Setting and Social Class in Strindberg's Miss Julie

The Kitchen as Central Setting

In August Strindberg's Miss Julie, the use of setting helps advance the play's themes and conveys meaning to the audience not only through the visible stage space but also through off-stage space. For a current production of the play, the basic description found in the text should be followed, though the set need not be as naturalistic as Strindberg originally intended. What is important is that the set suggest a large kitchen in an aristocratic home at the end of the nineteenth century. The script specifies that the roof and side walls of the kitchen are hidden by drapes and borders, so they need be little more than suggestions of walls and ceiling. To the rear, on the right, is an arched exit porch, and through it one can see a fountain and trees, which may also be suggested rather than rendered naturalistically. The essential kitchen props are a large stove, a kitchen table, some chairs, an ice-box, a sink, and shelves. Prominent in the side wall is a large speaking tube, which becomes an important symbol of the master of the house and should therefore be given special emphasis through its size and position.

The visible set is the kitchen of Miss Julie's father's house, where the play's three characters appear, along with a large complement of local people during one scene as they pass through. For most of the play, however, we only hear these other people off-stage, where they are attending a party. The fact that the hostess, Miss Julie, spends so much time in the kitchen contributes to the audience's understanding of what is developing between her and Jean, while also maintaining the constant possibility that the two will be discovered by the crowd in the other room. Such a discovery is an important thematic component of the work and points to the fourth character who is never seen — Miss Julie's father — a powerful presence despite his absence. Strindberg arranges the kitchen setting to create dramatic impact and to remind the audience continuously of what is at stake and of the bending of social rules taking place there.

The fact that the play takes place in the kitchen adds to the sense of shifting social positions. Miss Julie does not belong in the kitchen talking to the servants all evening, yet that is precisely where she is found. Class distinctions never disappear in the play, but they are deliberately blurred by Jean and Miss Julie. Jean displays a dual attitude toward her: he desires her and wishes to humiliate her at the same time. He regards her as something unattainable, yet on this particular night he lords it over her and shows a certain contempt for her position. This attitude stems in part from a dual view of her entire class. On the one hand, he envies her social standing; on the other, he regards that standing as beneath him and the other servants in any practical sense. He sees the upper class as living by romantic notions while people of his class live with reality — and it is this, in his view, that gives them true superiority.

Class Distinctions and Social Transgression

The fact that Miss Julie comes to the kitchen emphasizes that she is the one pursuing Jean, just as she was when she kept asking him to dance. Jean shows more concern for social proprieties than she does, because she wants to pretend those proprieties do not exist. Yet when the revelers come into the kitchen, she hides immediately, revealing that she does fear what others might think and say. Jean asks her: "Do you know how the world looks from down below? — Of course you don't. Neither do hawks and falcons, whose backs we can't see because they're usually soaring up there above us" (Strindberg 73). Tonight, however, Miss Julie is not soaring above but is invading the areas of the house that usually belong to the working class — including the barn where the dance is held and the kitchen where she pursues Jean.

The kitchen setting makes the action seem out of place. The function of the kitchen is to prepare food for the rest of the household; it is where servants gather and where orders from the master of the house arrive. By escaping to this part of the house, Miss Julie reveals her dissatisfaction with the social world in which she lives, with her position as a woman in that world, and with the façade she must maintain before others, such as the dancers she has left in the barn. For all their fear that the Count might return home early, there is little chance he would actually enter the kitchen, since that space lies outside his own realm as well. His voice on the speaking tube is all that is required to terrify both the servants and his daughter.

Jean belongs in this world and rules within it. As he and Miss Julie talk, he becomes more and more the master of the situation in a way that would be impossible anywhere else in the house — or at least impossible openly, even though as a servant he already holds more power over the upper-class inhabitants than they realize. He has his own views on which class is the better and which is more valuable to society, and he consistently protects himself and his own ambition. His story to Miss Julie about fleeing and opening a hotel would depend on her providing the funds, yet he must also recognize that he is gambling the secure position he already holds for one he may never obtain. In the end, he chooses to play the role of servant he has assigned himself and sends Miss Julie back to play her part. She enters the kitchen on her own initiative, but she leaves when Jean orders her to go. If their positions have shifted at all, it is because each now possesses a knowledge of the other that was previously lacking, rather than because of any substantive change in their respective social places. As a woman, Miss Julie's range of possible conduct is far narrower than that available even to a servant.

The kitchen brings together the two social elements living in the house: the masters, represented largely by Miss Julie, and the servants. The respective positions of these characters are conveyed not only by their presence but by their clothing, and mode of dress thus becomes an important marker of social distinction. The spaciousness of the kitchen suggests how large the rest of the house must be — the audience never sees those other rooms but only hears the sounds that emerge from them.