August Strindberg’s Miss Julie
Begin: 03/4/07
End: 03/04/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama Anthology
Genre: Modern Drama. Naturalistic Tragedy.
Original Language: Swedish.
Date of Publication: 1888, originally banned in Sweden.
Protagonists: Julie.
Antagonists: Jean.
Setting: The Count’s Manor House, Sweden on Midsummer Eve, 1880’s.
Number: Third?
Good stuff to be found in Modern Drama. Damn good stuff.
Okay. Here’s the plot in a nut shell. Julie is the count’s daughter. Jean is the count’s valet. The entire play takes place in one night, midsummer night at a manor house in Sweden. Julie dances at the servant’s party and is attracted to a senior servant, Jean. They eventually sleep together and afterwards most of the drama occurs of what to do next.
The play is very much concerned with power and class struggles. Julie has power over Jean in the beginning of the play because she is upper class but once they have their encounter, the power shifts completely.
I really liked it. I have read it before, a few years ago, for a class that I took. I have never gotten rid of the anthology because it contains so many damn good plays.
Let me list off some of the good quotations.
1.) Julie: Perhaps! But so are you!- For that matter, everything is strange. Life, people, everything. Like floating scum, drifting on and on across the water, until it sinks down and down! That reminds me of a dream I have now and then. I’ve climbed up on top of a pillar. I sit there and see no way of getting down. I get dizzy when I look down, but I don’t have the courage to jump. I can’t hold on firmly, and I long to be able to fall, but I don’t fall. And yet I’ll have no peace until I get down, no rest unless I get down, down on the ground, I’d want to be under the earth. Have you ever felt anything like that?”
Jean: No. I dream that I’m lying under a high tree in a dark forest. I want to get up, up on top, and look out over the bright landscape, where the sun is shining, and plunder the bird’s nest up there, where the golden eggs lies. And I climb and climb but the trunk’s so thick and smooth, and it’s so far to the first branch. But I know if I just reached that first branch, I’d go right to the top, like up a ladder. I haven’t reached it yet, but I will, even if it’s only a dream.
2.) Jean: Love is game we play when we get time off from work, but we don’t have all day and night, like you. I think you’re sick. Your mother was crazy, and her ideas have poisoned your life.
3.) Oh, I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood just like that. I think I could drink out of your skull! I’d like to bathe my feet in your open chest and eat your heart roasted whole! You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed Bear your child and take your name!—Come to think of it, what is your name anyway? I've never heard your last name. You probably don't even have one. I'd be Mrs. Doorkeeper or Madame Floorsweeper. You dog with my name on your collar—you lackey with my initials on your buttons!
So much goes on in this play that is powerful and though-provoking. We have class struggle and power struggles, rampant sexuality and misogyny. It’s amazing that it can say so very much in so few scenes and with so few characters.
So I guess I’ll talk first about the misogyny. The general reading of the play is that Julie is a grotesque and tragic aristocrat who seduces Jean and then creates a whirlwind of terror and misadventure.
Strindberg wrote that Julie has a “weak and degenerate brain.” Strindberg seems to blame Julie’s problems on her upbringing. Her mother not wanting to get married, wanting her to learn “boyish” things and believing in the equality of the sexes.
And yet, I really liked Julie. She was vilified for wanting to have sex with a “lower class” man. But is that really all that much of a crime? And I really liked what she said towards the end of the play, “You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed”. I love that statement. The idea that sexual desire makes us weak, that wanting to be plowed is a sign of inferiority and weakness. It’s like she taking a stand for straight women and gay bottoms everywhere.
Here are some more examples of Jean’s cruelty towards Julie post-coitus.
Julie: And now you’ve seen the hawk’s back
Jean: Not exactly it’s back…
Jean: And a whore is a whore.
Jean: Menial’s strumpet lackey’s whore! shut up and get out of here! Who are you to lecture me on coarseness? None of my kind is ever as coarse as you were tonight. Do you think one of your maids would throw herself at a man the way you did? Have you ever seen any girl on my class offer herself like that? I’ve only seen it among animals and streetwalkers.”
I think the most evident theme in the play dealt with class and power struggle. Miss Julie is very much in control and in power in the beginning of the play, even though both Jean and Kristine seem to look down on her. The play opens up with jean saying, “Miss Julie’s crazy again tonight; absolutely crazy!”
There is this whole theme running through the play of how Jean is a better man than the aristocrats. How he has better taste, more moral decency, ect. than does Miss Julie. Yet, when she is in the room with Jean and Kristine, she is the undisputed master. And it is interesting to watch the shift in power take place from Julie to Jean. It, of course, revolves around the sex. Once that single act occurs, it’s like Julie has become a powerless leper and Jean takes over and shows his true side.
