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Essay On Class Conflict In Drama

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Money is the foundation of the class system and therefore the world. Money is a tool used to determine a person’s worth throughout not only today but in the romantic, realistic and expressionist periods. Drama has used this notion of money, the class system and class conflict to explore humanity throughout its plays. Examples of these plays include Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Shaw’s Major Barbara, and O’Neill’s Hairy Ape. Throughout all three of these plays we see the use of mostly the upper class and lower class to make a point about humanity. All three of these plays see the upper class as sophisticated, civilized, knowledgeable, refined, and elegant. On the other side of the class spectrum these plays see the lower class as crude, ignorant, ill-mannered, and useless to society. As a result of these characteristics, these plays put their characters and classes at conflict with one another. Their plots involve the upper class looking down upon the lower class and therefore the …show more content…

This play revolves around the three characters of Julie, Jean, and Christine. Julie is the daughter of the count of the estate, Jean is the valet and Christine is Jean’s fiancee who is the cook. Jean and Julie have an affair and as a result Julie has to run away or she will ruin not only herself but her father, the count, as well. This is shown in “ “. This plot displays Strindberg’s idea of poverty and the classes in society. Strindberg has mentioned these ideas in a lot of his plays. Another example would be in his play, The Road to Damascus. He believes that “for the whole of life consists of nothing but contradictions. The rich are the poor in spirit; the many little men hold the power, and the great only serve the little men. I've never met such proud people as the humble; I've never met an uneducated man who didn't believe himself in a position to criticise learning and to do without it” (Strindberg

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