Miss Julie
August Strindberg
FULL TITLE · Miss
Julie
AUTHOR · August
Strindberg
TYPE OF WORK · Drama
GENRE · Naturalistic
tragedy
LANGUAGE · Swedish
TIME AND PLACE
WRITTEN · France, late 1880s
DATE OF FIRST
PUBLICATION · 1888; initially banned in Sweden;
published in Copenhagen in 1889
PUBLISHER · Seligmanns
forlag (Stockholm)
NARRATOR · None
CLIMAX · Julie
and Jean have sex
PROTAGONISTS · Julie,
Jean
ANTAGONIST · Julie,
Jean
SETTING (TIME) · Midsummer
Eve, 1880s
SETTING (PLACE) · Sweden,
the Count's manor house
FALLING ACTION · The
unmasking of Jean and fall of Julie
TENSE · Present
FORESHADOWING · Miss
Julie is described as white as a "ghost," yearns for death, and
hypnotically surrenders to Jean; Serena is decapitated; Jean sharpens his razor
TONE · Tragic
THEMES · The
degenerate woman; class and gender conflict
MOTIFS · Idealization
and degradation; hypnotism; animal doubles; the pantomime and ballet
SYMBOLS · The
signs of the Count's authority: the ringing bell, the boots, Jean's livery, the
speaking tube
Context
August Strindberg was born in 1849 to an unhappy family of ten in
Stockholm, Sweden. His father was a shipping merchant and his mother a former
servant, and Strindberg later attributed much of the family's strife to the
social differences between them. Bitter sibling rivalry, the death of
Strindberg's mother in 1851, and Mr. Strindberg's immediate remarriage to the
housekeeper did little to improve the situation. As a youth, August Strindberg
held a variety of odd jobs, briefly attended the University of Uppsala. He
worked as an actor, journalist, and librarian at the Royal Library while
pursuing his writing career. Though his first literary success, Red
Room (1879), was a novel, Strindberg is primarily remembered as a
chief founder of the modern prose play.
Miss Julie (1888) remains Strindberg's most famous work.
In the history of drama, it is primarily canonized for its stylistic innovations.
Its preface serves as a classic manifesto of late-nineteenth century
naturalism. In defining the new naturalist theater, Strindberg makes two major
demands of contemporary playwrights. First, he demands that they adhere to an
unflinching realism, whether in content (for example the explicit references to
menstruation, blasphemy, lust, and bodily functions in Miss Julie);
staging (the elimination of footlights and makeup); and time (Miss Julie,
for example, takes place over a single, compressed, and unbroken ninety-minute
episode). Strindberg also demands that the naturalist playwright strive toward
a new conception of character. Eschewing the one-dimensional stock figure of
the melodrama, the playwright must people his stage with full, lively beings.
Characters must not be collections of idiosyncrasies and catch phrases coupled
with simple motivations. Instead, the playwright must craft a psychology, a
"soul". Strindberg is also venerated as a progenitor of the
expressionist theater, though he did explicitly theorize about expressionism as
he did about naturalism. Expressionist devices are present throughout Miss
Julie and Strindberg's other works. Key examples include continual
allusions to mystical forces, the use of symbology and ritualized dance, the
backdrop of the pagan festival, and the construction of an absent, shadowy, and
yet precipitating center of authority in the figure of the Count.
Censored for its shocking content, Miss Julie revolves
around a familiar Strindbergian encounter: a quasi-Darwinian struggle across
sex and class lines. Strindberg scholars believe that a short story by Zola,
"The Sin of Father Mouret," served as direct inspiration for the
play. Zola's tale tells of a priest who abandons his order to take up with a
virgin but returns to the cloth upon being "caught in the act" by a
fellow clergyman. Grief-stricken, the maiden commits suicide by suffocating
herself in a bed of rose petals. There is also some evidence that Strindberg
intended the play as a warning to the first of his three unfortunate wives, the
Baronness Siri von Essen. When confronted with the suggestion that the play is
a warning to his wife, Strindberg reportedly answered that he could hardly be
sure enough to deny it.
Strindberg was an infamous misogynist, and he intended to portray Miss
Julie as a monster. One can trace the genealogy of his hatred for women in some
of his early works, such as Getting Married(1884), which earned him
a charge of blasphemy, and The Cloister(1886), a grim portrait of
his second marriage. Strindberg's misogyny was central to the many psychotic
episodes he suffered throughout the 1890's, episodes that put a stop to his
dramatic production altogether. In 1898, however, Strindberg took up his pen
anew, writing 36 plays in the following decade. In 1907, he began experimenting
with what he called an "intimate theater" based on the structures of
chamber music, turning from the conventional figure of the protagonist in favor
of a small and more balanced group of characters to direct his plays. The
following year, Strindberg retired to his house, the famous "Blue
Tower," where he lived until his death in 1912.
Part I
page 1 of 2
Summary
Miss Julie takes
place in the kitchen of the Count's manor house in Sweden, on a Midsummer Eve
in the 1880s. In the stage directions, Strindberg describes the kitchen in
great detail. A statue of Cupid, perched on a fountain, is visible through a
set of glass doors. Christine, the manor's thirty-five-year-old cook, is frying
something at the stove when Jean, the manor's thirty-year-old valet, enters. He
says Miss Julie, the Count's daughter, is wild tonight. Julie, age twenty-five,
led the local barn dance that evening and chose him for the Ladies' waltz.
Christine observes that Miss Julie has been especially rambunctious in the wake
of her broken engagement. Unable to face her family after this disgrace, Julie
has remained on the manor with the servants for the Midsummer Eve festivities.
According to Jean, Miss Julie's fiancé abandoned her after her attempt to train
him by making him jump over her riding whip in the barnyard as she beat him.
Jean saw the abuse. Jean thinks the man fundamentally good, if not rich. The
man ultimately tore the whip from Miss Julie's hands, breaking it into pieces.
Christine serves Jean kidney from the frying pan, and Jean takes a bottle of
red wine from a drawer. They flirt. It is revealed that Jean and Christine are
engaged.
Jean asks Christine what else she is cooking—the stench
is awful. Christine is making something for Miss Julie's sick dog, Diana, which
recently got pregnant by the gatekeeper's mongrel. Miss Julie is irate at the
pregnancy. Jean says Miss Julie is "too stuck-up in some ways and not
proud enough in others," just like her mother. The Countess felt
comfortable in the kitchen or among the cows, but had to have a pair of driving
horses. Her sleeves were filthy, but her buttons were immaculate.
Nevertheless, Jean finds Miss Julie beautiful. Miss Julie
enters and asks Christine if she has finished the meal. Jean suddenly becomes
polite and charming, asking if the women are sharing secrets and inquiring if
they are preparing a witches' brew in which to see the face of Miss Julie's
future husband. Miss Julie invites Jean to dance. He hesitates, telling her
that he has already promised a dance to Christine and warning her against the
dangers of local gossip. Miss Julie finds his hesitation preposterous: she is
mistress of the house and wants to dance with its best dancer. Beneficently
telling Jean that rank does not matter this evening, she walks out to the party
on his arm.
