By Werther, a Macao writer and art critic with a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Trinity College Dublin

The one-act play Miss Julie strictly adheres to the consistency of time, location and action, ensuring audiences could be closely engaged with the theatre illusion. A classic example of naturalistic play, it has rigid requirements about the realistic portrayal of all settings and scenes while pays attention to the details of what drives the story forward – bloodline and environment. Compared with another Nordic writer of the same period, Henrik Ibsen, the works of August Strindberg highlights a pessimistic view, or even a hateful and derogatory attitude, towards New Women. Thus, the personality and growing up of Miss Julie has destined her downfall. The play dissects a social phenomenon and the shift of power in a scientific manner, almost without any value judgment. Nonetheless, this ruthless, naturalistic world of fatalism echoes the historic background of Strindberg’s world at the time: the rise of the middle class amid the demise of aristocracy. As Charles Darwin’s writes about natural selection, the survival of the fittest and the society continues to bloom.

This article is excerpted and translated from Chinese