Miss Julie

Animals and nature are recurring motifs throughout the play. Julie has two pets, her dog Diana and her pet greenfinch, both of whom highlight important aspects of her character and story. Diana, for example, has been impregnated by a servant’s dog, an obvious parallel for Julie’s own relationship with the valet Jean. After this “betrayal” by Diana, Julie regards her greenfinch as the only living thing that really loves her, which makes Jean’s killing of the greenfinch even more cruel.

Julie and Jean are increasingly equated with animals themselves as the play progresses: Jean compares Julie to “hawks and falcons” (86) who, like aristocrats, cannot see what the world looks like from below. Julie becomes more and more like her dog Diana, while Jean turns into a “swine” (96) after he and Julie have sex. Eventually, Julie even characterizes her relationship with Jean as a kind of “bestiality” (98).

The animal imagery and symbolism of the play is complemented by other references to the natural world. There are many references to flowers, trees, and other plant life, as in the floral scent of Julie’s handkerchief (recognized by Jean as the scent of violets); in the manor’s garden, where Jean says he saw Julie for the first time; in the elder bush where Jean claims he tried to die by suicide, and so on. The cumulative effect of this animal and natural imagery is to symbolize that humans really are not so very different from animals, and to suggest that the natural laws of the animal world—such as Darwin’s natural selection—can be applied to social relations within human society.