by enyliram

Created on: February 04, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

At the time at which Henrik Ibsen wrote his arguably most controversial play, most Victorian novelists were writing about the fulfilling lives of womanly women and manly men finding each other and getting married. No matter how feminist certain writers could appear to be, such as Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte, they generally did not challenge the end -marriage, parenthood, happiness and a fulfilled social life- but the means. However, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is extremely modern in presenting us a woman who refuses her social role as a wife and a mother and who wishes to take on a man's role in insisting on wanting to control other people's lives. What is even more astonishing is the ability of Ibsen to master completely the psyche of his character, in fact exactly as Hedda wishes to do with her own life and surrounding, but fails to, leading to her fall and final suicide. Almost like in a psychological thriller, we enter the killer's head for the author to reveal and make us understand what lead to the sheer atrocity of the murder. Not only Hedda Gabler is a psychological play, it is also a social play showing the inadequacy of a person such as Hedda in the Victorian society: she is implicitly presented as a deviant character at least according to the standards of the late nineteenth century.

Even without showing Hedda's behavior towards designated people, several evidences can be found of her manly personality: the title of the play, her appearance and background are the first; several masculine symbols mentioned in the play can also account for her manly character; and finally, her psychological profile as a schizophrenic person is another evidence. Even though Hedda is married to Jorgen Tesman, she is presented as "Hedda Gabler" in the title, and later as "General Gabler's daughter" (Act I). The title does not only suggest her independence from her husband, but her independence from any other person in the play: contrary to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, who rather than depending on her husband to exist, depends on her father and remains "Mrs", Hedda Gabler remains "Hedda" and the force of her character is already conveyed through the title. Hedda is also the socially highest character in the play: her aristocratic background, as compare to the bourgeois society she has to or rather chooses to fit into, is alien to her and the only purpose of this match is, as we are going to see later, to fulfill her desire of taking control of people's lives. The physical

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