Miss Julie
EN302: European Theatre
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
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1849: born in Stockholm to a shipping agent and a former maidservant.
1856-67: attends a variety of schools (socially diverse upbringing).
1869: briefly studies medicine.
1877: marries the divorced aristocrat Siri von Essen.
1879: first major literary success with his satirical novel The Red Room.
1883-9: lives in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark.
1886: begins his 4-volume novel The Son of a Servant, in which he writes semiautobiographically about himself as the character ‘Johan’.
1887: The Son of a Servant and The Father (among others)
1888: Miss Julie and Creditors (among others). Miss Julie is refused publication
and not performed in Sweden until 1904; its performances elsewhere in
Europe are initially met with hostility.
1891: divorces Siri von Essen.
1892-1912: far too many interesting things to mention here!
Naturalism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00m7qq1
Darwinism
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Charles Darwin (1809-82) was a
‘Naturalist’ in the scientific sense of the
word.
He published The Origin of Species in 1859.
Natural selection: those members of a
species best adapted to survive in their
environment are more likely to reproduce
and thereby pass their traits on to the next
generation.
Darwin encouraged a rational and critical
outlook based upon empirical evidence.
His theory was shocking and controversial
in its challenge to traditional religious
beliefs.
Émile Zola (1840-1902)
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French novelist and playwright
Influenced by Darwin and the other
scientific developments of the
century, Zola proposed that literature
should reflect the principles of
scientific Naturalism:
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Determinism: all behaviour is
determined by genetics and
environment.
The writer’s task was to depict reality as
objectively and as scientifically as
possible.
‘Naturalism on the Stage’
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Zola published his manifesto on this subject in 1881, in an essay
titled ‘Naturalism on the Stage’.
He claimed to be reflecting the scientific and rational spirit of the
age in which he lived; ‘the impulse of the century,’ he argued, ‘is
toward naturalism’ (1881: 5):
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‘I am waiting for someone to put a man of flesh and bones on the stage,
taken from reality, scientifically analyzed, and described without one lie.
… I am waiting for environment to determine the characters and the
characters to act according to the logic of facts combined with logic of
their own disposition. … I am waiting, finally, until the development of
naturalism already achieved in the novel takes over the stage, until the
playwrights return to the source of science and modem arts, to the study
of nature, to the anatomy of man. (1881: 6)
‘Naturalism on the Stage’
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Zola proposed that naturalistic drama should
focus on ‘natural man’:
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‘…put him in his proper surroundings, and analyze
all the physical and social causes which make him
what he is… he is a thinking animal, who forms part
of nature, and who is subject to the multiple
influences of the soil in which he grows and where
he lives. That is why a climate, a country, a horizon,
are often decisively important.’ (1881: 10)
Thérèse Raquin
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Zola’s first play to explore these ideas was Thérèse Raquin (1873),
an adaptation of his 1867 novel.
This play examined its characters as ‘human organisms’ – as Zola
put it in his Preface, ‘a study in physiology’:
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Surroundings were described in detail and realistically depicted,
emphasising the physiological effects of environment upon characters;
Characters are driven primarily by natural urges and instincts – the sexual
urge, the instinct of self preservation, the parental instinct (‘Therese and
Laurent are human beasts, nothing more.’)
The culmination of the play was to be ‘the mathematical solution of the
problem posed.’
In contriving a ‘comeuppance’ for Therese and Laurent,
however, Zola turns the play into something of a moral fable.
Strindberg the naturalist
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Like Zola, Strindberg saw naturalism as reflective of the scientific
age:
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‘Nowadays the primitive process of intuition is giving way to reflection,
investigation and analysis, and I feel that the theatre, like religion, is on
the way to being discarded as a dying form which we lack the necessary
conditions to enjoy. … we have not succeeded in adapting the old form
to the new content. (1888: 91)
During the 1880s, Strindberg wrote that literature ‘ought to
emancipate itself from art entirely and become a science’ (1992:
202).
Strindberg, it should be noted, had also published academic
studies in the fields of anthropology and nature.
Strindberg described Miss Julie as ‘the first Naturalistic Tragedy in
Swedish Drama’ (1992: 280).
