Miss Julie Literary Elements

Drama

Swedish originally; translated into English

The action takes place in the Count’s house in the kitchen on Saint John’s night, the midsummer festival.

The main narrator is a third person (the author), who narrates the events that occur in the Count’s house between the three main characters. As it is a play, there are dialogues and monologues that help readers understand the relationships between characters.

Tone: lively, condescending, scornful, resigned

Mood: playful, fatalistic, lonely, anxious

The main protagonist is Julie. The main antagonist is Jean.

What will happen to Miss Julie after she sleeps with Jean?

Miss Julie and Jean have sex, and everything that follows is them figuring out what to do next—run away? Pretend that it didn't happen? Die?

1. From the outset, it is clear that Jean and Julie will not be together. Love between the Count’s daughter and a simple servant is impossible, because it is considered a shame for the Count’s family. When Strindberg indicates their respective social positions, he foreshadows that Miss Julie will be left alone with a broken heart.
2. Jean telling Miss Julie her face is white like a corpse's foreshadows her death

"It must be a terrible misfortune to be poor" (83)

1. Strindberg references other playwrights and plays in his preface, such as Moliere and Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
2. Don Quixote is the titular character from Miguel de Cervantes' novel
3. In the preface Strindberg discusses older forms of theater, such as Romanticism, and the current moment of Naturalism
4. Don Juan the classic libertine character from Lord Byron's poem
5. Joseph is the biblical character who refuses to sleep with Potiphar's wife
6. "Arabian Nights" is the famed collection of Middle Eastern folk tales
7. Rubens is a famous Flemish painter from the Baroque era, and Raphael a famous Italian painter from the Renaissance
8. "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle..." is from the Bible, Matthew 19:24

The imagery is primarily of flowers, which are associated with sensuality and hedonism; alcohol and being intoxicated, which alludes to a compromised state of mind; and people being pulled up or pulled down or falling, which alludes to the class divide.

1. "That's how it is when the gentry try to act common—they become common" (73)
2. "You play far too seriously—that's dangerous" (81)

n/a

1. "...letting the father's unhappy spirit hover above and behind it all" (64)
2. "Oh no matter how far you run, a whole baggage-wagon full of memories, remorse, and guilt follows on behind" (102)

1. There are a couple of monologues, such as Jean's talking about his childhood crush on Miss Julie, and Miss Julie's angry outburst
2. There is a chorus
3. There is a setting—the one room of the kitchen
4. Characters enter and exit the stage
5. To some extent, the play begins in medias res
6. The "point of attack" is Jean bursting in and saying Miss Julie is crazy