Miss Julie

by

August Strindberg

Miss Julie Character Analysis

The title character of Miss Julie, Miss Julie is the hot-blooded and unpredictable daughter of the Count, and the mistress of both Jean and Christine. According to August Strindberg in his Preface to Miss Julie, Miss Julie’s demeanor throughout the play, because it is out of step with what would have been proper and ladylike, makes her a “half-woman.” He writes, “Miss Julie is a modern character, not because the man-hating half-woman may not have existed in all ages, but because now, after her discovery, she has stepped to the front and begun to make a noise. The half-woman is a type coming more and more into prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations, distinctions, diplomas, as formerly for money, and the type indicates degeneration.” The “degeneration” Strindberg refers to is a product of Miss Julie’s unconventional upbringing. Miss Julie was born to a common mother who married her father, the Count without truly wanting to. Her mother disdained the idea of marriage and conventional female roles, and brought Julie up in a home where there were no conventional gender or class roles. Therefore, Julie grew up riding horses and doing things generally reserved for male children. As a result—according to Strindberg—Julie is constantly fighting against “natural” womanly imperatives like getting married and having children, and the emotional dysphoria and discord that arise from this ultimately render her unable to survive in the world. Indeed, Miss Julie is a largely allegorical character, standing in for Strindberg’s beliefs that the European aristocracy was an outmoded and restrictive social construct that elevated evolutionarily unstable individuals (like Julie) while subjugating and enslaving strong, smart, and intuitive men (like Jean.) Miss Julie is also a manifestation of Strindberg’s greater mistrust of and disdain for women, whom he portrayed throughout his body of work as bewitching temptresses whose chief goal was to unseat and overpower men. Miss Julie takes this fear to the extreme. A self-proclaimed “man-hater,” Julie breaks her own engagement when she tires of dominating and controlling her willingly submissive fiancée. Jean seduces Miss Julie and shames her after they make love, ultimately compelling her to commit suicide. In this way, Strindberg uses Julie’s character to argue that such degenerate women are no match for strong, self-possessed, “real” men like Jean. In addition, because Strindberg views Julie’s beliefs about her own autonomy to be an evolutionary defect, he presents her suicide as a necessary sacrifice so that she will not breed with a “degenerate man,” and “produce indeterminate sexes to whom life is a torture.”

Miss Julie Quotes in Miss Julie

The Miss Julie quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Julie or refer to Miss Julie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Biology vs. Society Theme Icon
).
Author’s Preface  Quotes

Miss Julie is a modern character, not because the man-hating half-woman may not have existed in all ages, but because now, after her discovery, she has stepped to the front and begun to make a noise. The half-woman is a type coming more and more into prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations … as formerly for money.

Related Characters: Miss Julie
Page Number: xiii
Explanation and Analysis:

It is this, the nobleman’s harikiri or the law of the inner conscience compelling the Japanese to cut open his own abdomen at the insult of another… for this reason the valet, Jean continues to live, but Miss Julie cannot live without honor.”

Related Characters: Miss Julie
Page Number: xiii
Explanation and Analysis:
Miss Julie Quotes

They were in the stable yard one evening, and the young lady was training him, as she called it. Do you know what that meant? She made him leap over her horse whip the way you teach a dog to jump.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, Christine
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:

The young lady is too stuck up in some ways and not proud enough in others. Just as was the countess when she lived. She was most at home in the kitchen and among the cows, but she would never drive with only one horse.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, Julie’s Mother
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

Don't take it as a command. To-night we should enjoy ourselves as a lot of happy people, and all rank should be forgotten.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

Take my advice, Miss Julie, don’t step down. Nobody will believe that you did it on purpose. The people will always say that you fell down.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

I have a dream that comes back to me ever so often… I have climbed to the top of a column and sit there without being able to tell how to get down again. I get dizzy when I look down, and I must get down, but I haven’t the courage to jump off.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you know how the world looks from below no, you don't. No more than do hawks and falcons, of whom we never see the back because they are always floating about high up in the sky.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

