Miss Julie Essay Questions

Why is Julie's upbringing so important in this play?

Julie was raised non-traditionally by her mother. This means that her mother did not raise her as one would expect a "normal" girl to be raised. Instead, she taught Julie how to do work that women didn't do in her social class, such as riding a horse and even going hunting. Julie was also raised to have contempt for men, and this childhood upbringing affects her relationship with Jean. Strindberg condemns her as a "half-woman" and suggests that she has been ruined from her earliest years.

What role do flowers play in the drama?

Flowers are mentioned multiple times in the text, particularly lilacs, which are associated with sexuality. Miss Julie has a scented handkerchief and asks Jean to pick her flowers; Kristin is seemingly immune to the effects of flowers. As the flirtation progresses, flowers and nature come into play even more. Stephen G. Hayes and Jules Zentner note that "In preparation of that battle [to seduce Miss Julie], Jean twice uses floral symbolism as part of his campaign of seduction. When Julie tells of the dream in which she is atop a pillar and wants to come down, Jean answers that he dreams of climbing 'ett högt träd i en mörk skog' [a tall tree in a dark wood]...That Julie understands both the social and sexual levels of his answer she proves by immediately inviting him out into the park, the aristocrat's domain over which Cupid presides." Jean also brings in flowers when describing the idyllic life they can live in Lake Como, but it is deeply problematic: "Strindberg uses this description as he had earlier in the play to underline the delusive effect of flora and, in Julie's repetition of it, to underline Julie's susceptibility to Jean's use of floral suggestion. The grotesqueness of Jean's floral idyll becomes increasingly clear as the hotel that he speaks of running takes shape as an elaborate and profitable brothel."

What role does alcohol play in the play?

Alcohol is a signifier of class (wine is associated with the aristocracy, beer with the lower sorts) as well as an indication of the general distancing of oneself from clarity of thought, acuity of observation, and conformity to norms and conventions. When Jean and Miss Julie drink, they are loosening their ties to the way things are and the way things should be; they are toying with a different reality, one that is not fated to come to fruition.

Though he is never glimpsed onstage, why does the Count inspire such strong feelings in Jean and Miss Julie?

The Count is a powerful patriarchal figure, looming large in the play, through his stand-in of boots and bell. When the bell sounds, it strikes fear into Miss Julie, as she knows her father will not approve of her behavior. For Jean, the bell incites cringing deference, reminding him of his lower status. Critic Goran Stockenstrum notes, "Like the ghost of Hamlet's father, the count represents the paternal authority in the play's social microcosm but also 'the father within' who commands both Jean and Julie through a conscience rooted in patriarchal society." Miss Julie and Jean may want to transgress class and gender norms, but the figure of the Count reminds them of how incredibly difficult that is to do.

Does Miss Julie have a demonstrated desire to die even before the end of the play?

Stockenstrum suggests that Miss Julie does have a desire to die, and that "her desire to die is introduced as a reflection of her existential alienation, a product of nature and nurture." She is alienated from her gender because of the way her mother raised her, alienated from her class by her behavior, and alienated from herself because of the various forces pulling at her. She often speaks dreamily of how terrible life is, and then later bursts out from a place of rage and bloodlust; both of these seemingly diametrically opposed emotional and rhetorical states are actually complementary in that they indicate she is unmoored from life and desirous of burning everything down.