Miss Julie

By August Strindberg

In Miss Julie, a willful young aristocrat, whose perverse nature has already driven her fiancé to break off their engagement, pursues and effectively seduces her father's valet during the course of a Midsummer's Eve celebration. The progress of that seduction and the play's stunning denouement shocked Swedish audiences who first attended the play in 1889.
Despite its controversial debut, this now-classic drama, inspired by the new ideas of naturalism and psychology that swept Europe in the late 19th century, helped to shape modern theater, and remains one of the most potent-and most frequently performed-of modern plays. The full text of Miss Julie is reprinted here as translated by Edwin Björkman, complete with Strindberg's critical preface to the play, considered by many to be one of the most important manifestos in theater history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Mar 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486111971

August Strindberg

Renowned Swedish writer, playwright and painter August Strindberg is known as one of the fathers of modern theatre. Born in Sweden in 1849, August Strindberg was raised in poverty. A multi-faceted artist given to extremes, he battled depression and emotional turmoils throughout his life. Strindberg was actively involved in the trade union movement and was especially admired by the working class of his time as a radical writer who zealously attacked social ills and hypocrisies in his work. After Strindberg was overlooked by the Swedish Academy for the Nobel Prize for literature in 1909, a grass-roots petition campaign was launched in protest, which resulted in a large sum of money raised to compensate the cherished writer. Strindberg’s early plays were written in the Naturalistic style, the best known of which is Miss Julie, one of the most studied and performed dramas in the world to this day. When he broke with Naturalism, the versatile Strindberg found equal success in producing works informed by Symbolism. He proceeded to become one of the pioneers of the modern European stage and Expressionism. Strindberg’s most engaging dramas deal with the constant and consuming battle for power between the sexes, bound together in perverse and complex relationships in which desire is mingled with scorn, and negotiated within the strictures imposed on class and gender roles by social conventions. Strindberg continued to write of the alienated modern man, who is desperate and alone in a forsaken universe, until his death in 1912.

Reviews for Miss Julie

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tight, complex, brilliant, disturbing. Good theatre.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A tragedy in the traditional sense, despite Strindberg's being a modern playwright. I didn't have much sympathy for the title character at first... She makes some very foolish choices under the influence of alcohol and hormones which have terrible consequences. My initial reaction was 'how could she be so stupid?' but as I thought about the play I realized that while her actions were stupid, they were also not uncommon (especially for someone in late teens/early twenties). One aspect of Miss Julia's behaviour that I really didn't like was when she kept asking the manservant Jean to tell her what to do. Perhaps that rang true in 1888 but it didn't seem to fit in with her character.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I would've rated this 1.5 stars last night as I finished and turned off the light. I didn't feel great, was disappointed with a classical program on NPR and found this play a touch hysterical. During the cold darkness of early morning I reflected on some of the subtle touches, the yellow label and the ill fated bird. The condensed nature of the action was difficult to believe. The pastoral passages by comparison were beautiful.

That said I would afford the Author's Preface five stars as a validation of Naturalism. Strindberg is wonderful in his exposition.

I am still not a fan of the play but would read it again.