Begin: 03/4/07
End: 03/04/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama Anthology
Genre: Modern Drama. Naturalistic Tragedy.
Original Language: Swedish.
Date of Publication: 1888, originally banned in Sweden.
Protagonists: Julie.
Antagonists: Jean.
Setting: The Count’s Manor House, Sweden on Midsummer Eve, 1880’s.
Number: Third?
Good stuff to be found in Modern Drama. Damn good stuff.
Okay. Here’s the plot in a nut shell. Julie is the count’s daughter. Jean is the count’s valet. The entire play takes place in one night, midsummer night at a manor house in Sweden. Julie dances at the servant’s party and is attracted to a senior servant, Jean. They eventually sleep together and afterwards most of the drama occurs of what to do next.
The play is very much concerned with power and class struggles. Julie has power over Jean in the beginning of the play because she is upper class but once they have their encounter, the power shifts completely.
I really liked it. I have read it before, a few years ago, for a class that I took. I have never gotten rid of the anthology because it contains so many damn good plays.
Let me list off some of the good quotations.
1.) Julie: Perhaps! But so are you!- For that matter, everything is strange. Life, people, everything. Like floating scum, drifting on and on across the water, until it sinks down and down! That reminds me of a dream I have now and then. I’ve climbed up on top of a pillar. I sit there and see no way of getting down. I get dizzy when I look down, but I don’t have the courage to jump. I can’t hold on firmly, and I long to be able to fall, but I don’t fall. And yet I’ll have no peace until I get down, no rest unless I get down, down on the ground, I’d want to be under the earth. Have you ever felt anything like that?”
Jean: No. I dream that I’m lying under a high tree in a dark forest. I want to get up, up on top, and look out over the bright landscape, where the sun is shining, and plunder the bird’s nest up there, where the golden eggs lies. And I climb and climb but the trunk’s so thick and smooth, and it’s so far to the first branch. But I know if I just reached that first branch, I’d go right to the top, like up a ladder. I haven’t reached it yet, but I will, even if it’s only a dream.
2.) Jean: Love is game we play when we get time off from work, but we don’t have all day and night, like you. I think you’re sick. Your mother was crazy, and her ideas have poisoned your life.
3.) Oh, I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood just like that. I think I could drink out of your skull! I’d like to bathe my feet in your open chest and eat your heart roasted whole! You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed Bear your child and take your name!—Come to think of it, what is your name anyway? I've never heard your last name. You probably don't even have one. I'd be Mrs. Doorkeeper or Madame Floorsweeper. You dog with my name on your collar—you lackey with my initials on your buttons!
So much goes on in this play that is powerful and though-provoking. We have class struggle and power struggles, rampant sexuality and misogyny. It’s amazing that it can say so very much in so few scenes and with so few characters.
So I guess I’ll talk first about the misogyny. The general reading of the play is that Julie is a grotesque and tragic aristocrat who seduces Jean and then creates a whirlwind of terror and misadventure.
Strindberg wrote that Julie has a “weak and degenerate brain.” Strindberg seems to blame Julie’s problems on her upbringing. Her mother not wanting to get married, wanting her to learn “boyish” things and believing in the equality of the sexes.
And yet, I really liked Julie. She was vilified for wanting to have sex with a “lower class” man. But is that really all that much of a crime? And I really liked what she said towards the end of the play, “You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed”. I love that statement. The idea that sexual desire makes us weak, that wanting to be plowed is a sign of inferiority and weakness. It’s like she taking a stand for straight women and gay bottoms everywhere.
Here are some more examples of Jean’s cruelty towards Julie post-coitus.
Julie: And now you’ve seen the hawk’s back
Jean: Not exactly it’s back…
Jean: And a whore is a whore.
Jean: Menial’s strumpet lackey’s whore! shut up and get out of here! Who are you to lecture me on coarseness? None of my kind is ever as coarse as you were tonight. Do you think one of your maids would throw herself at a man the way you did? Have you ever seen any girl on my class offer herself like that? I’ve only seen it among animals and streetwalkers.”
I think the most evident theme in the play dealt with class and power struggle. Miss Julie is very much in control and in power in the beginning of the play, even though both Jean and Kristine seem to look down on her. The play opens up with jean saying, “Miss Julie’s crazy again tonight; absolutely crazy!”
There is this whole theme running through the play of how Jean is a better man than the aristocrats. How he has better taste, more moral decency, ect. than does Miss Julie. Yet, when she is in the room with Jean and Kristine, she is the undisputed master. And it is interesting to watch the shift in power take place from Julie to Jean. It, of course, revolves around the sex. Once that single act occurs, it’s like Julie has become a powerless leper and Jean takes over and shows his true side.
1 comment:
I loved this play...infact i enacted on stage.
There is something in this play...which holds me.
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