Miss Julie is mostly judged as an anti-feminist play reinforcing patriarchy, especially in that the author himself claims to be a misogynist. According to his preface to the play, Strindberg is exerting his offense against female subjectivity as far as he could. However, regardless of what the playwright intended or believed, the text itself rather subverts and criticizes traditional male-oriented society. This study argues how Miss Julie originally purposed to trample female subjectivity creates counter-effects, based on textual evidence such as characterization of the main character (Julie), theatrical devices, and the ending. Before delving into the text, stereotypical female representations prevalent in nineteenth-century male-authored texts will be discussed in order to demonstrate how Miss Julie is different from them. Then, previous studies’ predominant views of the play are introduced briefly. Furthermore, similarities between Miss Julie and other feminist texts will be presented as a schema to illustrate how the play can be viewed as feminist. Feminist readings of Miss Julie are significant that a male misogynist playwright writes the play in the nineteenth century. It not only deconstructs another bias that only women can discuss woman’s rights.

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Yang, N. (2016). Counterattack of Julie: Feministic reading of August Strindbergs Miss Julie. International Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 2(3), 91-97