ABSTRACT
Johan August Strindberg has enjoyed a growing reputation both on the continent and, latterly, in England, for the simple reason that of all nineteenth-century dramatists, he is the least dated. He developed at a time when theatre had begun to be a contemporary affair, a platform for moral debate, an organ of modern thought which influenced public opinion, thus changing customs and even laws, and so the playwright had become an important international figure. The chapter presents the case study of a Laura. Laura is a more difficult character to analyse. Certainly she symbolises a terrible femininity, and is Strindberg’s answer to Ibsen and women’s emancipation. Laura is a silly featureless little girl and the other minor characters, too, are merely sketches. “Ordinary people,” Strindberg calls them in his preface to Miss julie, “as country pastors and provincial doctors usually are,” but to they seem extraordinary, and he mocks both church and medicine.