Analysis
The backdrop of Miss
Julie is Midsummer Eve, a
festival of pagan origins celebrated in Northern Europe. A number of critics
have related the paganism of the festival to the lust of the protagonists. The
pagan festival, a pause in regular provincial life, is an occasion for disguise
and deception, the crossing of social boundaries, and rebellion against moral
stricture. It is appropriate that Midsummer Eve is the setting of Miss Julie
and Jean's liaison, an encounter that crosses class lines. The play's
investment in Miss Julie's degeneracy and ruin is clear from the outset. The
portrait we get of Miss Julie through gossip shows the major motifs that shadow
her character. Strindberg's interest in contemporary psychology emerges in the
first scene. His heroine is portrayed as sick, probably sick in the manner of
female hysterics of Strindberg's day.
Jean introduces Miss Julie as a woman who dreams of
dominating men, subjecting them like dogs to her sadistic will. Her fiancé
rejects her because of her urges, and she must stay home with the servants in
disgrace. The story of the training session is a fantasy of unmanning the
unruly heroine. Her fiancé, a man with whom Jean clearly sympathizes, breaks
her riding crop. The crop is a phallic symbol, and when her fiancé breaks it,
he breaks Julie's masculine power. The play disapproves of Julie's impulse to
wield power, and prefers her to abuse herself rather than others.
We are meant to associate Julie's dog with Julie herself.
The dog has coupled with a mongrel, just as her sex-hungry mistress does not
care about the class of the man she wants to seduce. As Jean's first lines
indicate, Miss Julie is "wild," dancing scandalously with the
peasants in the barn. Miss Julie is meant to stand for modern women in general.
When Jean tells the story of her broken engagement, he says, "Well, that's
a woman for you," which suggests that Julie's behavior is typical of a
woman. Miss Julie is a case study of a degenerate woman
who supposedly embodies all woman. This case study is Strindberg's famous
experiment in the "naturalistic" character. To some extent,
Strindbergian naturalism is inseparable from Strinbergian misogyny.
Part I (page 2)
page 2 of 2
These misogynist fantasies primarily find voice through
Jean. In these first scenes, a motif that will become appears in his speech:
the simultaneous idealization and degradation of woman. Jean describes Julie
and her mother as both proud and crude. Miss Julie is cruder than the average
servant. The Countess's degraded nature manifests as the dirt on her sleeves.
This is an image of filth typical to the play. Such images recur to indicate
female degradation. Still, Jean is mesmerized by Julie, saying, "But she is beautiful! Magnificent! Ah, those
shoulders—those—and so forth, and so forth!" Jean's conflicting feelings
for Julie are complicated by his being not just a man relating to a woman, but
a servant relating to a mistress. Much of Miss
Julie comes from the
servant's perspective, the servant positioned to see the undesirable sides of
their supposedly superior masters. This degradation is not really about class
subversion, but about misogyny. Jean's humiliation of Julie relies on an
assertion of female degeneracy. In the context of this play, Jean is superior
to Julie because he is a man, a superiority he can use to combat her
superiority to him in terms of class.
Part II
page 1 of 2
Summary
A pantomime occurs. Humming in time with the music,
Christine cleans up after Jean, does the dishes, curls her hair, and plays with
Miss Julie's handkerchief. Jean enters alone, howling once again that Miss
Julie is wild. Christine attributes her behavior to the fact that she has her
period. Christine and Jean are flirt when Miss Julie enters. Julie is
unpleasantly surprised at finding them together. She teases Jean with forced
gaiety and then, in a different tone, orders him to take off his livery. While
Jean dresses in another room, Miss Julie asks Christine if Jean is her fiancé.
Christine says, "I suppose so. At least that's what we say." Jean
returns in his black coat. Miss Julie compliments him in French, and to her
surprise Jean replies in French, which he learned in Switzerland. Jean was born
in the local district. His father worked as a farm hand on the estate next to
Miss Julie's. Jean even remembers seeing Julie when she was a child.
Christine falls asleep next to the stove. Miss Julie
invites Jean to sit. He refuses until Julie teasingly commands him. Jean serves
her a beer, and Julie invites him to have one too. Under Julie's orders, Jean
kneels in "mock gallantry" and toasts his mistress. He hesitates,
then boldly kisses her foot.
Rising, Jean insists that this flirtation must stop,
since they could be discovered at any moment. Miss Julie feigns innocence,
protesting that Christine is with them anyway. Rudely, she moves to wake the
cook, who babbles about her housework in her sleep. Jean chastises her. Taking
a new tack, Julie compliments the valet for his kindness and asks him to pick
some lilacs with her. Christine shuffles off to bed. Jean refuses. Julie teases
him, wondering if his imagination has perhaps gotten the better of him. She
declares that she is "climbing down." To her, everything is
"scum, drifting and drifting on the water until it sinks." She relates
a dream in which she sits atop a pillar wanting to fall but lacking the courage
to jump. Julie knows she will have no peace until she gets down. Julie
continues: "And if I ever got down on the ground, I'd want to go father
down, right down into the earth." Jean has dreamed he lies under a tall
tree, wanting to get to the top to rob a nest of its golden eggs. He knows if
he can reach the first branch he could succeed, but never reaches it. Julie
invites him out again. Romantically, Jean suggests that they sleep on nine
midsummer flowers so that their dreams come true.
Jean gets a speck of dust in his eye, and Julie moves to
remove the speck with her handkerchief. She feels his arms and Jean warns her,
"Attention! Je ne suis qu'un homme!" (Be careful! I'm only a
man.) Julie commands him to kiss her hand and thank him. Jean warns her again.
Julie mocks him for imagining himself as a Don Juan or Joseph. Jean kisses
Julie, and she slaps him. Frustrated, Jean returns to shining the Count's
boots. Julie commands him to stop and asks if he has ever been in love. He
replies that once he got sick with love. Julie presses him to reveal the object
of his love, insisting that she asks "as an equal". Jean reveals that
he loved her.
Analysis
Miss Julie begins to play the coquette, intent on teasing
and ridiculing Jean, but ostensibly not wanting anything else. Thus she feigns
innocence when he alludes to the party nearby and the danger of gossip, mocks
Jean for his presumption, and taunts him for thinking himself a Don Juan or
Joseph. The reference to Joseph involves the story of Potiphar's wife, who
attempted to seduce a young slave and cried rape when he refused her. By
calling Jean Joseph, Julie aligns herself with Potiphar's wife. She is
portrayed as a devious, fickle temptress. The stage directions note her slyly
"changing tack." She pettily exerts her rank over Jean and displays
jealousy toward his would-be fiancé. The misogyny of this characterization is
hardly subtle. Strindberg makes his women characters misogynist, too; Christine
attributes Julie's wild behavior to her menstrual cycle.
