Miss Julie: Author’s Preface  Summary & Analysis

Strindberg likens the theater to a children’s bible, explaining that it has become a “middle class” art form for audiences who want to be entertained and not challenged. Therefore, popular drama has become mundane and flat, and truly innovative theater is unsuccessful because it fails to illicit the support of the majority. This trend, Strindberg believes, may cause the theater as an art form to go extinct.  

Strindberg explains that, though he has not done “anything new” in Miss Julie, he has tried to create a modern drama about social class and financial stability because people are consistently fascinated with tragedies about upper class people. Strindberg notes that audiences find it tragic when highly-placed people lose everything, and therefore it is a good subject for drama.

However, Strindberg says that he hopes there will come a day when rationality, objectivity, and philosophical thinking will make people indifferent to people’s struggles and instead, merely reflective about the harsh and heartless nature of life.

Strindberg explains that people find Miss Julie sad solely because they fear that her fate might also befall them one day. Strindberg claims that there is no “absolute evil,” and that the fact that some families fall from favor and others rise is merely the ebb and flow of society, and should not be viewed through an emotional lens.

Strindberg chastises audiences for finding his work “sad.” He mentions his play The Father (which proceeded Miss Julie by only a year) which was panned by critics for being too upsetting. Strindberg insists that there is nothing upsetting in the failure of upper class families who stand in the way of the social and mental ascendancy of those that they employ and subjugate. He compares the rich to rotting trees who must be chopped down to ensure the health of the forest. Again, Strindberg insists that any audience member who has a sad reaction to the action in Miss Julie feels this way because they are projecting their own fears onto the action.

Strindberg suggests that Miss Julie’s fate results from a combination of factors, including her “mistaken upbringing,” her fiancé’s influence on her “weak and degenerate brain,” and the atmosphere of Midsummer’s Eve. Therefore, Strindberg believes he has not been “one-sided” in writing the play, as the wealth of contributing factors implicate many people and elements of society in Miss Julie’s fate.

Strindberg also claims that he attempted to make his characters “characterless,” to fight against writers like Moliere who created stagnant stock characters that have no depth or proximity to reality. Instead, Strindberg aims to present “modern” characters that are caught in a period of transition and are, therefore, “vacillating and out of joint.” In other words, Strindberg explains that his characters are more allegorical than individual, standing in for different kinds of people and historical attitudes through time.

Strindberg explains that Miss Julie is a “modern character” because the “man-hating half woman” has begun to get more power in society as she becomes more educated and controls her own wealth. Strindberg sees this trend as a threat not only to society at large, but also to the gene pool of humanity, as these women are able to convince “weak” men to have children with them. According to Strindberg, their offspring are members of an “indeterminate sex” who lead tortured lives because their misguided upbringings counteract their fundamental natures. Ultimately, Strindberg explains, the indeterminate sexes die, like Miss Julie, in “fundamental struggles against nature.”

However, Strindberg believes that Miss Julie is also a tragic character because she comes from military nobility, and is therefore bound by an upper-class sense of duty to preserving the honor of her family. Strindberg likens this “superstition” about familial honor to harakiri, an ancient Japanese process in which noblemen would fall on their own swords when they had been dishonored by an enemy. Strindberg believes that Miss Julie cannot live without her honor and therefore commits suicide.

Because Jean is not a nobleman, however, he does not have the same superstitious connection to honor, which allows him to survive his tryst with Miss Julie. Strindberg explains that Jean is “of the kind that builds new stock”: a man who adapts to his surroundings and uses refined tastes and a superior intellect to craft a “polished outside” to mask his poor upbringing. Strindberg explains that because Jean is able to run in more upper-class circles, he has become “a stranger” to other members of his own class.

Strindberg explains that Jean has “at once the slave’s brutality and the Master’s lack of squeamishness,” meaning that he will not allow the tryst with Miss Julie to halt his goals for the future, and will likely end his life owning his own hotel. Strindberg even posits that Jean may become a count himself one day (in Romania where you can buy aristocratic titles) and, if not, his son will likely go to college and could even become a lawyer. 

Strindberg claims that Jean’s lower class is an advantage as it allows him to “look at the world from below,” examining and learning from the upper classes. Therefore, even though Jean agrees when Julie asks if poverty is a terrible misfortune, he also uses his low station to his advantage, as it sets him apart.

