and take advantage of her relationship with him. She continues to reveal what she perceives through their friendship, noting that even her child was named Eskil, after Amelia’s father. She imitates her by wearing the same colors, reading the same books, and eating the same food. It seems fearful to think about all those things together: “ oh , my God, it’s fearful , when I think about it ; It’s fearful everything came from you to me”. Amelia is with her everywhere, yet “she can’t keep a man’s love but she can steal away that love from others”.

Here, Strindberg illustrates a twisted form of Relatedness. Mrs. X cannot relate to her husband directly; she relates to him through the preferences of his mistress. She has adopted Miss Y’s tastes in tulips, in drinking chocolate, and in literature to please Bob. This is a "symbiotic union" in Fromm's terms, but a parasitic one. Mrs. X has swallowed the identity of Miss Y to maintain her own. Yet, Mrs. X believes she fulfills her psychological needs successfully through productive and constructive means.

She shows her relentless at Christmas eve, expressing her love and devotion towards her husband and family when “ Love is the only passion that satisfies man's need to unite with the world while giving him a sense of integrity and individuality “ (Erich, 2008, p. 30). Moreover, Erich manifests that “love is the productive form of relatedness to others and oneself” (Erich, 2013, p. 67). She is able to transcend and create her future life. She deliberately adapts what her husband likes in Amelia and keeping her strength and household. Strindberg gives Mrs. X performance a great deal when she is the lonely speaker, defender, survivor and the winning female. She maintains her rootedness by active and productive actions as a wife and a mother when she opens her basket and takes out the Christmas presents. "Here you can see what I have bought for my little pigs. [Takes up a doll] Look at this! This is for Liza. See?--And here is Maja's pop gun… [Takes up a pair of embroidered slippers] And these are for my old man.’ She talks about her husband daily routine which hasn’t seen by Amelia. Bob’s wife is her identity and she belongs to him and their sharing, practicing life in its up and fall. “I am I”—a sense of identity includes race, religion, social class, and occupation. The need to hold an identity is more important than to remain alive (David, 1970, p. 61). Mrs. X’s monologue clearly reflects how she centers all the events in her life to herself. She talks to Miss Y, most of what she talks about centers on herself and for her own identity and interest.

A frame of orientation is the last of Erich Fromm's five basic human needs. He asserts that man's ability to reason and imagine causes him to need a sense of who he is and the ability to orient himself intellectually in the world (Anton & Erica, 2017, p. 98). Mrs. X does everything that her husband wants her to do, suggesting male domination and a gendered assertion of how a wife should behave. From this gender perspective, Miss Y’s silence might suggest that Strindberg intentionally silenced her because she does not fit the gendered world that he produced. Or perhaps the silence acts as a mirror. As Mrs. X speaks, she constructs a frame of orientation where she is the victor, the "stronger" one because she has the home and the children. However, the audience is left to wonder if this frame is built on an illusion. Is she truly stronger, or is she merely more adaptable to the whims of the male?

The first Swedish production was performed by a touring company from 1903 to 1904. It was first performed in Stockholm at the Intimate Theater on December 5, 1907. The first US production was at the Wisconsin Dramatic Society, Milwaukee, in 1911.

Ali Abdulnibi Al-Zadi’s Summer Rain

Ali Abdulnibi Al-Zadi is an Iraqi playwright. He was born in 1965 in the city of Al- Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. Many of his plays have been performed on different stages inside and outside Iraq. Some of his works have been translated into English and French. Summer Rain is one of his remarkable plays. It presents the story of a nameless woman (Flana) and numerous nameless men (Flan). Flana is waiting for her absent husband, who left the house and did not return. Al-Zadi stages Flana's dilemma regarding whether to accept one of the replica husbands in order to be reunited again.