And I saw you walking among the roses, and I thought: if it be possible for a robber to get into heaven and dwell with the angels, then it is strange that a cotter's child, here on God's own earth, cannot get into the park and play with the count's daughter.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

Well, it wouldn't be easy to repeat. But I was rather surprised, and I couldn't understand where you had learned all those words. Perhaps, at bottom, there isn't quite so much difference as they think between one kind of people and another.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:

No, Miss Julie, they don't love you. They take your food and spit at your back. Believe me

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

That's the life, I tell you! Constantly new faces and new languages. Never a minute free for nerves or brooding. No trouble about what to do-for the work is calling to be done: night and day.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:

There will be barriers between us as long as we stay in this house… there is the count – and I have never met another person for whom I felt such respect. If I only catch sight of his gloves on a chair I feel small. If I only hear that bell up there, I jump like a shy horse.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, The Count
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

I? Of course! I have my expert knowledge, my vast experience, my familiarity with several languages. That's the very best kind of capital, I should say.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

I think I read the story in a paper, and it was about a chimney-sweep who crawled into a wood-box full of lilacs because a girl had brought suit against him for not supporting her kid-.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted tonight. Do you think any servant girl would go for a man as you did? Did you ever see a girl of my class throw herself at anybody in that way? I have never seen the like of it except among beasts and prostitutes.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

Don't you see: I could have made a countess of you, but you could never make me a count.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

I came into the world-against my mother’s wish, I have come to think. Then my mother wanted to bring me up in a perfectly natural state, and at the same time I was to learn everything that a boy is taught, so that I might prove that a woman is just as good as a man.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Julie’s Mother
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

But I have read about your pedigree in a book that was lying on the drawing-room table. Do you know who was your first ancestor? A miller who let his wife sleep with the king one night during the war with Denmark. I have no such ancestry. I have none at all, but I can become an ancestor myself.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:

I can't leave! I can't stay! Help me! I am so tired, so fearfully tired. Give me orders! Set me going, for I can no longer think, no longer act –

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

…but there's after all some difference between one kind of people and another- No, but this is something I'll never get over – And the young lady was so proud, and so tart to the men, that you couldn't believe she would ever let one come near her-and such a one at that!

Related Characters: Christine (speaker), Miss Julie, Jean
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

You think I cannot stand the sight of blood. You think I am as weak as that –oh, I should like to see your blood, your brains, on that block there. I should like to see your whole sex swimming in blood like that thing there. I think I could drink out of your skull, and bathe my feet in your open breast…

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

I don't know: I believe no longer in anything… Nothing! Nothing at all!

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:

But he was the one who reared me in contempt for my own sex—half woman and half man! Whose fault is it, this that has happened? My father's—my mother's—my own? My own? Why, I have nothing that is my own.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Julie’s Mother, The Count
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

Command me, and I'll obey you like a dog! Do me this last favor – save my honor, and save his name! You know what my will ought to do, and what it cannot do-now give me your will, and make me do it!

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean, The Count
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
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Miss Julie PDF

Miss Julie Quotes in Miss Julie

The Miss Julie quotes below are all either spoken by Miss Julie or refer to Miss Julie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Biology vs. Society Theme Icon
).
Author’s Preface  Quotes

Miss Julie is a modern character, not because the man-hating half-woman may not have existed in all ages, but because now, after her discovery, she has stepped to the front and begun to make a noise. The half-woman is a type coming more and more into prominence, selling herself nowadays for power, decorations … as formerly for money.

Related Characters: Miss Julie
Page Number: xiii
Explanation and Analysis:

It is this, the nobleman’s harikiri or the law of the inner conscience compelling the Japanese to cut open his own abdomen at the insult of another… for this reason the valet, Jean continues to live, but Miss Julie cannot live without honor.”

