The survival of the “weakest” among the fittest: A critical reading of Miss Julie (1889) in relation to social Darwinism

Abstract

The play Miss Julie is about the portrayal of the new image of feminist woman in the Victorian period. The playwright August Strindberg is mainly considered to be a misogynist as evidenced in his preface to Miss Julie, in which he defines miss Julie as man-hating and half woman with a “degenerate brain”. This representation of Miss Julie by a male author is likely to promote the idea that Strindberg presents the new ‘feminist’ woman as inferior and weak with a downfall in the end. However, the paper will dwell into the play by employing reader-response criticism to interpret the play to discover its multiple meanings rather than following the mainstream readings that rely on characteristics of the Victorian period. By employing a critical reading method, the paper will attempt to problematize social Darwinism in relation to gender roles as represented in the play, and by doing so it will challenge if not transform the social constructions of “weak women” that ideologically pertains today.