Summary
The peasants dance onto the stage, singing and wearing flowers. They exit.
Miss Julie and Jean enter, and Jean tells her they should run away to Switzerland and he will start a first-rate hotel. There will be new faces, languages, adventures, and opportunities. He says she can be the mistress and jewel of the house, with people paying her tribute. He urges her to catch the next train with him.
Miss Julie tells him she needs courage, and he must take her in his arms. Nervously, he says no. Miss Julie begs him to drop the “Miss' ' and just call her Julie, but he is tormented and says there is too much history as well as his Lordship, whom Jean deeply respects. He then bursts out that he was born to bow and scrape but he will climb and make something of himself nonetheless.
Miss Julie only wants him to say he loves her, but he repeats that he will not say it here in this house. He says they have to be cool about things or they are lost. Miss Julie despairs that he has no feelings and he says they don't have time for this. He asks what she thinks of his plans for the future, and she says they sound lovely but wonders if he has the capital to pull it off. Jean replies that he has professional expertise and knowledge of languages. Miss Julie looks at him and says that is not enough to even buy a railway ticket. He shrugs that he has a backer.
Miss Julie states that it cannot be her, as she has no money. Jean tells her the plan is off, then, and things will stay as they are. Miss Julie cannot remain under the same roof as him, with people looking at her and her father knowing, so she begs him to take her away. The shame is too much for her, and she weeps.
Jean is disdainful and says that she has done what many others before her have. She screams that she is falling and he must despise her now. She wonders what terrible power drew her to him—was it the weak to the strong or was it love? Does he even know what love is?
Jean laughs and says of course he does, and this was not his first time. He says they are birds of a feather now and takes out the bottle of wine and pours them two glasses. Miss Julie is aghast that he has taken her father’s wine. She cries that she is an accomplice to a thief and no one can be as miserable as her.
Jean asks how she can be miserable after such a conquest; after all, what about poor Kristin? Miss Julie says a servant is a servant, and Jean retorts that a whore is a whore. Miss Julie collapses in her despair and Jean admits he feels sorry for her, but that women always fall for such pretty stories.
Jean grows tired of Miss Julie and calls her a “Lackey’s whore, servant’s tart” (91). He orders her to leave and savages her for being crude. No servant girl would behave like she did, he says—only prostitutes. Miss Julie acutely feels the shame and says she is indeed a miserable wretch.
Jean says that a man like him would not even have looked at a woman like her without the invitation, but that he won’t hit a woman while she is down. He is sorry to see her sunk so low, which is like “watching the flowers being lashed to pieces by the autumn rain and turning into mud” (91). Miss Julie protests that he is not above her, as she is a count’s daughter, and Jean agrees she is a fine woman who was a victim of intoxication. However, she does not really love him and cannot lose him, and he does not want to be her creature. He moves closer to her, complimenting her and trying to move in for a kiss again, but she pushes him away. She cries that he cannot win her like that, and he suggests they run away together. She straightens up, takes the wine, and agrees to do so but they must talk first.
Jean tells her not to get drunk because it is vulgar. She ignores him and says she is going to tell him about her life so they can know each other before they set out together. She begins by explaining that her mother was a commoner from a humble background, but espoused theories of women’s equality and autonomy. Julie’s father was passionately in love with her and ignored this. Julie was born out of wedlock and her mother raised her as a child of nature. Julie was determined to learn everything a boy learned and “demonstrate that a woman was just as good as any man” (93). The family became the laughingstock of the neighborhood, so Julie’s father stepped in and set things straight. Her parents married, her mother fell ill, and then one night the house, stables, and barn burnt down under mysterious circumstances. There were suspicions of arson, especially as the insurance premiums expired the previous day. The family was left penniless and her mother told her father to get a loan, which he did. It was from the bricklayer, who was her mother’s lover. Her father rebuilt the house but her mother burned it down. Her mother had had a little capital of her own but had invested it with her “friend,” so her father had no recourse. He almost killed himself, but refrained. Her mother was forced to pay for her actions, but taught her daughter to hate men. Julie vowed never to be a slave to any man.
Jean asks about the lawyer fiancé, and she says that it was so he’d be her slave. Jean mentions how he saw the man break off their engagement, and Miss Julie says it was actually she who did it. He asks if she hates men and she admits she does sometimes.
They are at an impasse, and Miss Julie sighs that they should just enjoy each other for a couple days or a week or as long as it lasts—maybe until an imminent death. Jean says the hotel is a better idea than that. In response, Miss Julie dreamily says they can have it by Lake Como. Jean is not impressed with that place, and decides he is fed up with this conversation. He does not want to die romantically, he does not want to enter some “mesalliance” with Miss Julie.
He sneers that he actually comes from a finer line than she does, as none of his relatives committed arson. He’s looked into the Peerage book and seen her less-than-illustrious ancestors, and he is lucky he does not have anyone in that record.
Miss Julie is devastated by this, and bemoans that she has sacrificed her family’s honor. Jean asks what she expects of him. He will not cry or kiss her or lure her to the Lake; this is getting tiresome, and he can see she is suffering but he cannot understand her. There is nothing they can do about this. He thinks her mother was sick and she too is mad.
Miss Julie begs him to tell her what to do. He suggests staying here and doing nothing, but she says the servants know, and Kristin does too. Plus, there are other potential consequences, insinuating a child. At this, Jean is frightened and says she must leave. She should depart before his Lordship comes home and then write to him and tell him what happened but not name Jean. Miss Julie says she will go if he goes with her, but he balks. She wants him to order her to do it. He calls her a pathetic creature and gives her the order. She leaves forlornly.
Alone, Jean sits quietly. Kristin comes in and smiles that Jean promised to come to communion with her today. He agrees, and she fixes up his shirt.
