Miss Julie (1888) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), while written during two different times in history, both relate the downward spiral of two women from degenerating aristocratic families both of whom were unable to interact with men in a healthy manner. This lack in knowing how to communicate and interact with men is what brought about their downfalls. This paper will examine to what extent the aristocratic backgrounds affected their failed relationships with men.
In the play Miss Julie, Miss Julie's aristocratic background has ruined her relationships with men because of the way her parents raised her. Miss Julie is the only daughter of a count and a commoner woman whose progressive views severely changed the way her daughter was brought up. Julie's mother was such a believer in women's rights that she refused to marry the count, only living with him as a common-law wife (Strindberg 85). Although the count was ostracized from the rest of aristocratic society, he respected his lover's choices, even when it came to the manner in which his daughter was raised. Therefore, Miss Julie was taught to wear men's cloths, do men's chores as well as to despise them (85). In addition, all over the estate, the male servants had to switch chores with the female, while Julie's mother forced the line between the servant and master class to blur (85).
While women's rights and equality of individuals are commonly practiced in current society, in Julie's time, a woman, especially a woman of the aristocratic class, still depended on men to ensure her survival, yet Julie's parents did not give her any tools, aristocratic or otherwise, to survive on her own, without the aid of men (Strindberg 85). When faced with the life of the aristocrat that she must lead after the death of her mother and her father has re-entered society, she refuses to take responsibility for herself and adapt and learn either how to live in aristo
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