and Work of August Strindberg “What is life and what is its meaning?” August Strindberg asked this question many times throughout his life. He questions human existence, good and evil, happiness and sorrow, from the beginning of mans life until the end, in every thing he writes. He wrote novels, plays, poetry and over 7,000 letters. The collected works consists of 55 volumes. Strindberg was known best for his expressionist plays that he had made throughout his life. August Strindberg
August Strindberg’s naturalistic tragedy Miss Julie, plays on the shifts in power and authority. Whether staged between the Count’s influence over his servants or his daughter, the aristocrat Miss Julie over Jean, the Count’s valet, or more interestingly the vice versa of the latter relationship. The playout of the dominant character in the relationship is constructed not only by the constraints of class, social status, and often gender within context but also the fluidity of dialogue and tone within
August Strindberg was one of the first naturalist playwrights. Darwinism influenced the naturalists to perceive a person's fate as the product of blind external or biological forces, chiefly hereditary and environmental. By replicating observed details of environment, the artist would allow the audience a deeper understanding of the forces acting on characters. Miss Julie demonstrates the naturalistic idea that human beings are strictly products of the forces surrounding them - that "free will"
literary authors tackled this subject head on within two years of eachother in Henrik Ibsen’s 1890 “Hedda Gabbler,” and August Strindberg’s 1888 “Miss Julie.” A woman’s life in the late 19th century was very difficult. James McFarlane frankly generally describes a middle and upper class women’s dilemma during this time period in his introduction to Henrik Ibsen Four Major Plays: “These women of the modern age, mistreated as daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated in accordance with their talents
from his original noble stature to nothingness and death. Yet Georg Buchner's fragmentary play Woyzeck shows us a protagonist already stripped of humanity, transformed into and treated as an animal. Indeed, Woyzeck, far from being a simple tale of a village murder, shows us the systematic debasement, even intellectual and spiritual "murder," of the protagonist and all his class. Like August Strindberg's Ghost Sonata, Woyzeck identifies most of its characters only by professions or descriptions