Strindberg adds that Jean, stands above Miss Julie because he is a man. “Sexually he is an aristocrat,” explains Strindberg, “because of his male strength, his more finely developed senses and his capacity for taking the initiative.” Therefore, Strindberg posits, the only thing holding Jean back in life is his class, which he will ultimately be able to transcend.

However, Strindberg notes that Jean’s “slave” mind does show up in his fear and reverence for the Count, as well as in his belief in God. Jean primarily views the Count as an example of the kind of success and wealth that he hopes to achieve for himself.

In terms of the relationship between Julie and Jean, Strindberg explains that he does not believe that “two souls of such different quality” can be in love, but he does claim that Jean believes that if the social conditions were different, he could imagine himself feeling something close to real love for Miss Julie. Strindberg notes that love is like a hyacinth, which spreads roots in darkness before the bud can grow towards the light. In this case, the darkness of the circumstances that lead Julie and Jean to sleep together could have led to love if they had been of the same class.

Strindberg abruptly changes his focus to Christine, who he explains is “purposefully sketched as an ordinary character,” meant to stand in for the kind slow, overly-pious servants that Jean is trying to distance himself from. Strindberg particularly distains Christine’s extreme piety, explaining that it is a way that she can remain “guiltless” and overly moralistic while still lying and stealing to suit her own needs. 

In terms of dialogue, Strindberg explains that he purposefully tried to mimic natural speech, allowing his characters to speak in clipped sentences, trail off and interrupt their own trains of thought as people do in life, instead of using the forced and overly-formal style of French dramatic dialogue of the same period.  Strindberg explains that his dialogue repeats, rehashes ideas, and grows like a piece of music.

In terms of the characters, Strindberg chose to exclusively focus on Jean and Julie (adding Christine in for reference), but he made sure to keep the “unfortunate spirit of the father hovering above the action.” Strindberg believed that the Count provides important psychological background for both Julie and Jean’s action, and gave his drama a psychological undertone.

Strindberg explains that he purposefully wrote Miss Julie without an intermission because he worried that the hypnotic hold that the action has over the audience would be broken if they were able to take a break from the story. In addition, Strindberg dictates that the play should be 90 minutes long, since a play with so many heavy moral themes would become more like a punishing sermon if it lasted any longer. Strindberg notes that he made that mistake with his 1872 play The Outlaw, which lasted too long and the audience became restless.

Strindberg, worried that even 90 minutes may be too long for an audience to sit still, has broken the action in Miss Julie up with dance, songs, and pantomime in order to hold his audience’s attention. Eventually, Strindberg explains, he hopes for “a public educated to the point that they can sit through a whole-evening performance in a single act.”

Strindberg explains that he uses a pantomime instead of a monologue when Christine cleans the kitchen because he believes that monologues are unrealistic, and only truly talented and “creative” actors can improvise enough action and intention to make sense of the fact that they are talking to themselves for a long period of time. Likewise, Strindberg has “permitted” music in his dance sequence, but notes that it should not be any music that would be found in a musical or comedy.

Strindberg explains that he borrowed the Impressionist idea of “asymmetry” in his set design. The entirety of the play takes place in the kitchen, primarily to deprive the audience of lavish scenery that could distract them. In addition, Strindberg dictates that the furniture should be arranged so that the audience can see both Julie and Jean’s faces whenever they sit across from each other at the table. Above all else, Strindberg explains, the set should feel realistic, as if the audience is truly sitting in a kitchen with Jean and Julie, and witnessing a moment of ultimate tension and intimacy.

Strindberg also explains that, in terms of the actors, he has eliminated the use of footlights (commonly used to give actors’ faces a full, rosy appearance) and asks the actors to wear little-to-no makeup in order to look “lifelike.” Indeed, Strindberg notes that, in an ideal world, the play would be staged in a small space, so that the actors could be lit primarily with side light and wear virtually no makeup at all. He also asks that the actors make full use of the stage, even turning their backs on the audience if they feel it is appropriate to the action.

In his final paragraph, Strindberg makes an uncannily accurate predication for what the future of theatrical spaces should look like. He explains that, in his ideal world, he would place the orchestra in a “pit” so as to not distract the audience, and place the audience on risers or raked seats to that they have a more complete view of the action. In addition, Strindberg would eliminate dining boxes and dim the lights completely during the performance, so that the audience is not able to distract themselves from the action onstage. If these changes are made, Strindberg posits, “a new dramatic art might arise, and the theater might at least become an institution for the entertainment of people with culture.”