And Now: Kiss My Shoe!

: Class and Sexual Conflict In Strindbergs Miss Julie I

Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural heritage. -Anonymous Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy. -Henry Kissinger

Theatre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was influenced greatly by a literary movement called Naturalism. The movement made extensive use of Realism which was fathered by French realist, Honore de Balzac, in the early nineteenth century. Naturalism that occurred immediately after, is considered as an extension of this, and goes a step further to establish that heredity, social milieu and environment shape the human character, and the trajectory of its mortal existence. The naturalistic principles were greatly derived from Darwinist principles of the Survival of the Fittest, which contended that there was a perennial struggle for dominance and survival amongst species, and the fittest eliminated the weaker ones by way of direct confrontation and competition for the limited resources. Alongside naturalistic elements, a sense of deep pessimism pervaded the arts- especially the literary works of that age. Strindberg at that time was writing in accordance with Emile Zolas idea of Naturalism in Theatre and Andre Antoines Theatre of the Libre, that allowed him the liberty of incorporating very subtle effects such as the play of emotions on a characters face and a steady conversationalist exchange of dialogue1. Most importantly, the Theatre of the Intimate allowed him to write in his style without making intellectual compromises, for the material and financial support was guaranteed by a small coterie class that gave patronage to the plays. But though Strindberg was influenced by Naturalism, his personal philosophy, as critic Evert Sprinchorn points out, was that life was to be viewed less as a struggle against heredity and environment, as the Naturalists insisted, than as the struggle of minds, each seeking to impose its will on other minds. He was affirmed by the writing of Bernheim, and wrote an essay called, The Battle of the Brains. Moreover, in the Preface to Miss Julie, Strindberg says, Life is not so mathematically idiotic that only the large ones eat the small; it equally often happens that the bee kills the Lion or at least drives it crazy. It is this ideology that is reflected in the play, Miss Julie. For along with the survival of the fittest, is seen the gradual destruction of the Lion; the socially superior Miss Julie, belonging to the aristocrat lineage, at the hands of the Bee; the inferior one who was but a valet of her father, the Count. And so, And now: Kiss my shoe!, when uttered by Miss Julie to Jean, in haughtiness due to her class superiority, meant also for a tantalizing effect that washes over them both, reflects effectively the sexual and class tensions that exist in the play between the two characters, and how Miss Julie attempts to play with fire, against the existing social structures, as did her literary foremother, Anna Karenina.
1

From Ever Sprinchorns Strindberg and the Greater Naturalism

Imaginably enough, the eventual fate of both was the same. II Miss Julie was written in the year 1988, by when, Socialism as a political movement had already gained its foothold in the psyche of the lower masses, and had become an attractive notion due to its ideas of class equality. These ideas were enabled by the dissolution of the aristocratic class which had already begun in the early nineteenth century, and which was reflected in several works of Austen like Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park. The turning and turning of the widening gyres hence occurred: the decline of Aristocracy was marked by the rise of nouveau riche. The influence of the Socialists was very prominent as the lower classes began to aspire for social mobility. The same sentiment is reflected in Jean, the valet and servant in the house of Strindbergs Miss Julie. Throughout the play, Jean is seen as the ideal servant, the staunchest upholder of class hierarchies, conscious, very acutely so, of his inferiority in terms of his social position: Its the damned servant in me. He is disapproving of Julie, who, belonging to the aristocracy, does not conform to the class conventions, and attempts constantly to break free of them. Right that very beginning of the play, Jean remarks: its strange, isnt it, that Miss Julie prefers to stay at home with the servants on Midsummers Eve rather than go with her father to visit their folk.; and As for Miss Julie, she doesnt take any care of herself or her reputation. She somehow lacks finesse. Jean is thus not only aware of his position in society, but is also very ambitious. When Christine appeals to him for a stable family life, he says, Ive no intention of dying for my wife and children just yet. Ive more ambition than that. Moreover, he has trained himself; tutored himself in French and sophistry, and speaks in a polished way. When Miss Julie asks him where he learnt his debonair language, he says he has been to many theatres. His yearning to climb the social ladder is therefore markedly evident throughout the play. The fact that he prefers wine to beer, has an utter utilitarian approach to love, devoid of sentimentality, is a mark of and caused by his desire for the very same. Critic Alice Templeton comments that Strindberg has reduced both Jean and Julie to types representing their classes. While Julie is the degenerate aristocrat, Jean is the beginning of a new species, who is evolving through self-education into a future gentleman of the upper classes. However, class is not the only theme of the Miss Julie. Strindberg knits a complex fabric interlacing at once, both class and gender. He give the eponymous heroine a problematic position vis--vis her gender and class, putting her at a disadvantage in both cases. Miss Julie however, is a woman of the world and a complete antithesis to the self-righteous Christine. She the modern woman; the New Woman, and struggles for social mobility, sexual freedom in particular. Templeton says, Read against the preface, as well as against Jeans judgments of Julie, the play conveys not a degenerate falling woman, but a woman who is beginning to move toward social and gender consciousness. The play is thus about the tussle between the instincts and aspirations of both characters, Jean and Julie. While the latter affirms and reaffirms the class and gender roles for both, merely wishing to mobilize