This sequence is meant to assure the audience that Julie
is asking for her own ruin. She admits to a masochistic desire for her own
ruin. As her dream suggests, she wants to "climb down." Already we
begin to sense that Julie's fall is inevitable. In her dream, she goes
"right down into the earth" to find peace. Such masochism is what
makes her a difficult and fascinating character. We worry about her and wonder
at her behavior, but cannot look away. Jean appears to be at the mercy of
Julie's wiles, hesitant in his lust, and eager to maintain decorum and warn her
of the consequences of flirtation. Jean's unheeded warnings further underline
Julie's responsibility for her public ruin.
Part II (page 2)
page 2 of 2
Jean also engages in a show of "mock gallantry"
at his mistress's request, speaking French, feigning sophistication in his
speech, and staging a sentimental scene of seduction, even kissing her foot.
Julie is delighted by Jean's performance and tells him he should have been an
actor. Jean and Julie begin donning personas, playing at being master and
servant. This scene does suggest that a real romance could build between Jean
and Julie, and that they could complement each other. Their dreams complement
each other; Julie yearns to "climb down" from her pillar, and Jean
wishes to climb up to the next. In order for the complementary dreams to work
together, Julie must degrade herself. In terms of dramaturgical form, this
section of the play is notable for its use of pantomime. Christine's tasks
introduce an aspect of "real time" into the play, important to
Strindbergian naturalism. We watch this interlude while Jean and Julie dance
offstage.
Part III
Summary
Jean recounts a childhood memory of Miss Julie. He begins
by asking rhetorically if Miss Julie knows what the world looks like from
below. Jean grew up with seven siblings on a wasteland, with the Count's garden
and apple trees, like a Garden of Eden, visible from their window. He confesses
that he and the other boys found a way to the "Tree of Life". Julie
says, "All boys steal apples." One day, Jean caught sight of a
"Turkish pavilion"—that is, an outhouse—surrounded by jasmine and
honeysuckle. Jean did not know what it was, but thought the building beautiful.
One day he snuck in. He heard someone coming, and got out of the outhouse
through the bottom. Jean ran until coming upon the rose terrace. There he
caught sight of Miss Julie. Buried under thistles and stinking dirt, Jean
watched Julie walk among the roses, wondering why he, a poor boy, could not
play with Julie.
Miss Julie is moved, wondering sentimentally if all poor
children feel as Jean did. With exaggerated pain, Jean affirms her suspicion
and continues. He says he tossed himself into the millstream but was fished out
by his family. The following Sunday, Jean went to church, determined to see
Miss Julie once more and then die. Recalling that it was fatal to sleep under
an alder bush, Jean made himself a bed of alder leaves in a bin of oats and
climbed inside. He was rescued, and quickly recovered.
Miss Julie compliments Jean on his storytelling, asking
him if he went to school. Jean says he listens to the educated and has even
heard Miss Julie at her most vulgar. Miss Julie protests, saying at least
people of her class do not behave as he does when engaged. Jean tells her that
she cannot play the innocent with him. Jean decides to go to bed. Still moved,
Julie asks him to take her out to the lake. Again, Jean warns her of the injury
to her reputation and urges her to go to bed. Guests are heard approaching,
singing a folk song about two women. Miss Julie stands firm, convinced that the
peasants love her. Jean tells her that they are singing a dirty song about the
two of them. Jean suggests that they flee to his room, swearing (at Julie's
insistence) that he will behave in a gentlemanly fashion. The two exit. A
ballet ensues in which the peasants drink and dance around the kitchen, singing
the folk song and wreaking havoc.
Analysis
The story of the outhouse changes Miss Julie from a
seductive coquette to a sentimental listener. Jean's reminiscence has all the
trappings of a fairy tale (the seven brothers and sisters, the forbidden
garden, the bed of alder leaves, the servant who falls in love with his
superior at first sight), and it artfully puts Julie under his spell.
Strindberg makes it clear that Jean is deceiving Julie. He speaks in an
exaggerated tone and lies about the peasants' song. The fairy tale reveals the
nature of Jean's desire for Julie. Jean claims he fell in love at first sight,
after running through an outhouse. This story simultaneously exalts and
degrades Julie. The story can be divided by its two settings: the outhouse and
the rose terrace. Consciously choosing to address Julie as a servant to a
master, Jean attempts to produce pathos with the story of a servant-boy naively
enthralled by the incarnation of even his superiors' lowest functions. The
spatial metaphor suggests class differences. Forced to flee through the bottom
of the outhouse, Jean is mired in the filth of his masters. Whether Jean offers
this anecdote ironically, as an insult to Julie, is unclear. Indeed, Jean's
trip through the bottom of the outhouse suggests that Miss Julie is as interested in degrading the
figure of servant as it is in degrading the figure of the woman.
At times, Jean's story seems ironic, even mocking. He
describes the outhouse in this way: "I had never seen a castle, never seen
anything besides the church. But this was more beautiful. " Jean
idealizes, probably sarcastically, the filthy outhouse. He may be mocking what
he sees as Julie's typical upper class ability to see everything associated
with her, even outhouses, as noble. Jean's comparison degrades churches and
castles just as effectively as it mocks the foul outhouse. The juxtaposition of
the outhouse with the clichéd image of the adored woman spotted on the balcony
degrades the story of childhood romance. Once again, positions in space reflect
positions in class. Jean lies in filth, while Julie strolls on the rose
terrace. Thus, while the story shows Jean at his most abject, the joke is on
Julie. Jean is not only the figure abused by his masters but the servant whose
perspective allows him to see their undersides. Jean wonders why he cannot
enter the Count's forbidden garden at the very moment when he sees the young
Julie. The implication is that the way into the manor, the way up in the world,
is between Julie's legs.
The peasants' ballet is another break in the primary
action of the play. The peasants' lusty destruction of the kitchen parallels
the disruption the off- stage events will cause. Jean and Julie's exit marks a
major turning point in the play. By retiring offstage, the two keep the most
scandalous event of their flirtation, sex, hidden from view. Similarly, in
dialogue sexual matters are alluded to indirectly, through suggestive phrases,
suspenseful pauses, and tense ellipses.
Part IV
Summary
Julie enters alone, surveys the kitchen, and powders her
face. Jean follows in high spirits. Jean says that because of the crowd's
rumors, it is impossible to stay at the manor. He dreams of traveling to Como
in northern Italy and setting up a first-class hotel. Miss Julie will be the
queen of the office, commanding her slaves. Julie begs Jean to declare his love
for her and invites him to call her by her first name. It is clear that she has
fallen for him. Jean cannot love her as long as they remain in the house. The
specter of the Count weighs on him too heavily. He dreams of fleeing to a
republic and perhaps becoming a count himself one day. Julie cares little for
his plans. She only wants to be with him. Jean declares that they must be calm.