Strindberg’s Preface to Miss Julie
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Michael Robinson argues that ‘the Preface was partly
written to convince Zola of [Strindberg’s] naturalist
credentials’:
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‘Strindberg had sent him a copy of his own French
translation of The Father, in the hope that he would promote
it, but Zola’s response was lukewarm. Although he praised
the play in general terms for its “daring” idea, which is
presented to “powerful and disquieting effect”, he found the
characterization abstract. According to Zola, Strindberg’s
figures lacked “a complete social setting” (un état civil complet).’
(1998: xiii)
Determinism in Miss Julie
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In his Preface, Strindberg describes Miss Julie’s motives as
neither ‘purely physiological’ nor ‘exclusively psychological’
(1888: 94):
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‘The passionate character of her mother; the upbringing misguidedly
inflicted on her by her father; her own character; and the suggestive effect
of her fiancé upon her weak and degenerate brain. Also, more
immediately, the festive atmosphere of Midsummer Night; her father’s
absence; her menstruation; her association with animals; the intoxicating
effect of the dance; the midsummer twilight; the powerfully aphrodisiac
influence of the flowers; and, finally, the chance that drove these two
people together into a private room – plus of course the passion of the
sexually inflamed man.’ (1888: 93-4)
It is worth thinking about the specificity of the play’s setting:
décor, light, symbolism of wider social pressures (e.g. bell,
boots).
Survival of the fittest
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Strindberg’s plays often focus on a fight for dominance
(or even for survival) which Strindberg characterised as
‘the battle of the brains’: a battle between ‘two
implacably hostile minds, bound to each other by desire
and hatred’ (Robinson 1998: xi).
Survival in Strindberg’s universe is not a matter of
morality:
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‘The naturalist has abolished guilt with God’ (1888: 96);
‘The servant Jean is the type who founds a species… He has
already risen in the world, and is strong enough not to worry
about using other people’s shoulders to climb on. … his
tendency is to say what is likely to prove to his own
advantage rather than what is true.’ (1888: 96-7)
Survival of the fittest
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Strindberg was equivocal about the politics of a
Darwinist view of human society:
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‘As for the political planner, who wishes to remedy
the regrettable fact that the bird of prey eats the
dove, and the louse eats the bird of prey, I would ask
him: “Why should this state of affairs be remedied?”
Life is not so foolishly and mathematically arranged
that the great always devour the small. It happens
equally often that a bee kills a lion, or at any rate
drives it mad.’ (1888: 92)
The ‘half-woman’
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Strindberg’s view of human nature as a battle between rival
‘types’ for dominance led him to some rather questionable
conclusions:
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‘The half-woman is a type that pushes herself to the front, nowadays
selling herself for power, honours, decorations and diplomas, as formerly
she used to for money. She is synonymous with corruption. They are a
poor species, for they do not last, but unfortunately they propagate their
like by the wretchedness they cause; and degenerate men seem
unconsciously to choose their mates from among them, so that their
number is increased. They engender an indeterminate sex to whom life is
a torture, but fortunately they go under, either because they cannot adapt
themselves to reality, or because their repressed instinct breaks out
uncontrollably, or because their hopes of attaining equality with men are
shattered. It is a tragic type, providing the spectacle of a desperate battle
against Nature.’ (1888: 95-6)
Photography
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First photograph taken in
1826 by Joseph Nicéphore
Niépce.
William Fox Talbot invented
the photo negative in 1835;
this enabled photographs to
be reproduced.
Long exposure times needed
for sharp, clear pictures.
Technological breakthroughs
meant that exposure time
was reduced over the 19th
century.
Early photograph by William Fox Talbot
Naturalism and photography
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Zola on photography:
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‘To my mind, you cannot say that you have seen the essence of a thing if
you have not taken a photograph of it, revealing a multitude of details
which otherwise could not be discerned.’ (Rugg 1997: 83)
Darwin appears to have agreed: in 1872, he published The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, with Photographic and
Other Illustrations.
In this book, Darwin argues that humans and other animals
betray their own emotions and read those of others – both
consciously and unconsciously – by reading physiological signs.
He writes throughout this book about the relationship between
exterior signs of emotion, and the body’s nervous, respiratory,
and circulatory systems.
‘Expressions of Suffering and
Weeping’ (Darwin 1872: pl. 1)
Strindberg the photographer
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Strindberg himself was a keen photographer; around 80 of his
photographs survive, many of them at the Strindberg Museum,
Stockholm.