Flana seeks to fulfill her psychological needs, but she is shocked by the number of men who claim to be her real husband. They compete with each other to win her despite being impostors. Her disappointing journey starts with the loss of her husband. At the age of forty-five, she is talking to a picture (her husband's picture) on the wall:

He will come, my adorable husband and the light of my house. Oh, it’s time to come... I am Flana, your wife; do you remember her? Oh, how handsome you are, my husband! Oh, the laughter of my little daughter, whose voice I always imagined. I will not say a single word of blame, as our lives no longer have time for blaming and reproaching. The most important thing is your coming; I will apologize for your long absence...

Throughout her long speech addressing her husband's picture, she exposes her basic psychological needs. She shows her need for relatedness when she mentions her need for him and his coming. Her rooted love for her husband has increased during his long absence. She recounts her daily routine while he is pictured on the wall: ” Do you know that I wash my hair to you every morning and arrange it, the way you like it”. But her hair color has changed and she “wiped away the grayness that cover it”. Flana's preparation for Flan's arrival dominates her entire reproachful speech addressed to her husband's picture. This state of preparation is mingled with her sense of loneliness and isolation. Moreover, it represents her basic psychological needs: rootedness, a sense of identity, a frame of orientation, and her final approach to transcendence.

When she is alone in her state of waiting, she prepares herself to fulfill her needs powerfully and productively. She takes care of her appearance, using the perfume preferred by her husband, going out to search for him in every street and house, and asking about him among those who know him and even those who do not. He has been absent for twenty years, and no one knows anything about him. She even sings the song that he likes: ” When I was a child and you, we were knowing each other by eyes”. Her sense of love, self-awareness, and realization is tested by the arrival of her husband (as a copy). Her situation changes when she meets more than one husband, alongside her psychological needs.

The distortion of her personal psychological needs appears when she encounters the fake husbands. The second scene of the play starts with the arrival of her supposed husband. Flan 1 is fifty years old; he seems tired, weak, and confused. Flana feels afraid and confused: ” What I should do, oh God, I am worried, confused, afraid,, no, no, I was waiting for you, oh I was, oh, I don’t know what I was”. Meanwhile, he is eager to meet her, announcing his need to be with her: ” I need you, I don’t need your words, as you with all your details, (he examines her), it seems to me that I left you yesterday.” He examines everything in the room and reveals his feelings of love and longing, but she remains shy. Flana discusses her request with him:

Flan1: I am your husband; has my appearance changed a lot? Flana: So much. I told them to bring you back young. Oh God, what will I do? I assured them of that.

Her speech is met with his laughter: ”bring me back, how do they do that?. She replies that they do so, saying that they will make a copy of her original husband for her. After waiting for a long time, she asks for a cloned man to attain a natural and secure sexual life (wife–husband) relationship. Azhar states that the playwright dramatizes the idea of a natural and integrated life. This is the life that every woman calls for through marriage and stability, which is the sexual life that is usually safe in normal life with a husband who represents security for the woman. The justification for this request to clone the husband is that life has become incomplete without a husband or children. Loneliness affects the woman psychologically and socially as well as physically and materially when she is alone. It is necessary for her to make an equitable decision in life that she believes in, as having a cloned husband is better than a life without a husband or waiting for twenty years for an absent husband who may not return. Hence, the alternative option is the best solution, which is the choice made by all waiting wives who do not know what to do in this inevitable absence:

Flana: Copying. They made him and sent him to his wife, and our neighbor was unable to spend her long nights in an empty bed. Can you believe that? They gave birth to cloned children, but they are happy. Everything is a copy, and how handsome a clone you are. Flan1: And where did my real friend go? Flana: The real things in our lives, when they leave, never come back. But their remains can come back, like the remains of your friend! Flan1: Remains? That means— Flana: Were you dead? Flan1: Do dead people stand on their feet like this? Flana: I don’t mean you; I mean my real husband.

