IO Reflective Statement Miss Julie
Through this interactive oral, much new information about August Strindberg was brought to light. Though already keenly aware of his ever present misogyny, I was not aware of his three divorces, his struggles in life, and how eventually game to be a naturalist when he gave up on the idea of ever being happy. I also was very much unaware of the peculiar parallels between Strindberg and Julie. For some odd reason, it was never suggested that there was a link between his own naturalism and belief in a predestined awful life and the way Miss Julie was portrayed. In my opinion, it would have been interesting to dig deeper into this and see if the themes of masochism actually carry over into an odd sort of self-loathing complex within August Strindberg.
I did learn a few other things that helped deepen my understanding. One of these is that now, we no longer possess classes! What a wonderful we live in today, and how enlightened of it. All kidding aside, I feel that my understanding of the work was most heavily influenced by what I gleaned from my fellow audience members and from how the audiences at the time of the drama’s release reacted. The fact that despite its conservative message it was banned for merely implying sex was not always some sort of Holy Union lent a very different view of what sort of the time this work was written in and for. I had assumed it would have been rather celebrated in the fact that it portrayed women in such a (in my view) horrifically misogynistic way. Yet also my understanding of the work was greatly deepened by how much my fellow classmates didn’t view it that way. Perhaps this is what makes the work still relevant, in that with very simple techniques, you can still bend an audience to make very much gender related judgments of characters, and judgments of characters can sadly at times transfer over into real people. Strindberg’s work was meant originally as a caution against new ways of thinking and women trying to better themselves, now it serves as a warning against men who seek to stop that.
I did learn a few other things that helped deepen my understanding. One of these is that now, we no longer possess classes! What a wonderful we live in today, and how enlightened of it. All kidding aside, I feel that my understanding of the work was most heavily influenced by what I gleaned from my fellow audience members and from how the audiences at the time of the drama’s release reacted. The fact that despite its conservative message it was banned for merely implying sex was not always some sort of Holy Union lent a very different view of what sort of the time this work was written in and for. I had assumed it would have been rather celebrated in the fact that it portrayed women in such a (in my view) horrifically misogynistic way. Yet also my understanding of the work was greatly deepened by how much my fellow classmates didn’t view it that way. Perhaps this is what makes the work still relevant, in that with very simple techniques, you can still bend an audience to make very much gender related judgments of characters, and judgments of characters can sadly at times transfer over into real people. Strindberg’s work was meant originally as a caution against new ways of thinking and women trying to better themselves, now it serves as a warning against men who seek to stop that.