Do you know how people in high life look from the under-world?... They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above. I lived in a hovel provided by the State, with seven brothers and sisters and a pig; out on a barren stretch where nothing grew, not even a tree, but from the window I could see the Count's park walls with apple trees rising above them. That was the garden of paradise; and there stood many angry angels with flaming swords protecting it; but for all that I and other boys found the way to the tree of life—now you despise me.... I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God's earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess' daughter.... What I wanted—I don't know. You were unattainable, but through the vision of you I was made to realize how hopeless it was to rise above the conditions of my birth.
What rich food for thought in the above for all of us, and for the Jeans, the people who do not know what they want, yet feel the cruelty of a world that keeps the pauper's child out of the castle of his dreams, away from joy and play and beauty! The injustice and the bitterness of it all, that places the stigma of birth as an impassable obstacle, a fatal imperative excluding one from the table of life, with the result of producing such terrible effects on the Julies and the Jeans. The one unnerved, made helpless and useless by affluence, ease and idleness; the other enslaved and bound by service and dependence. Even when Jean wants to, he cannot rise above his condition. When Julie asks him to embrace her, to love her, he replies:
I can't as long as we are in this house.... There is the Count, your father.... I need only to see his gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse.... And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feel like bowing and scraping.... I can't account for it but—but ah, it is that damned servant in my back—I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot.... Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment.
No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth—these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them. Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and overbearing toward those who are below them. For Jean has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon Jean, it is much more terrible in its effect upon Kristin, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when Kristin, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress Julie had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet.
Kristin. I don't want to be here in this house any longer where one cannot respect one's betters.
Jean. Why should one respect them?
Kristin. Yes, you can say that, you are so smart. But I don't want to serve people who behave so. It reflects on oneself, I think.
Jean. Yes, but it's a comfort that they're not a bit better than we.
Kristin. No, I don't think so, for if they are not better there's no use in our trying to better ourselves in this world. And to think of the Count! Think of him who has had so much sorrow all his days. No, I don't want to stay in this house any longer! And to think of it being with such as you! If it had been the Lieutenant— ... I have never lowered my position. Let any one say, if they can, that the Count's cook has had anything to do with the riding master or the swineherd. Let them come and say it!
Such dignity and morality are indeed pathetic, because they indicate how completely serfdom may annihilate even the longing for something higher and better in the breast of a human being. The Kristins represent the greatest obstacle to social growth, the deadlock in the conflict between the classes. On the other hand, the Jeans, with all their longing for higher possibilities, often become brutalized in the hard school of life; though in the conflict with Julie, Jean shows brutality only at the critical moment, when it becomes a question of life and death, a moment that means discovery and consequent ruin, or safety for both.
Jean, though the male is aroused in him, pleads with Julie not to play with fire, begs her to return to her room, and not to give the servants a chance for gossip. And when later Jean suggests his room for a hiding place that Julie may escape the approaching merry-makers, it is to save her from their songs full of insinuation and ribaldry. Finally when the inevitable happens, when as a result of their closeness in Jean's room, of their overwrought nerves, their intense passion, the avalanche of sex sweeps them off their feet, forgetful of station, birth and conventions, and they return to the kitchen, it is again Jean who is willing to bear his share of the responsibility. "I don't care to shirk my share of the blame," he tells Julie, "but do you think any one of my position would have dared to raise his eyes to you if you had not invited it?"
There is more truth in this statement than the Julies can grasp, namely, that even servants have their passions and feelings that cannot long be trifled with, with impunity. The Jeans know "that it is the glitter of brass, not gold, that dazzles us from below, and that the eagle's back is gray like the rest of him." For Jean says, "I'm sorry to have to realize that all that I have looked up to is not worth while, and it pains me to see you fallen lower than your cook, as it pains me to see autumn blossoms whipped to pieces by the cold rain and transformed into—dirt!"