Play response:Strindberg's "Miss Julie"--incls:Title-Author-Nationality-Period and Setting-Synopsis-Unique Elements of Playwright's Style-Production Challenges/Problems

Essay by x562cambria562x January 2003

download word file, 3 pages 4.8

Downloaded 84 times

Title: Miss Julie

Author: August Strindberg

Nationality: Swedish

Period and Setting: Sweden in the late 1880's (87 or 88) on Mid Summer's Eve. The action all takes in the kitchen of Miss Julie's father, the Count's manor house.

Synopsis: The play begins with Jean the Valet gossiping with Kristin about Miss Julie's wild behavior specifically that night and more generally since her broken engagement that occurred after Miss Julie's Sadomasochistic attempt to conquer her fiancé. Later, after Miss Julie and Jean go to a Mid Summer's Eve dance, they return and Miss Julie confides her longing to relinquish her class status and Jean tells of his desire to gain status. Jean also tells a story of the first time he fell in love with Miss Julie. They then leave and have sex while a mob of peasants storm the kitchen. Afterward, they return and Julie tells Jean she has no money to help his dreams come true at which point he turns on her and reveals his story of how he fell in love with her was all a lie.

Julie then tells him about her life with her feminist mother and her absentee, cowed father and Jean suggests they flee. When Julie comes back, prepared too leave, Jean kills her bird and Julie asks him to kill her too and declares her abhorrence for men and her desire to see them dead and in pain and decides to stay and tell her father about her and Jean. Kristin, who was disgusted to learn of Jean and Julie's sexual relationship (partially due to the romance between her and Jean and partially due to her religious zeal) returns and denies Julie's requests for help and leaves the two to their fate. At the return of the Count,