Related Characters: Miss Julie
Page Number: xiii
Explanation and Analysis:
Miss Julie Quotes

They were in the stable yard one evening, and the young lady was training him, as she called it. Do you know what that meant? She made him leap over her horse whip the way you teach a dog to jump.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, Christine
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:

The young lady is too stuck up in some ways and not proud enough in others. Just as was the countess when she lived. She was most at home in the kitchen and among the cows, but she would never drive with only one horse.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, Julie’s Mother
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

Don't take it as a command. To-night we should enjoy ourselves as a lot of happy people, and all rank should be forgotten.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

Take my advice, Miss Julie, don’t step down. Nobody will believe that you did it on purpose. The people will always say that you fell down.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

I have a dream that comes back to me ever so often… I have climbed to the top of a column and sit there without being able to tell how to get down again. I get dizzy when I look down, and I must get down, but I haven’t the courage to jump off.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you know how the world looks from below no, you don't. No more than do hawks and falcons, of whom we never see the back because they are always floating about high up in the sky.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:

And I saw you walking among the roses, and I thought: if it be possible for a robber to get into heaven and dwell with the angels, then it is strange that a cotter's child, here on God's own earth, cannot get into the park and play with the count's daughter.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 12
Explanation and Analysis:

Well, it wouldn't be easy to repeat. But I was rather surprised, and I couldn't understand where you had learned all those words. Perhaps, at bottom, there isn't quite so much difference as they think between one kind of people and another.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:

No, Miss Julie, they don't love you. They take your food and spit at your back. Believe me

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:

That's the life, I tell you! Constantly new faces and new languages. Never a minute free for nerves or brooding. No trouble about what to do-for the work is calling to be done: night and day.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 15
Explanation and Analysis:

There will be barriers between us as long as we stay in this house… there is the count – and I have never met another person for whom I felt such respect. If I only catch sight of his gloves on a chair I feel small. If I only hear that bell up there, I jump like a shy horse.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie, The Count
Page Number: 16
Explanation and Analysis:

I? Of course! I have my expert knowledge, my vast experience, my familiarity with several languages. That's the very best kind of capital, I should say.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:

I think I read the story in a paper, and it was about a chimney-sweep who crawled into a wood-box full of lilacs because a girl had brought suit against him for not supporting her kid-.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

You're the right one to come and tell me that I am vulgar. People of my kind would never in their lives act as vulgarly as you have acted tonight. Do you think any servant girl would go for a man as you did? Did you ever see a girl of my class throw herself at anybody in that way? I have never seen the like of it except among beasts and prostitutes.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:

Don't you see: I could have made a countess of you, but you could never make me a count.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:

I came into the world-against my mother’s wish, I have come to think. Then my mother wanted to bring me up in a perfectly natural state, and at the same time I was to learn everything that a boy is taught, so that I might prove that a woman is just as good as a man.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Julie’s Mother
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

But I have read about your pedigree in a book that was lying on the drawing-room table. Do you know who was your first ancestor? A miller who let his wife sleep with the king one night during the war with Denmark. I have no such ancestry. I have none at all, but I can become an ancestor myself.

Related Characters: Jean (speaker), Miss Julie
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:

I can't leave! I can't stay! Help me! I am so tired, so fearfully tired. Give me orders! Set me going, for I can no longer think, no longer act –

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 25
Explanation and Analysis:

…but there's after all some difference between one kind of people and another- No, but this is something I'll never get over – And the young lady was so proud, and so tart to the men, that you couldn't believe she would ever let one come near her-and such a one at that!

Related Characters: Christine (speaker), Miss Julie, Jean
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

You think I cannot stand the sight of blood. You think I am as weak as that –oh, I should like to see your blood, your brains, on that block there. I should like to see your whole sex swimming in blood like that thing there. I think I could drink out of your skull, and bathe my feet in your open breast…

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

I don't know: I believe no longer in anything… Nothing! Nothing at all!

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:

But he was the one who reared me in contempt for my own sex—half woman and half man! Whose fault is it, this that has happened? My father's—my mother's—my own? My own? Why, I have nothing that is my own.

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Julie’s Mother, The Count
Page Number: 34
Explanation and Analysis:

Command me, and I'll obey you like a dog! Do me this last favor – save my honor, and save his name! You know what my will ought to do, and what it cannot do-now give me your will, and make me do it!

Related Characters: Miss Julie (speaker), Jean, The Count
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis: