Miss Julie

As Strindberg explains in the Author’s Preface, he decided to avoid act divisions in Miss Julie because “our dwindling capacity for accepting illusion is possibly further disturbed by intermissions, during which the spectator has time to reflect and thereby escape the suggestive influence of the author-hypnotist” (71). Instead of act divisions, the action of the play is broken by the incorporation of mime and ballet scenes that feature singing and dancing. The result is that the viewer gets the impression that the story is unfolding before them more-or-less in “real time.”

The first part of the play roots the characters and themes of the play. From the very first conversation between Jean and Kristine, the tensions underlying the play—the tensions of Class Conflict and Social Hierarchy and of Gender Roles and Power Dynamics—are put on display. Jean is particularly preoccupied with ideas of class and social hierarchy, posing as refined and even aristocratic even though he is well aware that his own background is humble. For instance, Jean makes a point of drinking wine instead of beer; he speaks proudly of his travels; he turns his nose up at “the rabble” (88) celebrating midsummer eve outside; and he occasionally lapses into French in conversation. Even when acknowledging the humility of his background, Jean adopts the kind of refined and elevated diction that seems at odds with the livery he wears. Thus, when Julie tells him that he “look[s] like a real gentleman” (81), he responds (a little pompously or at least, as Julie will observe, theatrically) by declaring, “My natural modesty forbids me to believe that you would really compliment someone like me, and so I took the liberty of assuming that you were exaggerating, which polite people call flattering” (81).

Julie, on the other hand, behaves in a way that is beneath her station. The very first line of the play is Jean’s exclamation, “Miss Julie’s crazy again tonight; absolutely crazy!” (76) The reason Jean calls Julie “crazy” is because of the way she is dancing with the servants, but the word “again” is also significant, highlighting that Jean is noting not something completely out of the ordinary but rather a behavioral pattern. Sure enough, Kristine responds by observing that Julie’s behavior has always been unusual, though she concedes it has been worse since her recent breakup with her fiancé. To Jean, Julie “just isn’t refined” (78). Her behavior demonstrates, in his view, “what happens when aristocrats pretend they’re common people—they get common!” (78).

The viewer or reader gets to see Julie’s “craziness” for themselves soon enough when Julie comes to the kitchen, flirts with Jean, and demands that he dance with her, even insisting that “[o]n a night like this we’re all just ordinary people having fun, so we’ll forget about rank” (80). Later, Julie declares, “[m]y tastes are so simple I prefer beer to wine” (82). There is even a growing sense that Julie is uncomfortable with her gender and that she prefers to be more like a man—something that becomes more apparent in the second part of the play, but which is already hinted at, for instance, when Jean observes that Julie is very similar to her mother, who was herself “most at home in the kitchen and cowsheds” (78).

The juxtaposition between Julie’s and Jean’s opposite attitudes towards their social classes is best illustrated by the very different recurring dreams each of them has. Julie tells Jean that she dreams of finding herself on the top of a high pillar and realizing that she cannot get down; Jean, on the other hand, dreams of trying to climb a tall tree to plunder the golden eggs from a bird’s nest. The symbolism is significant: While Julie wants only to escape her high social standing with its stifling restrictions, Jean longs to join the seemingly inaccessible echelons of that very same aristocratic class.

While Jean and Julie both dream of changing their place in the social hierarchy, the cook Kristine seems to accept her place. As she tells Jean: “I know my place” (80). Kristine is content to be exactly what she is supposed to be, and both Julie and Jean observe that she would make a good wife. She is thus spared the inner turmoil that propels Julie and Jean towards tragedy.

The first part of the play also demonstrates the great care Strindberg takes in depicting The Complexity and Contradictory Nature of People. Julie, Jean, and Kristine each represent a very different type of person, and their personalities are so carefully fleshed out that Strindberg hardly thought it fitting to refer to them as characters (as he explains in his Preface). Julie wears her heart on her sleeve and always says exactly what she means; Jean is constantly changing his manner to suit the occasion (even in the first part of the play, his interactions with Julie are very different from his interactions with Kristine); while Kristine alone accepts her place and always acts exactly like she is supposed to act.

However, part of what makes Strindberg’s characters so realistic is that they are not consistent. Julie’s behavior, for example, is motivated in part by heredity (she is too much like her reckless mother), in part by her own wildness, and in part by the impact her breakup with her fiancé has had on her. Jean, similarly, constantly oscillates between bald statements about his aspirations to rise above his class and recognizing that a servant’s respectability lies in embracing their place within the social hierarchy. He thus is constantly changing his tune, dancing with Julie and promising Kristine a dance at one point, and later stating that “[d]ancing with the rabble […] doesn’t amuse me much” (88). In the second part of the play, these tensions of class and character quickly boil over.