He decides, to Julie's anguish, that they must behave as if nothing has
happened. Julie asks if he will need money for his plan. She cannot help, she
reveals, for she is penniless.
After a brief pause, Jean announces that the plans are
off. Suddenly it is clear that he wanted her for her money. Julie becomes
hysterical, wondering how she can stay on with everyone sneering at her behind
her back. Jean is cynical and unsympathetic. When Julie accuses him of
vulgarity, he retorts that she cannot play the fine lady with him, and that
they are now eating off the same platter. He takes out the bottle of burgundy
he stole from the wine cellar, and Julie calls him "a petty house
thief." Jean calls her a whore. Cruelly, the increasingly sleepy Jean
reveals that when he first saw her on the rose terrace, his mind was full of
dirty thoughts. He also stole the story of the oat bin from some newspaper article.
He says he told her these stories to win her over. Jean says Julie is of the
same class as animals and prostitutes. Julie submits to his abuse.
Jean slept with Julie too easily, and is disappointed to
see his ideal fallen. Suddenly becoming passionate again, Jean resumes his
seduction, complimenting her beauty and refinement and lamenting that she could
never love him. Julie is unmoved but cannot tear herself from him. Jean
proposes anew that they flee together. Julie pauses: she wants to tell him her
life before they become traveling companions. Jean warns her against confessing
her secrets.
Analysis
After Julie and Jean have sex, their idyllic fantasy of
Italian summers quickly becomes an ugly unmasking of Jean's intentions.
Transformed from "mistress" (as in woman of the house) to
"mistress" (as in concubine), Julie finds herself sinking in
"awful filth." She wonders at her own behavior. Faced with Jean's
accusation that she has acted like a beast and a whore, Julie is prostrate,
masochistically imploring her servant to at once punish her and help her. She
simultaneously hates and desires her lover. Julie's submission to Jean reflects
Strindberg's notions of evolution. He suggests that Julie must fall to Jean,
because women are men's evolutionary inferiors. This mythical conception of
evolution is central to each of the characters' fates. As Strindberg notes in
the preface to Miss Julie, he has "added a little
evolutionary history [to the play] by making the weaker steal and repeat the
words of the stronger." The play takes pleasure in Julie's humiliation. We
find ourselves in a bind, too, because although we may find ourselves
sympathizing with Julie, that sympathy is characteristic of the sadistic Jean.
He pities Julie as we probably do.
Class conflict persist, a conflict also informed by
Strindberg's understanding of evolutionary history. The play imagines servants
imitating and aspiring to become their masters. Jean's dreams of being a Count
himself one day reflect Strindberg's idea that strong people want to clamber up
some evolutionary ladder. Though Jean abuses his mistress here, declaring that
they now eat on the same platter, he remains aware of his lower status. Still,
Julie has put herself at his mercy by sleeping with him. When she insults Jean,
he can retort that whatever he is, she is worse, for she has slept with the man
she insults. In his fantasies of Como, Jean initially imagines Miss Julie as a
slave-mistress and then appears to mourn genuinely the loss of Julie as his
idealized class superior. Though relations of power have reversed between Jean
and Julie, fantasies of the class structure persist in the background. Jean's
inferior class position will continually compromise his apparent mastery over
the fallen Julie.
Jean, unable to fully command Julie, describes the
effects of the Count's authority: "I've only got to see [the Count's]
gloves lying on the table and I shrivel up. I only have to hear that bell ring
and I shy like a frightened horse. I only have to look at his boots standing
there so stiff and proud and I feel my spine bending." Jean is sent into
instant submission by a physical reminder of his master's presence. The symbols
of the Count unman Jean (he shrivels up), reduce him to a workhorse, and bend
his spine. He reacts to the Count in what Strindberg likely means for us to see
as a feminine manner.
Part IV
Summary
Julie divulges her family's past. Her mother was born to
commoners and grew up to believe in "equality, the independence of women,
and all that." Though averse to marriage, Julie's mother married the Count
and raised Julie as a "nature child". Julie had to learn everything
boys did. With the men and women having switched roles, the estate fell into
ruin and public disgrace. Julie's father rebelled and took command. Julie's
mother inexplicably fell ill and took to spending her nights outside. Then a
mysterious fire burned down the estate. The Countess suggested that the Count
borrow money from a friend of hers to rebuild the farm. Jean thinks it is
obvious that Julie's mother set the fire, and the friend was her lover. Upon
discovering the Countess's revenge plot, the Count attempted suicide but
ultimately rallied to make his wife suffer for her treachery. Unknowingly,
Julie took her mother's side in their marital strife and grew up to hate men as
her mother did.
Jean points out that Julie got engaged. Julie says she
just wanted to enslave him and ultimately got bored. Jean mocks her with the
truth: Julie's fiancé rejected her. Julie wants Jean killed like an animal.
However, the two revive their plans to flee. Julie dreams of enjoying
themselves for as long as they can, and then dying together. Jean has no
intention of dying, and reveals that Como is a stinking hole, only good for
tourists and their short- lived romances. Jean moves to go to bed. When Julie
points out his debt to her, he tosses her a silver coin. Julie invokes the
law's protection for young maidens; Jean retorts that she is lucky there is no
law against seductresses. Julie wants to flee, marry, and divorce. Jean
suggests he might refuse her hand: after all, he has better ancestors than
Julie. He is sick of her entreaties. His own people do not behave so wildly. He
tells her she is sick.
Julie begs him to help her, to tell her what to do. First
he advises that she stay. Julie says their liaison might continue and with more
severe consequences, alluding to the absent Count. Stunned, Jean immediately
commands her to flee. Julie protests that she cannot leave by herself. She
submits completely: "Tell me what to do. Order me." Disgusted, Jean
obliges, commanding her to get dressed, collect traveling money, and prepare
for her departure. Julie begs him to join her in her room. He refuses.
Analysis
Strindberg's misogyny is apparent in Julie's continued
humiliation. Her mother's feminist ideas are portrayed as unquestionably
abhorrent and her treachery as a familiar story. Julie is supposedly lucky that
the law does not arrest temptresses. Jean thinks Julie is sick, a diagnosis we
are meant to agree with. This scene blames Miss Julie's illness on her family
history, laying the blame at the feet of her mother. Strindberg was interested
in psychology, and incorporated it into his literary and scholarly works. Miss
Julie and the Countess are models of the hysteric, as popularly conceived of in
the nineteenth century. When Strindberg wrote, hysteria was thought to be a
female disease. The word "hysteria" is derived from the Greek word
for womb (hustera). In antiquity and beyond, people believed in specious
disorders and demon possession of the female reproductive system. In
Strindberg's day, hysteria—though a hotly contested disease—increasingly came
to refer not only to theories of innate degeneracy, but to sexual disturbances.
