Name

Course

: Adinda Arum Damarsari

: Literary Criticism

NIM & Class : 1701370792 / LA61

Psychoanalytic

My analysis of the Miss Julie play deals with issues of psychoanalytic and related to traumatic
past event. In my opinion the play which shows the struggle for dominance and power is also closely
linked with the theme of sexuality in the unconscious.
Miss Julies Trauma
After the seduction of Miss Julie by Jean, she is at Jeans mercy. She pleads with him to call her by
her name Julie, trying to establish equality between them. She talks about her trauma after the seduction in
her anxiety not to be punished by her family, and society at large. In the unconscious, she has dared to
express desire and has se-duced the Father. Jean says that it is impossible to continue to stay at the manor. He
fantasises about travelling to Italy and setting up a hotel there (pp. 20-21):
Jean: Escape with me to Switzerland. Ill set up a hotel. You will be the mistress of
the house; the
jewel in the crown.
Miss Julie: You must give me courage. Say that you love me. Hold me.
Jean: I want to but I darent. Not in this house any more. I love you Miss Julie, I do Miss Julie: Julie
say Julie.
Jean : There are no barriers between us any more, Say Julie.

When Miss Julie pleads that she has no money to elope with Jean, he is com-pletely cruel and
unsympathetic, and says that his story about the rose terrace was entirely fabricated. Miss Julie is
traumatized.
A trauma is an important impossibility and refers to an experience in a per-sons life that he has
not been able to sufficiently symbolize or to put into language. In his theory of repression Freud says that
if somebody were the victim of trauma that they have repressed, some aspect of their repressed
experience would return. When Miss Julie is faced with Jeans accusation that she has acted like a beast
and a whore, both extremely patriarchal terms, she is prostrate.
Miss Julies submission to Jean reflects Strindbergs notions of evolution. He suggests that Miss
Julie must fall to Jean, because he was convinced that women are inferior to men. As Strindberg has
noted in the Preface to the play Miss Julie he has added a little evolutionary history [to the play] by
making the weaker steal and repeat the words of the stronger.