In 1892, Strindberg planned to open a photographic studio in
Berlin; he hoped to take what he called ‘psychological portraits’
of his subjects (or ‘victims’):
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‘I have prepared a story for myself … which contains all possible moods.
I tell this story to myself while I am exposing the plates and gazing fixedly
at the victim. Without suspecting that I am forcing him to do so, only
under the influence of my suggestion, he is obliged to react to all the
moods I go through in the meantime. And the plate fixes the expression
on his face. … In thirty seconds I have captured the whole man!’ (Rugg
1997: 112-113)
Is this a Darwinist view of emotion?
Strindberg’s self-portraits show him in a variety of roles (author,
father, gentleman, musician) – a fractured, unstable ‘self’?
Strindberg the photographer
Strindberg the photographer
Miss Julie in performance, 1906
Modern tragedy
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Raymond Williams’ Modern Tragedy (1966)
analyses some of the ways in which various
modern plays might be conceived as having
adapted the conventions of classical tragedy.
Williams defines tragedy as ‘the conflict between
an individual and the forces that destroy him’
(2006: 113).
Liberal Tragedy
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For example, Williams describes Ibsen’s drama
as ‘Liberal Tragedy’:
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‘…the hero defines an opposing world, full of lies
and compromises and dead positions, only to find,
as he struggles against it, that as a man he belongs to
this world, and has its destructive inheritance in
himself.’ (2006: 124)
In this view, society is at fault: it is seen as false
and oppressive, a trap from which it is
impossible to escape.
Liberal Tragedy
General Gabler’s memory
Regional location
Oppressive environment
Social class /
expectations
HEDDA
GABLER
Tesman /
identity as ‘wife’
Intellectual boredom
Impending motherhood
Judge Brack’s ‘leverage’
Threat of scandal
Patriarchy
Private Tragedy
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Strindberg’s drama, on the other hand, belongs to a
category that Williams calls ‘Private Tragedy’, a form
which ‘begins with bare and unaccommodated man’:
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‘All primary energy is centred in this isolated creature, who
desires and eats and fights alone. Society is at best an arbitrary
institution, to prevent this horde of creatures destroying each
other. And when these isolated persons meet, in what are
called relationships, their exchanges are forms of struggle,
inevitably. Tragedy, in this view, is inherent.’ (2006: 133)
The association between love and destruction is ‘so deep that
it is not, as the liberal writers [like Ibsen] assumed, the
product of a particular history: it is, rather, general and
natural, in all relationships.’ (2006: 134)
Private Tragedy
Environment,
heredity, body,
psyche, etc.
Environment,
heredity, body,
psyche, etc.
MISS JULIE
JEAN
CHRISTINE
Environment, heredity, body, psyche, etc.
Private Tragedy
JEAN
MISS JULIE
Jean’s heredity,
body, psyche,
etc. are better
equipped for
survival… or
are they?
A Naturalistic Tragedy?
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Strindberg himself was ambivalent about Miss
Julie’s credentials as a modern tragedy:
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‘…the time may come when we shall have become
so developed and enlightened that we shall be able
to observe with indifference the harsh, cynical and
heartless drama that life presents – when we shall
have discarded those inferior and unreliable thoughtmechanisms called feelings, which will become
superfluous and harmful once our powers of
judgment reach maturity.’ (1888: 92)
References
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Darwin, C. (1955) The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, with
Photographic and Other Illustrations, New York: Philosophical Library.
Robinson, M. (1998) ‘Introduction’ in Strindberg, A. Miss Julie and
Other Plays, Oxford University Press, pp. vii-xxxvi.
Rugg, L. H. (1997) Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography,
University of Chicago Press.
Strindberg, A. (1888) ‘Preface to Miss Julie’, in Meyer, M. [trans.]
(2000) Strindberg, Plays: One, London: Methuen Drama, pp. 91-103.
Strindberg, A. (1992) Selected Letters, Volume 1: 1862-1892, ed. M.
Robinson, University of Chicago Press.
Williams, R. (2006) Modern Tragedy, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview
Press.
Zola, E. (1881) ‘Naturalism on the Stage’, in Cole, T. [ed.] (2001)
Playwrights on Playwriting: from Ibsen to Ionesco, New York: Cooper Square
Press, pp. 5-14.