Even though he died more than a century ago, the influence of the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg is still being felt today. The play for which he is probably best known is Miss Julie, a visceral take on lust, class and the battle of the sexes that has seen many reinventions since he wrote it in 1888.
The reason why it lends itself to different interpretations, and updatings, is that the premise is a simple one: Julie, the rich, entitled daughter of an aristocrat sets about the cold-blooded seduction of her father's attractive but low-born valet, Jean, who is at once beguiled and repelled by her.
Never one to underestimate his own talent, Strindberg declared Miss Julie to be a masterpiece, adding that it was ‘the first naturalistic tragedy of Swedish drama,’ in which he delved into the psychological motivation of his characters in an unprecedented way. That may have been true for Sweden but his Norwegian contemporary Henrik Ibsen, with plays like A Doll's House (1879) and Ghosts (1881), was already setting the pace for other European dramatists a lot earlier.
In his definitive 1987 biography of Strindberg, Michael Meyer claimed Miss Julie was revolutionary in its treatment of sex. He writes: ‘Before Strindberg, sex in drama is something in which only married people or wicked people indulge. Miss Julie's tragedy is that she does not want to sleep with (Jean), she wants to be f***ed by him.’
Unsurprisingly such an unabashed approach to sex meant there was a lot of nervousness about staging Miss Julie, especially after its publication in Sweden had been met with a hostile reception. Reviewers called it ‘totally repellent’ and ‘a heap of ordure.’ Having been banned from public performance in Sweden, Strindberg managed to produce it privately at the Copenhagen University Student Union in 1889 in front of an audience of 150 students – hardly the triumphant premiere he'd imagined.
It would be another 17 years before Miss Julie was seen in Stockholm. The audience heard things they knew to be true but had never been said in a theatre before. The critics acclaimed it, the audience cheered. Finally, Strindberg's belief in its merit was vindicated.
Themes
Strindberg's over-arching theme is that you can be sexually attracted to someone for whom you have no respect and little in common. In his preface to the play, he describes his two main protagonists as ‘modern characters in an age of transition.’ Julie represents a dying breed of aristocratic privilege, while Jean is emblematic of a more upwardly mobile servant class. For all her fevered desires, Julie is constrained by her upbringing while Jean believes anything is possible.
Darwin's theory of evolution, published in 1859, was a huge influence on Strindberg who, in his preface, described Julie and Jean as ‘vying against each other in an evolutionary life and death battle for a survival of the fittest.’
The other major influence on the playwright was the late nineteenth century trend for naturalism (as practised by Ibsen, Zola, Granville Barker and Shaw, among others, at this time) which sought to bring a more realistic and psychological approach to character and exposition in all forms of fiction. In theatrical terms, this meant less gesticulation and flamboyance, more introspection and reflection.
Interpretations
Despite its faltering start, Miss Julie has proved one of the most durable ‘classics’ of all time, notching up seven film versions, six for TV, five operas, one ballet and countless stage versions all over the world.
One of the most successful reinventions is Patrick Marber's After Miss Julie (1995), which relocates the drama to an English country house on the eve of the Labour Party's landslide election victory in 1945. Originally written for TV, it was adapted for the stage by Marber in 2003 and has been revived many times. Reviewing it for The Guardian, Michael Billington wrote: ‘The real virtue of Marber's version is that it refreshes an old play and reminds us that it is as much about psychological disintegration as the never-ending sex and class wars.’
An even bolder relocation takes place in Yael Farber's Mies Julie (2012), in which an aristocratic white woman has sex with a black manservant in South Africa's Western Cape on Freedom Day, commemorating the end of apartheid. In addition to the class and gender stand-off, there is the weight of colonial oppression and racial inequality hanging over the couple as they negotiate their mutual attraction.
Most recently, Laura Lomas brought the story bang up to date with The House Party (2024) in which Julie has morphed onto a precocious millennial teenager holding a riotous, Saltburn-esque party in her parents' smart town house. Clearly the prescient Strindberg tapped into a universal truth about sexual attraction, entitlement and class that is still acutely relevant 136 years on.
Resources
- Strindberg: A Biography by Michael Meyer (1985), published by Secher & Warburg
- After Miss Julie by Patrick Marber, published by Methuen Drama
- Mies Julie by Yael Farber, published by Oberon Modern Plays
- The House Party, published by Nick Hern Books