| Product: |
Miss Julie - August Strindberg |
| Date: |
20/11/07 (162 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Mostly characterization... plus the play is short and makes a good read
Disadvantages: A little painful like all tragedies
Miss Julie OR Countess Julie (1888)
A tragedy in one act
By
August Strindberg (1849 – 1912)
Like any other “classic” tragedy, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie represents the fall of its heroine; she is a beautiful and rich twenty-five year old woman who committed the terrible sin of having sex with her servant. Well, things are a little more complicated than this, so let’s examine her character. Julie’s parents collaborated in preventing her from owning a clear gender; her mother wasn’t of noble birth, she believed in equality and freedom, was dominant and taught her daughter, Julie, everything that a boy should know. Her father’s subservience to his wife and subsequent incident he was fooled in, caused the little girl to hate men from some time, and then even when she found out the truth, she never managed to have a clear idea of how a healthy relationship between a man and a woman should be.
Julie was engaged to the Lieutenant Governor, but things did not work out: “They [Julie and her fiancé] were out in the stable yard one evening and she was ‘training’ him as she called it. Do you know what happened? She made him leap over her riding whip, the way you teach a dog to jump. He jumped it twice and got a lash each time; but the third time he snatched the whip from her hand and broke it into pieces. And then he vanished!” I remember reading a novel in which the narrator, a woman, warns other women from treating men like dogs, for one of her acquaintances does so and she never manages to keep a lover; however, at the end of the novel that dominant woman gained her lover back. Of course, here Julie’s fiancé leaves her, but both stories are equally hilarious, to women at least. Now you know how I chose my title, for this is an important section that I’ll return to later.
The play opens with the discussion between the thirty year old servant, Jean, and Kristin, his fiancée, who also works as a cook, on how crazy Miss Julie’s acts are. Like her late mother, she pays no attention to her appearance, and no heed to what people say about her when she dances with her servants. When Kristin goes to sleep, Miss Julie and Jean have a conversation which ends with their having sex after the lady herself suggested this. It’s definitely interesting here to make a comparison between the strong Julie and the “falling” Julie.
Before stepping down, Julie made her servant kiss her slipper jokingly, but after that she had to beg him not to talk to her harshly. In addition to this, the “dog whisperer” who made her rich an powerful fiancé jump on a whip, becomes so confused and clueless that she asks Jean for advice saying: “Help me now. Command me--I will obey like a dog.”
Now, you are reading all this and thinking: why doesn’t she let it go? It’s just sex. This must be a much-ado-about-nothing situation. Allow me to add to your confusion the possibility that Julie actually had sex with her fiancé before he left her, as is suggested in the text of course, so the one night stand with Jean might not be even her first time. But then, why didn’t hamlet ignore his father’s command? And why did Oedipus blind himself although his marriage was not even his fault. Well, these are the kind of questions that readers try to answer when reading a tragedy, and in Miss Julie you’ll find many threads to follow.
As is the case with Strindberg’s The Father, this play is an excellent example of brilliant characterization. In addition to all the aforementioned complications in Julie’s character, she actually relates one of her dreams to Jean: “I have the same dream every now and then and at this moment I am reminded of it. I find myself seated at the top of a high pillar and I see no possible way to get down. I grow dizzy when I look down, but down I must. But I'm not brave enough to throw myself; I cannot hold fast and I long to fall--but I don't fall. And yet I can find no rest or peace until I shall come down to earth; and if I came down to earth I would wish myself down in the ground.” Obviously one does not have to be Freud to see the phallic symbol in the pillar that Julie mentions, and apparently Jean understood the reference too.
The other two characters in the play can be considered round as well. Kristin seems to know her limits, respect her “superiors”, and have a religious character, but at the same time she steals from the grocery money and her reaction when Jean told her about the affair with Miss Julie was weird to say the least. She tells her fiancé that his mistake lies in the fact that he did not respect his masters; not that he cheated on her, simply because she and Miss Julie are not peers. As for Jean, we see him as a proud master of words at the beginning of the play that we are fooled into believing that he is actually different from the “conformist” Kristin, yet once he is done with Julie he treats her as a complete bastard, for the lack of a better term. As in:
JULIE: Do you think I would allow myself to be satisfied with such
an ending? Do you know what a man owes to a woman he hits-
JEAN (Takes out a silver coin and throws it on the table): Allow
me, I don't want to owe anything to anyone.
and the memorable quote:
JULIE: … A servant is a servant.
JEAN: And a whore is a whore.
Even worse, as soon as Jean hears the orders of Julie’s father, and as is the case with Pavlov’s dog, he loses all his art and becomes nothing but a lowly servant.
Is Strindberg a misogynist? Is his play a condemnation of the upper class? Is it possible for readers to sympathize with Jean and accuse Julie of being a spoiled aristocrat? Absolutely. As is the case with The Father, the play is beautifully open for interpretation. Happy reading!
<<< Price and Book Info >>>
Price: £1.49
Paperback: 64 pages
Publisher: Dover Publications Inc.; New Ed edition (14 Dec 1992)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0486272818
ISBN-13: 978-0486272818
Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13 x 0.5 cm
Summary: One of August Strindberg's finest works.
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