Biology vs. Society Theme Analysis

In the preface to Miss Julie, August Strindberg explains that his play is a “Naturalist Tragedy.” Strindberg, who is considered one of the foremost naturalist playwrights of his era, was concerned with creating theater that was highly realistic, with characters who were complex and flawed. However, Strindberg also refers to the play as “naturalist” because he viewed Miss Julie and Jean as two characters whose innate natures are betrayed by the way they have each been brought up. Indeed, throughout the play, both characters consistently reference their upbringings and the constraints of society as the reasons that they cannot achieve their dreams. Jean (who epitomizes Strindberg’s conception of the “new man” of his age) is unable to make the most of his considerable intellect, strength, and ingenuity because he grew up poor and can’t get a leg up. Meanwhile, Julie’s unconventional upbringing gave her ideas about female equality and autonomy that (in Strindberg’s opinion) go against what is “natural” for a woman, ultimately rendering her unable to survive in the world. Jean is ultimately the victor in the play, gaining the upper hand over Julie despite his low class and, Strindberg suggests in the preface, going on to escape servitude. Julie, on the other hand, meets a tragic end when Jean succeeds in convincing her to take her own life—an outcome which Strindberg presents as the natural consequence of her “unnatural” upbringing. Through this sequence of events, Strindberg’s “Naturalist Tragedy” makes an argument for the “survival of the fittest,” suggesting that those who are made strong by their biology will always rise to conquer those whom society artificially props up.

Strindberg believed that as a man with a strong will to alter his social circumstances, Jean is superior to Miss Julie. To prove this, Strindberg uses his preface to introduce the concept of “Sexual Aristocracy,” which posits that biological sex is the true measure of a person’s worth rather than inherited wealth. “Jean stands above Miss Julie not only because his fate is in ascendency, but because he is a man,” Strindberg explains. “Sexually he is the aristocrat because of his male strength, his more finely developed senses, and his capacity for taking the initiative.” Strindberg, believing Jean to be superior to Miss Julie simply because he is a man, consistently highlights Jean’s personal taste and intellect, which sometimes even surpasses Miss Julie’s. He learned French, he says, “in Switzerland, when [he] worked as sommelier in one of the big hotels in Lucerne,” where he also picked up a taste for fine wine and a sense of good breeding. Unlike aristocrats, whose pedigree is conferred at birth, Jean is a self-made man who worked hard to achieve a sense of personal taste. And indeed, Julie selectively validates his efforts. “You are an aristocrat, I think,” she tells him flirtatiously, though she is merely referencing his tastes for fine wine. When Jean responds that he is indeed an aristocrat, she states, “and I am stepping down,” indicating that, while Jean might have many of the intellectual and emotional qualities of a nobleman, she is the one who has the title, and therefore is socially debasing herself by spending time with Jean even if he is her “sexual” superior.  

Yet, while Julie has a title, it is of little use to her because of her “tainted biology.” Strindberg portrays Julie as inferior to prove that the social hierarchy is protecting and elevating “biologically” weak individuals. According to Strindberg, because Julie was brought up as a “half-woman” by her free-thinking mother, and raised to hunt, shoot, and wear boys’ clothes, she lacks the ability to perform the appropriate duties society expects of both a woman and a countess. For example, Julie learned from her mother to disdain the institution of marriage. Julie tells Jean that her mother married her father without really wanting to, and that Julie herself “came into the world against [her] mother’s will.” Therefore, from the outset, Julie does not have the necessary tools to fulfil the primary imperative of noble women: to find a husband and continue her noble family line. Indeed, just as Julie’s mother caused their family’s ruin, Julie ruins her one chance at marriage because she is commanding and cold toward her fiancé instead of warm and nurturing. Without a husband to make her a respectable countess, Julie pursues and fulfils her sexual desire in the way that a man would, ultimately degrading herself and risking bringing shame to her father. Highlighting this disconnect between Julie’s egalitarian upbringing and her noble title, Jean tells Julie that, despite her social class, her promiscuity has made her worse than a servant. “Do you think any servant girl would go for a man as you did?” he asks rhetorically. “Did you ever see a girl of my class throw herself at anybody in that way? I have never seen the like of it except among beasts and prostitutes.” In this way, Strindberg emphasizes Julie’s inferiority to Jean despite her superior social standing, thereby reinforcing the idea of a natural or “sexual aristocracy” that undercuts the constructed hierarchies of European aristocracy.

Although in Strindberg’s estimation Jean’s maleness, resourcefulness, and intellect make him Julie’s moral superior, both he and Julie are ultimately foiled by the artificial social constraints of aristocratic European society. Strindberg portrays Julie’s death as the natural outcome of her unnatural upbringing, while Jean’s masculine strength and intellect is subverted tragically by his social class. In Strindberg’s preface, he outlines the factors the lead to Julie’s death: “her mother’s fundamental instincts; her father's mistaken upbringing of the girl; her own nature, and the suggestive influence of her fiancé on a weak and degenerate brain.” In other words, Julie’s misguided upbringing and “weak and degenerate brain” made it impossible for her to fulfil the natural womanly duties of marriage and motherhood, leading her instead to pursue sex with a servant, which in turn ultimately leads to her suicide. Meanwhile, Jean is stopped from escaping simply because the Count returns abruptly, causing Jean to fall back into patterns of servitude, despite having the intellect and drive necessary to escape his circumstances. In Strindberg’s preface, he indicates that, while Miss Julie fell victim to a “degenerate” biology, and therefore could not survive her tryst with Jean, Jean is a biological and “sexual” aristocrat, who is only barred from success by the artificial boundary of social class, which he will ultimately transcend as (according to Strindberg) the aristocratic power structure would deteriorate over time. By ending the play with Jean ordering Julie to end her own life, Strindberg suggests that the artificial social hierarchy will soon be superseded by a natural hierarchy dominated by “new men” like Jean, thereby ushering in a new, merit-based society where all strong and resourceful men can prosper regardless of the class they were born into.