Miss Julie (Fröken Julie) is a play written by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. He composed the play in a two-week period in late July and early August of 1888. Strindberg deemed it a “modern psychological drama” and a “tragedy,” and when he submitted the manuscript to his publisher, included a note that read: “By this I take the liberty to offer the first Naturalistic Tragedy in Swedish Drama, and I ask you not to refuse it rashly so that you may regret it later, for ... this play will be recorded in the annals.” It was indeed considered boundary-pushing and controversial for its frankness about sex; it was not professionally produced in Sweden until 18 years later, and an uncensored text was not published or performed until the 20th century.
Both the drama itself and its preface are notable in the history of theater. The preface is, critic Michael Robinson claims, “the single most important manifesto of naturalism in the theatre.” The play embodies much of the manifesto in regards to its structure and themes, such as realistic, wandering dialogue; a single act and a shorter run-time; and characters who act based on the effects of the world in which they live.
The preface indicates that the play is based on a real-life incident that captured Strindberg’s imagination, and many examples have been proffered over the years. A compelling one is that Miss Julie is Strindberg's own wife, Siri von Essen, and Strindberg himself is Jean; another theory is that Miss Julie is Countess Frankenau and Jean is her servant Ludvig Hansen, two people with whom Strindberg was living when he wrote the play; yet another is that the characters come from the novels of the Goncourt brothers. Miss Julie’s suicide, however, was modeled on the suicide of the novelist Victoria Benedictsson, who was also dressed as a boy by her father as a child, and whose pseudonym, “Ernst Ahlgren,” seemingly confirmed for Strindberg that she was a “half-woman.”
There have been dozens of stagings all around the world as well as adaptations for film, the most recent being a 2017 version with Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell.