According to Erich Fromm’s five basic needs, she deludes herself at the beginning of the play. This is mentioned in her talk with the picture. With the arrival of the cloned husband, however, she tries to fulfill them and be happy. Happiness or stability cannot be achieved due to the conflict from which she suffers. Flan 1 wants to live with her regardless of her physical and psychological split. She knows that he is not her real husband, while he insists on affirming the opposite:

Flana: After twenty years, I know that my lovely husband is still alive, as if I hear a story. You don’t know him as I do; he is madly in love with me. Flan1: Try to trust me, please. I want to give you what remains; I may come back with a quarter …. I admit that I am a collection of quarters, but I will gift it to you, you alone, my love. Falan: Oh, my God, as if he were the one; that's how he was talking to me about our love on those hot nights; you drag my memory to nights that can't be forgotten. Flan1: I only fall asleep in your arms, oh, my life.

Flan 1 narrates many stories that they shared in the past so that she feels comfortable. At this moment, she tries to fulfill her psychological needs of relatedness, rootedness, transcendence, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. In the following conversation, she specifies some of their shared past experiences. Flan 1 reminds her of their beloved song and her perfume: ” When you miss my smell put some of my perfume on your nose, you will find me standing behind you with all of my belonging and love”. Gradually, she announces the return of her husband publicly; she goes to the window and calls out of it, addressing the passers-by: ” Listen up, clones, my beloved husband is back and my soul is back too... My husband is the only truth in your cloned world. ”

In her second stage, she attains her basic needs. They exchange passionate words and loud laughter. Suddenly, someone knocks. The action focuses on the arrival of other cloned husbands. They compete against each other, and she enters her third stage of conflict and struggle to uphold a truthful and tangible reality in this world of falsehood. Besides her personal crisis, the three cloned husbands compete to win her. All of them tell her the same words and their past secrets, as mentioned by Flan 1. They quarrel in her house, and she does not know how to resolve her agony. Flan 1 wants her to drive Flan 2 out, and she answers: ” You gave me evidence and I believed you. He came back with the same evidence. What do you want me to do? “. He blames her and orders her to obey him as her husband. He competes with Flan 2, but she becomes the target of his blame and insults. Flan 2 also asks her to drive Flan 1 out: ”Get him out, I am tired, I will get him out by force “.

She moves between the two rooms; each man is lying on a bed, and each of them gives the same orders and words. When Flan 1 sees Flan 2 in the other room, he says: ” I will kill him if he doesn’t get out”. She is not sure of either of them, as she reacts: ” To kill who one, the coned or the real?”. She expresses her final doubts about both of them. Flan 1 tries to warn Flan 2 against staying: “Go out of your room, you should leave my home now, oh cloned one, I will not permit you to stay along…”. Flana feels sorry for herself and asks Flan 1 to calm his anger and look for a peaceful solution: ”Stop please, I will tell him your speech, we must talk, we may reach the truth”. It seems the playwright puts Flana in a difficult trap. Three men compete against each other, exploiting her longing for her real husband. At the arrival of the third cloned husband, she revolts strongly against this absurdity and pain: “My soul no longer needs your words, memories, dreams, lies, and your dirty faces, you don’t have a love in my heart”. Then she turns to address her heart: ” O, heart, stop your pulse, love, longing, and eagerness… I should clean my heart from the dirtiness of waiting”. Hence, she asks them to leave her house. She will wait for the truth alone; it will come to her doors: she” opens the doors, and the three of them come out completely disappointed. Then she forcefully closes the main door behind them.

The play ends with a rejection of the Frommian needs because they are being fulfilled artificially. She prefers destructiveness (the destruction of her new "family") with a bit of hope of reuniting with her absent husband and reviving her past life of well-being. The three competing men show their love and their need for her, but no one cares about her feelings, her passion, or her mental and psychological conflict. All of them tell her the same words and memories. They do not leave her house; each one of them blames her for not kicking the other out. A violent clash occurs between Flan 1 and Flan 2:

Flan1: (Coming in angrily) No one can get me out of my house. I am here, the truth. (Hitting the door of Flan 2’s room) I am the truth! (Trying to open the door) Open the door; I will force you to get out. I am still strong and able to stop this farce in my house. If you are a man, come out and face me. I will beat you up, throw you out of the house, and bring something from my room to fight with. (He quickly goes to his room). Flan2: (He comes out of his room holding a knife. He goes straight to the room, hits the door with the knife, and tries to open it). You, you clone, you nobody, get out of my house now. Come on, face me, if you are a real husband. Where is your courage, clone? (She enters after him. She hears words that do not seem clear, screaming, shouting, hitting, and breaking things. Meanwhile, she hears knocking on the main door. She opens it; Flan 3 enters. He is fifty years old and seems tired, weak, and confused). Flan3: Come and hug your husband... (He steps toward her). Come, come, come, oh my sweet wife. Flana: (Screaming in terror) No, no, no, a third husband! No, no, no, another clone, another and another.

