Abstract
Fitzpatrick draws on different translations and interpretations of Strindberg’s naturalistic tragedy Miss Julie, including three film versions and two recent adaptions. The play centres around the seduction of a young noble woman by her family’s valet (or possibly her seduction of him). The text never clarifies whether the off-stage sex is consensual, but most interpretations—including contemporary ones—never consider the possibility that the play is about a rape. Yet it can be interpreted in that way, as Ingmar Bergman’s 1981 production makes clear. Fitzpatrick explores the play’s engagement with enduring social and cultural attitudes to women’s sexuality, and the relationship between violence and desire.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, McGregor’s Is it Rape? This study of acquaintance rape notes that ‘many victims of acquaintance rape don’t label their experience as rape at all. They often believe that the law does not protect them against the acts of acquaintances. These fears and beliefs are in fact warranted’ (5).
- 2.
The full quote, often attributed to Shakespeare, is ‘Heav’n has no Rage, live Love to Hatred turn’d / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d’. It is from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride, Act 3 scene i. The line is often used to support the suspicion that scorned women falsely accuse men of rape, and it forms part of the title of Peggy Sanday’s study of acquaintance rape.
- 3.
Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie was first filmed and broadcast by the BBC in 1995, and was first published, by Methuen, in 1996. However, the stage premiere at the Donmar Warehouse in London did not take place until 2003. The play is referenced here by the printed copy dating from 2004.
- 4.
Steene (2005) states that the architecture of the typical Swedish big house of the time would have the kitchen separated from the main house by a courtyard. Julie therefore cannot access the safety of her own quarters from her position in the kitchen.
- 5.
See, for example, Joan McGregor (2005), Karen Rich (2014), Alison Healicon (2016). There are multiple studies that examine the problem of women’s credibility, and numerous legal cases that demonstrate the difficulty of prosecuting wealthy, respected, or famous men. Some recent examples include the case of Brock Turner in California in 2016, or the cases against Bill Cosby in the United States and footballer Chad Evans in the United Kingdom. Jennifer Kabat, writing on Lutz Bacher’s film about the Kennedy Smith rape trial in the United States in 1991, makes the point that ‘speaking about rape is always a trap … The vocabulary is limited, and expectations are already shaped by previous descriptions’ (1993, 70).
- 6.
M. Hale, History of the Pleas of the Crown (London, 1971 ed.) 635, cited in J. Taylor, ‘Rape and Women’s Credibility: Problems of Recantation and False Accusations Echoed in the Case of Cathlees Crowell Webb and Gary Dotson’, Harvard Women’s Law Journal 10 (1987): 75.
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Fitzpatrick, L. (2018). Rape on the Naturalistic Stage: The Example of Miss Julie . In: Rape on the Contemporary Stage. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70845-4_2
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