Kristin notices the glasses and asks if he and Miss Julie were drinking together. She also knowingly asks if something happened and chides him when he confirms it. She says she is disgusted by it but not jealous at all. In fact, she adds, it was wicked of him and she feels badly for Miss Julie. In her mind, they all need to respect their betters and she does not agree with Jean that they are the same. She says “If they’re no better than we are, there’s no point in trying to be like them” (100).
They briefly discuss their plans to marry and to go to church.
Analysis
Strindberg inserts a (rather non-naturalistic, as many critics point out) ballet of peasants dancing and singing to account for the time that elapses in the play—a time in which Jean and Miss Julie consummate their flirtation, something that will inevitably lead to her death and thus illustrate Strindberg’s views on the way one’s social class and gender indelibly shape one’s fate. Critic Una Chaudhuri argues that space also has a role in the intersection of sex and class that the play explores, writing, “The plot of Miss Julie turns on an unusual conjunction of sexual and spatial determinism, an association which also includes the issue of class. The aristocratic Julie and her valet Jean are literally and figuratively trapped into intercourse when, to avoid being seen together alone, they are forced into hiding in Jean's room. This fateful concealment, which Strindberg is at pains to characterize also as a fated development, renders the disruption of class roles as sexuality, and sexuality (that transgressive, forbidden, fatal sexuality) as the inevitable outcome of a momentary and enforced privacy. In acting according to the taboos and dictates of a rigid class society, it would seem, the characters are doomed to transgress two of the orders in which that society inscribes itself, the orders of sexuality and territoriality.
After they have sex, both Jean and Miss Julie realize what a complicated situation they’ve thrust themselves into. Jean first lets himself be carried away with dreams, which center on the two of them running away and his using Miss Julie’s money to start a high-class resort (which actually sounds like a brothel). As he waxes poetic, Miss Julie can only think of how she needs Jean to say he loves her in order to legitimize what they’ve done. Ever the practical figure, Jean knows he cannot say it, not only because he does not love her (though telling a lie does not seem like it would bother him) but because he does not want her to cling more tightly to him. He only wants to use her in order to rise, claiming “I wasn’t born to bow and scrape, there’s something more to me, I’ve got character, just let me get hold of the first branch, and soon you’ll see me climb!” (88). He is irritated by her emotions and warns her that they have to “approach things coolly” (88). Goren Stockenstrum writes that the “decorum of class is broken and with it all possibilities of retreat…In Jean’s ability to respond to Julie’s urgent plea, the tragic peripety is revealed as one of social class, and this illuminates Strindberg’s choice of title for his tragedy, Froken Julie in Swedish, referring to her state of being a member of the aristocracy.”
Miss Julie, however, cannot control her emotions. She is distressed that Jean will not say he loves her and that he seems to have no feelings. She also knows that her options are slim: “Do you think I’ll stay under this roof as your easy lay? Do you think I’ll let people point their fingers at me, that I can look my father in the face after this? No! Take me away from here, from the shame and dishonour!” (89). She also recognizes that something has shifted in the power dynamic between the two of them, telling Jean in an anguished tone, “You speak as if you were already above me” (91), and he replies “I am, too. You see, I could turn you into a countess, but you can never make me a count” (92). She feebly tries to exercise her power by calling him a “lackey” and a “servant,” but he brings in both class and gender in his retort: “Lackey’s whore, servant’s tart, shut your mouth and get out of here! How dare you go and call me crude? No one of my sort has ever behaved as crudely as you have this evening. Do you think aunty of the girls around here would approach a man the way you did? Have you seen a girl of my class offer herself like that? I’ve only seen the like among animals and prostitutes” (91). He sneers that he is sorry to see her “sunk so low you’re far below your cook” (91). Here Jean excoriates Miss Julie for acting outside of her class norms and her gender norms, but also reveals himself as a hypocrite because this is the very class he wants to join. And mere moments later, caught up in a burst of sexual passion again, he tells her she is a “fine woman, far too good for the likes of me” (92). Jean’s ambivalence about class is a product of his self-serving mindset.
Miss Julie provides more insights into the shaping of her own character, which is essentially Strindberg making the case that the modern woman—a “half-woman,” as his preface deems her—is a scourge to society. Miss Julie’s mother seduced her father, got pregnant out of wedlock, and then initiated a topsy-turvy social experiment at their house where “on the estate the men were put to women’s work and the women’s to men—so that everything went to the dogs, and we became the laughingstock of the neighbourhood” (93). Her father finally “must have woken up from his bewitchment and fought back, for everything was now done his way” (93), but that did not preclude her mother from burning down their house and taking a lover. Miss Julie admits her mother “taught me how to hate men” (95), but that she is sometimes overwhelmed by her sexual desire, which she describes as a “weakness” (95). Strindberg clearly indicates that women’s sexuality is something distasteful and something to be ashamed of, and that a “half-woman” is a disaster. Stockenstrom adds that Miss Julie realizes in her monologue that “unconsciously she had hated the father she had loved with such a passion. This places her tragedy at the heart of the patriarchy and indicates the psychological depth structure of her character. In this way the patriarchal order as the frame for the action becomes the cohering myth embodied in the tragedy of all the characters in the mimetic as well as the diegetic time/space.”
This section ends with Jean ordering Miss Julie to get ready to run away together, and Kristin and Jean discussing what happened. Kristin takes the position that she is not jealous of Miss Julie but rather disdainful of her for violating her station. Jean does not have a strong position, asking why they should respect the upper classes and that if they aren’t better than the servants then they should not be emulated, but then chides Kristin for insulting Miss Julie, saying “Kindly speak with a little more respect; she’s still your mistress. Understand?” (106). He is, as ever, trying to balance the social class he is in with the one he wants to join.