Specifically, it was thought that women became hysterics when they failed or
refused to accept their sexual desires. Physicians defined this as the failure
to become a sexual object for a man.
Julie appears torn between her hatred and disgust for
men, and an irresistible attraction to them. She attempts to enslave and even
destroy men, but she submits to Jean. Her desperate plea for Jean to accompany
her to her bedroom is meant to demonstrate her feminine masochism. Julie's paralysis
is another symptom of her hysteria. After sleeping with Jean, she is portrayed
as totally without will, unable to think for herself. The play explains Julie's
state as a product of her mother's influence. The Countess suffered from a
"masculinity complex" (a charge leveled against feminists, from
Strindberg's day to the present), usurping her husband's authority and
disastrously attempting to reverse gender roles on the estate. She raised Julie
just like a boy, making her a mannish woman and teaching her to hate men. Julie
became bent on revenging herself on men and bringing ruin to the paternal
household. Her mother's influence has divided her from her supposedly
appropriate desires.
Along with providing Julie's family history, this scene
continues to develop the theme of class, particularly in relation to genealogy.
At one point, teasing Julie with the threat of rejecting her hand in marriage,
Jean declares his family line superior to his mistress's. "I don't have
any ancestors at all!" he cries. "But I can become an ancestor
myself." Jean fantasizes about making himself, free of all ties of kin,
and breaking the bonds of his servitude.
Part VI
page 1 of 2
Summary
In a pantomime, Jean does some calculations in a
notebook, and Christine enters, carrying his shift and tie. Christine gasps at
the mess; Jean blames it on Miss Julie. Christine reminds Jean that he promised
to join her at church this morning. The sermon today is on the beheading of
John the Baptist. Jean gets dressed. Christine asks why he was up all night,
and Jean confesses to sleeping with Miss Julie. Christine is more disgusted
than jealous, deciding that she cannot remain in the house any longer. When one's
superiors are no better than oneself, there is little point in trying to
emulate them. Christine expresses disbelief that Miss Julie was been so proud
about men, even having her dog Diana shot for copulating with a mongrel.
Christine thinks it is time that Jean finds a better
position, if they are to marry. A doorkeeping or caretaking job would provide a
steady income and pension. Jean has no intention of sacrificing himself for a
family. The two hear sounds upstairs and realize that the Count has come back.
Christine exits. The sun rises, marking the end of Midsummer's Eve. Dressed for
travel, Miss Julie enters with a small birdcage. Jean remarks that she is
"white as a ghost" and has dirt on her face. Julie again begs Jean to
join her, fearing the memories that will haunt her on her journey. Jean agrees.
When Miss Julie moves to bring her canary, Serena, Jean insists that she leave
it behind. Julie would rather see the bird dead than entrusted to another. Jean
offers to kill it. He decapitates it on a chopping block. "Kill me
too!" screams Julie.
As Jean urges Julie to go, she approaches the chopping
block, mesmerized. She hears a carriage approaching. Suddenly she exclaims that
she wants to see Jean's head on a chopping block and his entire sex swimming in
blood. She asks how Jean could presume that would bear his child and take his
name. Julie calls him a "dog with [her] name on your collar—[a] lackey
with [her] initials on your buttons!" She pledges to stay, to wait for her
father to discover his bureau robbed, and then to confess everything to the
sheriff. She says the Count will die. Her father's coat of arms will die with
him, and Jean's family line will end in the orphanage, gutter, and jail.
Analysis
This sequence functions as another unmasking. Miss Julie
fantasizes about men's annihilation, and fantasy that shows her at her most
violent, desperate, morbid, and monstrous. This fantasy is sparked by a scene
of decapitation, a scene that links to Christine's mention of the execution of
Saint John the Baptist. Unlike the biblical allegory, however, which imagines a
man symbolically castrated by a conspiracy of women, the execution in Miss Julie is of a female bird that stands for
her female mistress, which reverses the gender roles of the Saint John story.
In Julie's story, the symbolic castration is of a woman already established as
inappropriately masculine.
The story of Saint John's execution revolves around
Salome, the daughter of Herodias and King Herod. King Herod had arrested John
for his public invectives against the king's adultery and his urgings for the
people to revolt. On his birthday feast, Herod, consumed with incestuous desire
for his daughter, promises to grant Salome a wish if she performs the infamous
dance of the seven veils on his behalf. She does so and, at the request of her
mother, demands the head of the saint on a platter. John is executed, and
Salome presents John's head to her mother. As elaborated by Freud and others,
decapitation is often symbolic of castration. Thus the story of Salome has
become a touchstone for fantasies of monstrous, castrating women. Both Julie
and her mother are portrayed as wrathful, castrating, and monstrous women. Jean
(French for "John") is the would-be victim of Julie. The decapitation
of the bird, however, reverses the terms of the story.
Miss Julie's pet dog already stands in for Julie. The
lusty dog is named Diana, ironically, for Diana is the virgin goddess. The
canary, Serena, also stands in for Julie, which makes Julie the symbolic victim
of this cruel execution. Julie screams for Jean to kill her too, making her
identification with the bird obvious. The play inverts the gender dynamics of
the biblical allegory, and the woman who would castrate becomes the castrated
woman. This execution prompts Miss Julie's outburst of rage. This speech
reveals the threats the degenerate Julie supposedly poses. She reveals her
hatred of men in all its violence, saying she wants to see the blood and brains
of all men, and would love to eat their hearts. Julie's revenge fantasy also
involves the derision and destruction of the proper name, on which the family
line depends. The name symbolizes the father's legacy, his dominance in the
family, and his ownership of his wife and children. Jean's name becomes the
sign of his inferior class position. Jean has no last name beyond his servile
role (Doorkeeper or Floorsweeper); his line can only end in the orphanage,
gutter, and jail. Jean cannot be a father, the ancestor of a new line; as a
servant, he is a tarnished man.
Part
VI (page 2)
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of 2
Because last names symbolize male authority, Julie's
comment that Jean bears her name on his buttons and collar robs Jean of his
manhood. At the same time, however, the initials on Jean's buttons are not
really Julie's. They are the initials of Julie's father, which symbolize his
ownership of Julie and Julie's mother. Julie must borrow the tool of a man in
order to show Jean her superiority. In the tirade's final reversal, Julie
yearns for the destruction her father's name. She dreams of his death and the
annihilation of his line.
