SOURCE: Franchuk, Edward S. “Symbolism in Miss Julie.” Theatre Research International 18, supplementary issue (1993): 11-15.

In the following essay, Franchuck explores the symbolism in Miss Julie.

The theme of Strindberg's Miss Julie (Fröken Julie, 1888), the struggle for sexual ascendancy between a liberated young woman and an ambitious young man who is her social inferior, continues to hold fascination even in times such as our own, which purport to be sexually liberated, socially egalitarian, and feminist. Perhaps, one might speculate, fascination with the play, its characters, and its situation is especially intense in such times. Certainly awareness of an interest in sexual politics have not lessened in the century since the play appeared. Since it has been a century dominated to a large extent by the theories of Dr. Sigmund Freud, this is hardly surprising.

Indeed, Freud has influenced not only the way we, as a late twentieth-century audience...