Miss Julie" as "A Naturalistic Tragedy

In an article encouraging feminist critics to deal with male-authored, canonized texts, Adrienne Munich writes that Critical discourse has tended to be more misogynist than texts it examines.' August Strindberg's play Miss Julie and its preface provide a telling example of Munich's point. In preface, which author attached to play after it was written, Strindberg is quick to steroetype his characters and especially eager to condemn Julie. According to preface Julie is victim of a hideous power struggle between her father and mother, and she represents a degenerating aristocracy crumbling in face of a rising middle class. Above all, she is modern Woman, the man-hating half-woman, Victim of a superstition S. . that woman, that stunted form of human being, standing with man, lord of creation, creator of culture, is meant to be equal of man or could ever possibly be ... .,2 Such women as Julie, Strindberg claims, fortunately are overcome eventually either by a hostile reality, or by uncontrolled breaking loose of their repressed instincts, or else by their frustration in not being able to compete with male sex (209). The misogyny of preface resides in wry pleasure it takes in demise of Julie and her misguided desire to live outside her so-called natural gender and class stations

Art · Epistemology · Literature · Naturalism · Tragedy (event · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Philosophy · Psychology

• Why Did August Strindberg Not Kill Himself

  Open Access•Ernest Shulman•OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying•1993

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