Part VII
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Summary
Christine enters, dressed for church and carrying a
hymn-book. Miss Julie throws herself into her arms, appealing to their shared
womanhood for help against Jean. Christine refuses. Embarrassed, the valet
withdraws to shave. Julie has an idea: the three of them can flee together and
open that hotel on Lake Como. An extended fantasy of their travels and life at
the hotel follows. Julie promises that they will visit the castles of mad King
Ludwig in Munich, the castles where he staged his private operas. Julie is hallucinating,
and Jean begins to sharpen his razor at stage left. Miss Julie lays her head
between her arms at a table. Christine chastises Jean for his plans. He
commands her to respect her mistress. She says she can't anymore. Christine
speaks of their redemption through Christ.
Julie asks Christine who will receive the gift of God's
grace. Christine responds with the platitude: "With him the last shall be
the first and it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." She leaves, promising to tell
the stable boy to stop any attempted departures on their part. Listlessly,
Julie asks Jean what he would do if in her place. Julie picks up the razor and
slashes the air. Jean approves but says that he would never do such a thing.
Julie cries that she wants to but she cannot, much like her father when he
failed to kill himself. Jean replies that the Count was right to fail, because
he needed to avenge himself first. Julie says the Countess is exacting her vengeance
through Julie.
Jean asks if Julie has not ever loved her father. She has
but hates him as well. He raised her to despise women, making her "half
woman and half man." Torn between her parents, Julie lacks a self of her
own. It makes no difference, though, for she still bears all the guilt. The
bell rings twice. Julie jumps up and Jean changes his coat. The Count has
returned. Jean takes up the speaking tube. The Count wants his boots and coffee
in half an hour. Exhausted, Miss Julie implores for the last time: "Help
me, Jean. Command me, and I'll obey like a dog. Do me this last favor. Save my
honor, save his name." Jean says he cannot, because the return of the
Count has made him weak. Julie tells Jean to pretend that he is the Count, and
she is Jean. She tells him to act, or to hypnotize her. Julie falls into a
trance, and Jean whispers the fatal instructions in her ear.
Julie wakes and thanks him. She asks Jean to tell her
that the first will receive the gift of grace. He cannot promise grace but can
tell her that she is definitely among the last. Suddenly she cannot go and begs
him to command her anew. Jean cannot. She is taking all his strength away. Jean
thinks he sees the bell move. He plugs his ears, but still hears to bell. The
bell rings twice, and Jean jumps. He says, "It's horrible! But there's no
other way for it to end.—Go!" Miss Julie walks out the door.
Analysis
Strindberg suggests that the difference between men and
women is that women are masochistic, and want to ruin themselves, while men are
better equipped for evolution and want to survive. Although our first image of
Julie is of a sadist, her sadism quickly becomes masochistic submission to an
erstwhile servant. The play itself is sadistic in exacting her demise. Jean,
speaking for the play, says he cannot promise her grace, but can assure her
that she has moved from among the first to the very last. Though at one point
Julie describes herself as "half woman and half man," we should not
take her words at face value. Julie is not a figure of gender indeterminacy;
rather, the play rather conventionally imagines her "half-ness" as
consisting of her mother's emotions and her father's thoughts. Julie identifies
with both male and female figures in the play. As she confesses, she has no self
she can call her own. Part of Julie's pleasure in her pain comes from
identification with the men around her. Julie's indecision over taking her
life, for example, is analogous to her father unsuccessful suicide attempt. On
one level, Julie sees herself as her mother's victim, just as her father was.
Julie learned to hate men from her father, and to hate women from her mother.
This scene links Julie's masochistic behavior to her hatred of women, a hatred
her father implanted in her.
It occurs to Julie to have Jean hypnotize her, and when
she asks him to play the count, it shows her desire to hurt herself, and Jean's
mastery over Julie. She wants to play the servant to his master. Projecting
herself across class lines, Julie identifies with the figure of the servant
bowed before his master. She also transcends gender lines, wanting to imagine
herself as a cowed man. A homoerotic element infuses the request. We have heard
Jean say several times that he has thought of being a count someday. His
performance as count falters, however. Julie successfully imagines herself the
servant, but Jean's authority over her is incomplete. Julie wakes from hypnosis
and interrupts their play-act. Jean finds himself in a near-hypnotic state of
his own, reduced to impotence by the presence of the Count. He is paralyzed by
seeing the Count's boots and hearing his voice. Though Jean ostensibly leads
Julie to her death, it is clear that both characters are under a spell.
Part VII (page 2)
page 2 of 2
Jean and Julie are under the total influence of the
Count. The innumerable power reversals between Jean and Julie are reduced to a
joint submission to the Count, who is master and father. Jean would follow Julie
in suicide himself if the Count commanded. The Count—disembodied, unseen, and
unheard—is a figure of supreme, magical authority. The Count's authority
demands Jean's return to servitude and Julie's death. The denouement of the
play is sadistic, demanding that the heroine kill herself and claiming, through
Jean, that it is the only way.
Plot
Overview
Miss Julie takes place in the kitchen of the Count's
manor house on a Midsummer's Eve. Christine, the cook, is frying something when Jean, a valet, enters,
exclaiming that Miss Julie is wild tonight. He says that he danced with Miss Julie, the Count's
daughter, at the local barn. Christine observes that Miss Julie has been
rambunctious in the wake of her broken engagement. According to Jean, Miss
Julie's fiancé abandoned her after she attempted to train him, making him jump
over her riding whip in the barnyard as she beat him. Miss Julie appears in the
doorway, and Jean becomes polite and charming. Julie invites him to dance. He
hesitates, warning her against the dangers of local gossip, but he goes with
her to the party.
A pantomime ensues in which Christine cleans the kitchen. Jean and Julie
return and flirt more. Christine falls asleep next to the stove. Under Julie's
orders, Jean kneels in mock gallantry and kisses her foot. In a dream, Miss
Julie declares that she is "climbing down" from her social position.
Jean has dreamed the opposite, yearning to improve his status. Julie asks Jean
if he has ever been in love. He tells her that as a child, he got sick with
love for her. He grew up on a wasteland. The Count's lovely garden was visible
from his window. One day while weeding the onion beds, Jean caught sight of a
"Turkish pavilion"—that is, an outhouse. Enchanted by its beauty,
Jean snuck in but soon heard someone coming. Trapped, he fled through the
bottom of the outhouse until coming upon a rose terrace, where Miss Julie was
walking. Lovelorn, Jean watched Julie walk among the roses. The following
Sunday, he went to church, determined to see Miss Julie once more, and then
attempted suicide.
Moved, Julie asks Jean to take her out to the lake. Again, Jean warns
her of the injury to her reputation. Suddenly the guests are heard approaching.
Jean tells her that they are singing a dirty song about them and suggests that
they flee to his room. They exit. The peasants dance around the kitchen. Julie
and Jean return to the kitchen. The implication is that they have had sex.