The dramatist stages Flana in three phases: the phase of waiting, the phase of recalling, and the phase of disappointment. In the first phase, she apparently tries to control her basic anxiety by engaging in certain activities. In the second phase, she meets her absent husband, but not her real husband. He is made, as many men are made, to end the agonies of women who lose their men in war. At first glance, she thinks that he is her real husband, especially after the stories and memories he has narrated. She feels a bit of comfort, but she is not certain at the very moment of the meeting. Meanwhile, Flan 1 eagerly hints at having a sexual affair as a husband. He insists on managing her duality (the soul and body) and tries to persuade her to trust him. The arrival of Flan 2 and Flan 3 makes the situation worse and unbearable for her.

Then she kicks them out of her house. At this stage, she exposes her failure to satisfy her needs. In the third phase, she revisits her past life through memories, wishing for his return one day. Flana sees the competing men as robots, ridiculous and cloned. They do not belong to the original world that she belongs to. The idea of "competing" to win women would, to Fromm, “be a distortion of love—treating it as a commodity or conquest, rather than a human relationship based on shared respect and inner improvement.”( Fromm, 1957, p. 54). In other words, Fromm is against the idea of competing to win a woman. For him, true love could not emerge from ego-driven competition but from shared understanding, effort, and respect.

Conclusion

Mrs. X, in The Stronger, can achieve her basic psychological needs. She attains relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, a sense of identity, and a frame of orientation. Her long offensive speech reveals her basic anxiety and her psychological and physical suffering. She shields and empowers herself through love and productivity instead of hate and depression. She competes with Miss Y to keep her husband and family. Throughout a raging argument, she unveils her anger and anxiety toward Miss Y when she describes her as a worm and a snake. Besides, she believes that women have been bewitched by her husband‘s personality and position as a reason for competing. She effectively neutralizes the threat by absorbing it, showing a mastery of Fromm’s concept of productive orientation, albeit in a manipulative way.

Flana in Summer Rain is unlike Mrs. X in The Stronger. She does not fulfill her psychological needs due to the confusing world to which she belongs. Flana’s state of being is threatened by the appearance of three competing cloned husbands. In the phase of waiting, she achieves a state of resilience when she retreats into her memories of her lost husband. In the phase of recalling, she is challenged to discover the truth—the truth about her real husband—but she finds herself in a vicious cycle (the competition of the three cloned husbands: Flan 1, Flan 2, and Flan 3). She realizes that she cannot choose any of them because each one proclaims that he is the real one. They treat her as an object to attain, while she is bewildered. She is eager to love as an act of giving and growing, not something one passively ‘wins’. However, she only manifests this love toward her real husband, who went to war and never returned. In the third phase, she decides to drive them out of her house, preferring loneliness and isolation. Memories and her past life become her final resolution, because this is the obvious and tangible truth that she elects to live in.

Ultimately, both plays illustrate the severe psychological toll that the competition for male affection or male presence takes on the female psyche. Whether it is the silent competition against a mistress in Strindberg’s work or the surreal competition against cloned entities in Al-Zadi’s work, the female protagonists are forced to navigate a labyrinth of anxiety. Fromm’s humanistic psychoanalysis provides the necessary framework to understand that these women are not merely fighting for a man; they are fighting for their identity and their place in the world. Mrs. X constructs a reality to survive, while Flana deconstructs a false reality to maintain her integrity. Both actions are desperate attempts to overcome the "basic anxiety" of separation and find a home in a hostile world.

References