himself on the ladder of social condition, Julie seeks to break free for the rules for her are far more rigid. Critic Templeton says, Because her revolution lacks a method, and because she has no satisfying means of expression, her discontent is self-destructive. When Jeans warns her it would not be wise to dance with the same partner (him) twice in a row, lest she be mocked and gossiped about, she is outraged and insists: Let us forget about rank. Now give me your arm. Indeed, while Jean has the luxury of eventual mobility, Julie does not. Julies sexuality is never viewed as an individual entity. Her sexual mores are always conflated with class conventions. She is expected to behave in a certain way, unlike is Jean. It might be possible for Jean to climb up on the social ladder through hard labour and education (Jean knows and mentions it that it is possible to buy titles in Romania), but not possible to fall down from the pillar, as Julie pictures herself hoisted upon in her dreams. The dreams of both the characters therefore are very significant for both the dreams sum up their respective desires. Julie says that sitting on top of the pillar, I (she) feel dizzy when I look down. I havent got the courage to throw myself. I cant hold on. I long to be able to just fall but I dont fall. Jean on the other hand, is lying underneath a tall tree in a dark forest. He says, I want to get up to the top and look around me across the bright landscape where the sun shines. I want to plunder the birds nest up there with the golden eggs. At this point in the play, the sexual tension between the two is simmering almost to the point of a boilover. But the consummation is delayed for a very long time, mainly due to Jeans reluctance. When Miss Julie flirts with him; attempts to seduce him into a sexual encounter, he cautions her somberly: Miss Julie: Will you sit still? There! Gone! Now kiss my hand. Jean: Miss Julie. Listen to me. Christine has gone to bed, now will you listen to me. Miss Julie: Kiss my hand first. Jean: Listen to me. Miss Julie: Kiss my hand first. Jean: For what? You are not a child anymore, youre 25. Dont you know its dangerous to play with fire? Miss Julie: Not for me, Im insured. Jean: (boldly) No, youre not. And even if you were there are other people who might catch fire. Miss Julie: Meaning you? Jean: Yes, but not just because its me but because I am a man and young. (Italics mine) But wherein lies Jeans weakness? Despite his financial inferiority, he is meritoriously superior to Julie. Since Julie has personalized their relationship and has deliberately removed the class barriers, he wholly gains power over her. But the confidence in him; his presumptuous attitude with her, however comes to naught at the sight of the Counts boots. Even when they have consummated, and Julie appeals to him to embrace her, he is unable to. He feels there will be barriers between them as long as they will be in the house. There is the past; there is the Count. I respect him more than anyone else Ive ever known. Just seeing his gloves makes me feel small. Just hearing his bell up there makes me jump like a frightened horse. Seeing his boots standing there, so straight and cocksure, makes me want to grovel. The boots to him are a symbol of his crippled state. It is the Lacanian symbol of the father that castrates him. As a man, society may have given him a privileged position in the gender hierarchy; he may not be insecure about his position of masculinity in the sexual relationship he might share with Julie, but as the servant- her

servant- he is unable to conceive of a dignified position for himself, within that sort of a relationship with her- atleast until the time he is serving under her. And so when Julie cajoles him to forget about class conventions, he insists otherwise: No, its part of my job and I respect it. Its not my job to be your playmate though, ad I never will be. I have too much selfrespect. The two characters nevertheless seem to be interdependent on each other for the achievement of their respective dreams. Jean provides Julie with that much desired opportunity for sexual and class transgression, and also an opportunity for exploiting a man in a sadistic-misandrist way. She had been taught to hate men by her mother; she was trained to be a man. Jean would have served her purpose for his feeling of being handicapped that arose out of his class inferiority would have made him an easy target for her. An initial pretence at the breakage of the class barriers between them would have endeared her to him, and would have enslaved him forever. Right at the beginning of the play we are told by Jean of her previous romantic escapades wherein she had practically tried to make her fianc jump the whip: Yes, I saw it. They were in the stable yard one afternoon and Miss Julie was training him, as she called it. Do you know how? She made him jump over her riding like a dog. Similarly, Julie provided Jean with the possible means for advancement in social and monetary position. Jean knew if Julie could just provide him with that much needed financial prerequisite, he could climb up the ladder of his own thereon. He says, I wasnt born to grovel. Ive got substance, Ive got character. Just let me hold onto the first branch and youll se me climb step by step! Critic Templeton has pointed out how sexual pairing has previously been used for sexual deliverance in folktales such as Cinderella. Strindberg just reverses the usual structure of the woman being of the lower class. Jean spins an ideal romantic tale of his adolescent love for her and emotionally softens her to him. His story brings out the utter rigidity of social structures and the lack of inter-class mingling. She was to him, a symbol of what he can never have, or never be. His story of an unrequited and hopeless love was typical in the sense that several romance stories, Wuthering Heights, Lady Chatterleys Lover, Far from the Madding Crowd, Love in the Time of Cholera, for instance, have seen such unequal romantic pairings. Though Jean later retracts saying he had the same dirty thoughts about her as adolescent boys do, his purposeful vilification of his own emotions, something he always strove hard against, for he considered himself akin to the refined gentry, seems to be more out of frustration and self-denial. He confesses at one point, You may be physically attracted to me, but in that case your love is no better than mine. I could never be satisfied with just being your animal, and I know I could never make you love me. Critic Templeton says that Jean merciless denies Julie of a symbolic significance to their sexual encounter, rendering the act, trivial almost contempt-worthy. This he does in order to debilitate her: Julie: Your very soul stinks! Jean: Wash it then! Julie: Servant, footman, stand up when I speak! Jean: Servants slut, footmans whore, shut your mouth and get out of here. I stink? How dare you! Not one of us ever behaved as common as you have tonight. Do you think Julie that any housemaid