Gesturing toward the rumor-mongering crowd, Jean declares it is impossible to
stay at the manor. He dreams of traveling to northern Italy and setting up a
hotel. Julie begs Jean to declare his love. She has fallen for him. Abruptly,
Jean declares that behave coolly, as if nothing has happened. Julie points out
that he needs capital to open a hotel, and she has not a penny to her name.
Jean says that in that case, the plans are off. Julie becomes hysterical,
wondering how can she live with everyone sneering behind her back. Jean is
unsympathetic, calling her a whore and revealing that his story of the rose
terrace was a lie. Crushed, Julie says she deserves his abuse.
Jean proposes anew that they flee together. Julie wants to tell him
about her life first. Believing in the independence of women, Julie's mother
brought the estate to ruin. When Julie's father finally took command, her
mother fell ill. A mysterious fire then burned down the estate. Julie's mother
suggested to Julie's father that he should borrow money from a friend of hers
to rebuild the farm. Jean says that Julie's mother set the fire, and the friend
was her lover. Julie took her mother's side and grew up to hate men as her
mother did. Jean tires of Julie's talk, and tells her she is sick. Julie begs
him to tell her what to do. Terrified of the consequences with the Count, Jean
commands her to flee. She exits to prepare for her departure.
Christine enters, reminding Jean that he promised to join her at church.
This morning's sermon is on the beheading of John the Baptist. Jean confesses
to sleeping with Julie. Disgusted, Christine decides that she cannot remain in
the house. Suddenly the two hear sounds upstairs: the Count has come back.
Christine exits. The sun rises, breaking the spell of Midsummer's Eve. Dressed
for travel, Julie appears with a small birdcage. She begs Jean to join her. He
agrees, but insists that she leave the canary behind, offering to kill it. Jean
decapitates the bird on a chopping block. "Kill me too!" screams
Julie. Julie approaches the chopping block, mesmerized. She exclaims that she
wants to see Jean's head on a chopping block and his entire sex swimming in
blood. She pledges to stay, to wait for her father and confess everything. The
Count will die of shame.
Christine enters, and Julie begs her for help. Christine refuses.
Desperate, Julie has an idea: the three of them can flee together and open that
hotel. Christine speaks of their redemption, saying the last shall be first.
Christine leaves, promising to tell the stable boy to stop any attempted
departures on their part. Utterly defeated, Julie asks Jean what he would do if
in her place. She picks up Jean's shaving razor and slashes the air, saying
"Like this?" The bell rings twice; it is the Count. Exhausted, Miss
Julie begs Jean to help her, saying she will obey him as a dog would if he
helps save her father from disgrace.
Jean is immobilized by the sound of the Count's voice. Julie tells him
to pretend that he is the Count, and to hypnotize her. Jean whispers the fatal
instructions in her ear. Julie asks Jean to tell her that the first will
receive the gift of grace. He cannot promise grace but tells her that she is
definitely among the last. The bell rings twice, and Jean commands Julie to her
death. She walks out the door.
Analysis of Major Characters
Miss Julie
Miss Julie is the play's
twenty-five-year-old heroine. Fresh from a broken engagement—an engagement
ruined because of her attempt literally to train her fiancé like a dog—Miss
Julie has become "wild", making shameless advances to her valet, Jean,
on Midsummer Eve. In his preface to the play, Strindberg discusses what
motivates Miss Julie: "her mother's primary instincts, her father raising
her incorrectly, her own nature, and the influence of her fiancé on her weak
and degenerate brain." He also cites as influences the absence of her
father, the fact that she has her period, the sensual dancing and flowers, and,
finally, the man. Strindberg is interested in psychology, and this list is his
diagnosis of what he considers Miss Julie's sickness. This symptoms of this
sickness are similar to contemporaneous symptoms of the hysteric. Traditionally
considered a female disease, hysteria in Strindberg's day was increasingly used
to refer to a disturbance in female sexuality—namely, a woman's failure or
refusal to accept her sexual desires.
Raised by a shockingly empowered
mother who abhorred men, Julie is alternately disgusted by and drawn to men,
horrified by sex and ready to play the lascivious coquette. Her hatred of men
leads her to attempt to enslave them sadistically. Ultimately, however, the
play is more invested in her masochism above all else. Julie desires her own
fall. Strindberg partially blames her for her fate. Julie submits to Jean, who
is partly a father figure, imploring him both to abuse and to save her. Julie
slips into a "hypnoid state", a trance-like condition that people
associated with hysterics. It can be argued that Miss Julie's profile and
ultimate fate reveal Strindberg's notoriously misogynistic fantasies.
Jean
Jean is the manor's thirty-year old
valet, chosen as Miss Julie's lover on Midsummer's Eve, and the second major
character in the play. He grew up working in the district and, although Miss
Julie does not know this, he has known Miss Julie since she was a child.
Initially Jean talks coarsely and disparagingly about Miss Jean with his
fiancé, Christine. Later he plays the gallant while seducing of Miss Julie,
honorably hesitating before her advances, telling a heart-rending tale of his
childhood love for his mistress, recounting his longtime ambitions, and
generally making her believe in his gentleness. Upon the consummation of their
romance, when Jean finds that Miss Julie is penniless, he rejects her and
confesses that he has deceived her, cruelly leaving her to her disgrace.
Jean dreams of grandeur, vaguely
imagining someday opening a hotel in northern Italy and becoming a count like
Miss Julie's father. However, he remains subjected to authority throughout the
play. Indeed, the reminders of the Count—his boots, the speaking tube, Jean's
livery, and, most importantly, the ringing bell—automatically reduce Jean to a
lackey. Jean's relationship to Miss Julie is complicated by his class envy and
misogyny. Jean at once elevates and scorns the object of his desire. This
relationship is neatly summarized by a story in which young Jean had to flee an
outhouse through the bottom and, emerging from his master's waste, came upon
Julie strolling a terrace and fell in love at first sight. This story shows how
Jean is mired in filth at the hands of his social betters. It also shows the
simultaneous adulation and hatred Jean feels for Miss Julie. He worships her
from afar, but then he sees her underside from the bottom of the outhouse.
Imagining Julie in increasingly
degrading fantasies, Jean stops being a cowed, reluctantly seduced servant to a
sadist reveling in Julie's ruin. Despite the many power reversals between them,
however, the end of the play joins them in their submission to the Count's
authority, the authority of the father and master. Julie's hypnosis is
paralleled by Jean's automatic response at the ringing of the Count's bell, and
in the end Jean will only be able to command Julie by imagining that he is the
Count commanding himself. The class and gender battles end with Julie's and
Jean's submission to their absent sovereign.
Christine
A relatively minor character,
Christine is the manor's thirty-five-year-old cook and Jean's fiancé. Sharing
in Jean's gossip over Miss Julie's "wild" nature, she seems to be a
pious and petty hypocrite. She clings fiercely to a sense of social hierarchy.
