Private Parts: Sex, Class, and Stage Space in "Miss Julie"

Abstract

The plot of Miss Julie turns on an unusual conjunction of sexual and spatial determinism, an association which also includes the issue of class. The aristocratic Julie and her valet Jean are literally and figuratively trapped into intercourse when, to avoid being seen together alone, they are forced into hiding in Jean's room. This fateful concealment, which Strindberg is at pains to characterize also as a fated development, renders the disruption of class roles as sexuality, and sexuality (that is, transgressive, forbidden, fatal sexuality) as the inevitable outcome of a momentary and enforced privacy. In acting according to the taboos and dictates of a rigid class society, it would seem, the characters are doomed to transgress two of the orders in which that society inscribes itself, the orders of sexuality and territoriality.