would have thrown herself at a man, like you? Have you, Julie, ever seen a girl of my class offer herself as blatantly as you have? Ive only seen it among animals and prostitutes! The sexual conflict is spurred by the differences in both the characters perceptions of love. These perceptions are in turn shaped by their class and its respective ideologies. For Jean, romantic love, foreplay, are elitist notions of love. He has a naturalistic idea of sex and to him, it is just a matter of procreation and basic human need that has to be fulfilled like any other bodily needs. He says: we treat love as a game, when we have some time off from work, but we dont have all night like you do. Julie therefore becomes the erring and distraught fallen woman of any other stereotypical story. Jean had warned her right at the beginning of the play, Dont come down Miss Julie, take my advice. No one will believe you came down out of your own free will; the people will always say that you fell down. But she hadnt paid heed. The climatic overturning of class hierarchies occurs when Julie, desperate after her transgression, begs Jean to lend her some sense of direction. He tells her to die. The final scene in which this occurs brings out the sexual and class conflicts in the play, and the way sexuality and class itself conflict. Miss Julie: What would you do in my place? Jean: In your place? Lets see. If I were an aristocrat, a woman, a woman whod fallen I dont know-yes I do know. Miss Julie: (takes a razor and makes a gesture). Like this? Jean: Yes. But mind you, I wouldnt do it. Thats the difference between us. Miss Julie: Because youre a man and Im a woman? What difference does that make? Jean: The same difference between any man and any woman. Critic Alice Templeton has commented, Jean is superior to Miss Julie in that he is a man. Although it is she who belongs to the aristocracy, Jean, being the man in their sexual and personal relationship, is the aristocrat, and the one in the position of power, in their relationship. Templeton also remarks: The play leaves us not with a vision of determinism but with an understanding of the determination with which the characters engage in destructive sexual and class politics. Strindberg in his preface, says that Jean possesses a brutality that Julie lacks. He therefore emerges unscathed from the conflict and will very likely end up as a hotel keeper and even f he does not become a Romanian Count, his son will probably go to university and perhaps even reach position of power. Indeed, in concordance with the naturalistic tendencies of writers of that age, Miss Julie meets her fated/fatal end. David Bagauley in his book, Naturalistic Fiction: the entropic vision, has written that the notion of the falling woman is central to naturalistic writing. There is a large corpus of naturalistic literature that turns on the working of such fatalities of flesh and conveys disaster through the womans body with such an obsessive insistence that we are clearly dealing with a myth that is as imperious as any of the myths that fashioned ancient texts, the myth of the catastrophic female body. He has also said, The fault was in the body, the womans body, which was associated with the social body and the body politic in a society in which preapprehensions confined women to the role of a gauge and guardian of its order, for her inviolability was to be preserved all the more vigilantly as its destructive potentiality became scientifically demonstrable.

Just as Amelia Opies heroine Adeline Mowbray was thoroughly trained in philosophy by her mother but not as much in practical skills, Miss Julie was similarly rendered at loss when it came to practical existence. Though she knew theoretically how to torture men, having been taught by her mother of it since childhood, she is unable to apply them in real life, with either the fianc of hers mentioned earlier in the play, or even Jean. Her lack of survival skills thus causes her ultimate defeat. And so, while Strindberg claimed to have transcended the controversies of that age; the controversies being that of social ascent or decline, of gender hierarchies, so is not the case. The naturalistic elements all count against both, the mother and Miss Julie, and the preface itself, specifically, spells out that he had made his heroine weak and degenerate. His misogyny is stark naked in his decision of the end for Miss Julie and Miss Julie. Bibliography: Bagauley, David, Naturalistic Fiction: The Entropic Vision, Cambridge University Press, 1990 Preface, Strindberg, August, Miss Julie, Methuen Publishing Ltd., 2006 Sprinchorn, Evert, Strindberg and the Greater Naturalism Templeton, Alice, Miss Julie as a Naturalistic ragedy Young, Vernon, The History of Miss Julie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(theatre)