Upon discovering that Julie and Jean have had sex, Christine decides to leave
the house. Late in the play, she denies Miss Julie's plea for help. The fact
that Jean did not live up to her social position trumps Christine's sense of
human compassion.
Themes
The Degenerate Woman
In his preface to the play, Strindberg
describes his heroine, Miss Julie, as a woman with a "weak and degenerate
brain." In the play, Jean comments on Julie's crazy behavior. Miss Julie, one of the first
major exercises in naturalism and the naturalist character, becomes a case
study of a woman who is supposedly, as Jean says, "sick." This
sickness condemns her to ruin in one of the more misogynistic classic works of
modern theater. Strindberg was interested in psychology, and the play spends time
detailing Julie's pathologies. Two concepts from the psychology of Strindberg's
day are relevant: hysteria and feminine masochism. Hysteria was historically
considered a female disease, and in the late-nineteenth century was defined as
an illness brought on when a woman failed or refused to accept her sexual
desires and did not become a sexual object, as the psychologists put it.
Strindberg probably meant for us to read Julie as a hysteric, for she is
simultaneously disgusted and drawn to men, both nonsexual and seductive.
Strindberg, in his fear of early European feminism, attributes Julie's problems
to a mother who believes in the equality of the sexes and, indeed, hates men.
He also blames an initially absent, ineffectual father. Julie inherits her
mother's hatred of men, attempting to train her fiancé with a riding whip and
fantasizing about the annihilation of the male sex.
Besides this sadism (pleasure in
another's pain), the play is interested in Julie's masochism (pleasure in one's
own pain), a masochism explicitly identified as feminine. When Julie proposes
suicide, Jean declares that he could never follow through with a plan to kill
himself, and says that the difference between the sexes is that men are not
masochistic, as women are. Julie confesses her desire to fall, and her brazenly
flirtatious behavior with Jean supposedly makes her ruin her own fault. She
ends up submitting herself wholeheartedly to Jean's will—Jean standing in, as
we discover in the final scene, for Julie's father, the Count—.
Class and Gender Conflict
Miss Julie has two
subordinates—a daughter and a servant—who are subject to each other's
authority. Julie is Jean's superior in terms of class; Jean is Julie's superior
in terms of morality, because Jean is a man and Julie is a
"degenerate" woman. These differences structure most of the play's
action. The play is conservative in sentiment. It keeps these superior and
inferior positions in place, and ultimately submits both characters to the
total authority of the Count, who is father and master. An uncountable number
of power reversals occur along class and gender lines throughout the play. The
difference between Jean and Julie is central to their attraction. Whereas Julie
expresses a desire to fall from her social position, Jean expresses an idle
desire to climb up from his social position. Jean hopes to better his social
status by sleeping with Julie. When he discovers that she is penniless,
however, he abandons his plans. By sleeping with Jean, Julie degrades herself
and places herself beneath Jean's level. The power shifts again, however, when
Julie reasserts her superior class, mocking Jean's name and family line.
As explained in the preface to the play,
these battles reflect Strindberg's social Darwinist notions of evolutionary
history and hierarchy. He writes, "I have added a little evolutionary
history by making the weaker steal and repeat the words of the stronger."
Jean and Julie borrow from each other when they talk about the vision of the
hotel or the sheriff. The most explicit instance of mimicry, however, occurs in
the final moments of the play, when Julie asks Jean to imitate her father,
commanding him to send her to her suicide. The conflicts between Jean and Julie
throughout the play recreate Julie's fundamental submission to the Count. Julie
has authority over Jean partly because she is her father's daughter, and Jean
has authority over Julie because he has the Count's power as a man.
Idealization and Degradation
Strindberg's notorious misogyny is
characterized by the simultaneous idealization and degradation of woman. To
him, these opposite impulses are two sides of the same coin. Jean at once
worships and scorns Miss Julie. Early in the play, he describes her as both
crude and beautiful. In the story of the Turkish pavilion, young Jean must flee
an outhouse through the bottom and, emerging from his master's waste, sees
Julie. He falls in love with her on the spot, but then she raises her skirt to
use the outhouse, and he sees her in a compromising position. On top of Jean's
initial love comes revulsion. The image of Julie strolling amidst the roses is
degraded by the image of her going to the bathroom.
Hypnotism
The famous scene of hypnosis at the end
of Miss Julie emerges from
Strindberg's longtime interest in psychology and occult phenomena. Here,
hypnotism stands for the absolute authority of the Count, the master and
father, whose power feels all the more absolute for his absence. The play shows
us the effects of his power—the ringing of the bell, the animation of the
speaking tube, and, most importantly, the direction of the characters' action.
Miss Julie asks Jean to hypnotize her, because she lacks the will to commit
suicide. Jean lacks the will to command her, so he is to pretend that he is the
Count giving himself an order. The magical power of Julie's father, sends Julie
to her death. Though Julie is hypnotized, the Count's power exerts a hypnotic
effect on Jean as well. The trappings of the Count's authority (his boots, the
bell, etc.) reduce Jean to paralysis.
Animal Doubles
Two pets appear in Miss Julie. Both function as
doubles for the heroine. The first pet is Diana, Julie's dog, who is pregnant
by the gatekeeper's mongrel. Diana's name is a joke, for the goddess Diana is
the goddess of virgins. Her resemblance to her owner implies that Miss Julie is
not good looking. The second pet is Serena the canary, who Jean decapitates on
a chopping block after deciding that Miss Julie cannot take the bird with them
on their journey. The decapitation of the bird is linked to the story of Saint
John the Baptist, who was decapitated. Saint John's story can be read as an
allegory of a castration staged by a conspiracy of women. Here the terms of the
allegory are reversed: Serena (or Miss Julie, who Serena symbolizes) is
submitted to the chopping block. The execution of Serena sends Julie into a
rage. She restores the biblical story in her fantasy, imagining Jean (French
for "John") and his "entire sex" swimming in blood.
The pantomime and ballet
The play's numerous pantomimes function
as pauses in action, interrupting the otherwise unbroken episode with slow,
highly realistic interludes. Christine cleans the kitchen, curls her hair, and
hums a tune; Jean scribbles a few calculations. Such injections of the banal
are typical of the naturalistic theater. Also a sort of pantomime, the dance of
the peasants operates differently, laying waste to the kitchen and disrupting a
largely two-person play with a rowdy crowd. Many critics have identified this
pagan festivity of the rumor-mongering crowd as symbolic of Miss Julie's ruin
and pre-figurative of German expressionism.
Some objects symbolize the Count, suggesting
him in his absence: his boots, Jean's livery, the speaking tube, and, most
importantly, the ringing bell. Together, these objects symbolize the workings
of the master's authority. Their effect on Jean in particular reveals the
magical and irresistible nature of the Count's power. They also reduce Jean to
a spineless, yes-man.
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