Miss Julie

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1888

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface

Pages 76-90

Pages 90-112

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

Miss Julie

Miss Julie is the young and beautiful daughter of a Swedish count who occupies a manor somewhere in the country. At the time the play takes place, she has recently broken off her engagement with a young man of her own class. At least initially, Julie comes across as a flamboyant and reckless character. Jean repeatedly refers to her as “crazy” (e.g., 76), and Kristine agrees that the girl has always behaved somewhat unusually. To some extent, Julie’s character can be traced to her mother, who taught her—as Julie says—to hate men and to believe that women can do anything that men can do.

Julie is also naturally impetuous, as the play highlights by her treatment of her previous fiancé (whom she apparently tried to train like an animal) as well as in her flirtation with Jean. At the same time, Julie is representative of the old European aristocracy, with Jean admitting that he had always viewed her as “a symbol of the hopelessness of ever rising out of the class in which [he] was born” (87). Julie is never entirely able to disavow her “blue blood” (106), despite the fact that she makes a point of dancing with her servants or of drinking beer rather than wine. After she has sex with Jean, she is so horrified of being shamed that she tries to run away with Jean and, ultimately, seems to decide to end her own life.

Beyond being driven by an often-cacophonous combination of quasi-feminist, hereditary, and aristocratic motives, Julie has a deep-seated need for love. After she and Jean have sex, she begs Jean to show her some sign of affection, pleading, “[t]ell me you love me,” and “[s]how me you love me” (91). When she and Jean are about to leave the house, she even tries to bring her pet greenfinch with her, declaring that it is “the only living being that loves [her]” (105). Julie’s stories about her upbringing suggest that she never felt true affection from either of her parents, and the breakdown of her short-lived relationship with Jean is so devastating to her that it finally drives her to die by suicide.

Jean

Jean is the valet of Julie’s father, a Swedish count. Though a servant himself and the son of a farmhand, Jean is well-read and well-traveled and longs to rise in the social hierarchy. Jean impresses Julie with his refined speech and mannerisms, and Julie even comments a few times how much of an aristocrat he seems. Jean himself admits that he wants to rise above the social class into which he was born, dreaming of opening a hotel and perhaps even becoming a count someday.

There is another, darker side to Jean’s character. In the second part of the play, Jean shows that he is willing to go to drastic and even cruel lengths to achieve his ambitions. It becomes increasingly clear that he sees Julie as a tool to help him advance socially: In describing his plans for opening a hotel in Switzerland, he refers to Julie as “the jewel in our crown” (90) who will help him bring in guests. He does not want to show affection to the distraught Julie and becomes increasingly vicious towards her. Though he can play the part of an aristocratic gentleman very well, he also has the mentality of a servant—along with all the advantages that such a mentality confers, including, as Strindberg notes in his Preface, his lack of the aristocrat’s “fatal preoccupation with honor” (69). He is strong, resolute, and is not afraid of hurting others or even shedding blood.

However, Jean’s “slave mentality” (70) is also his undoing. He admits that the count makes him “feel small” (91), and at the end of the play just the sound of the count’s bell is enough to shatter his plans and restore him to his old role as a servant.

Kristine

Kristine is the cook of the manor and Jean’s fiancée. Strindberg describes her in the Preface as “conventional and lethargic” (70). She is a more “ordinary” person than either Julie or Jean, and Strindberg explains that he deliberately sketched her that way, so as to more strongly emphasize the tragic natures of his other two characters.

Kristine, unlike Jean, passively accepts her place within the social hierarchy, and even prefers to see her aristocratic employers as superior to her. To that end, she is incapable of viewing Julie as a rival because she cannot believe that any real relationship can ever exist between the servant Jean and the aristocratic Julie: Even when she learns that Julie and Jean are planning to run away together, she continues to insist almost nonchalantly that she will marry Jean in the end. Kristine is also religious (another “conventional” aspect of her character). At the end of the play, she finally urges Julie to look to God for forgiveness and grace—this is what she herself does, after all.