Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Hedda is under control
In the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen the main character is a woman. A strong woman who is striving for power and prestige. This alone would be a great acknowledgement for the time period but this woman is so manipulative and selfish that she is not a good example of a leading woman. She displays many characteristics Jealousy, sexual manipulation, and selfishness to name a few. She proves her selfishness when she talks a man into killing himself just to end her own feelings of jealousy and then has the nerve to say “Eilert Loevborg, listen to me. Do it-beautifully!”(1508). As if to add to the insult of her power over him. She uses her sexuality to battle Judge Brack‘s advances. But he wins the war by using the knowledge of the origin of the pistol Loevborg used to kill himself to try to blackmail her into a life of misery as his unwilling mistress and Hedda confirms that by saying “Nevertheless, I’m in your power. Dependent on your will and your demands. Not free. Still not free! --- No I couldn’t bear that. No” (1517). Although she exerts power over the men and women in this play she is never truly powerful because in the end she cannot overcome the tangled mess she created and then powerless and selfishly she kills herself. She never once considers the child she is carrying or the father of that child who will find out she is pregnant after her death from his aunt JuJu. Hedda is not a honorable woman.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I disagree that Hedda is not a good example of a leading woman because I feel that (for the time period), it is a very accurate rendering of a strong willed woman in her social position. Judge Brack (one of the foremost men in the story), exhibits nearly all the same traits as Hedda, only from the male side of society. Hedda and Brack are both in a sparring match as they vie for control and power, and about the only real difference between them is their social standing because of their gender. Just as Hedda manipulates men, Brack manipulates women, and in his conversations with Hedda, he actively tries to steer her choices. We see a good example of this when Brack says of Hedda’s desire for Tesman to enter politics, “Tesman! No, honestly, I don’t think he’s quite cut out to be a politician” (Ibsen 1487), attempting to prevent her from gaining more social status that would lessen his power over her.
ReplyDeleteThere simply were no socially acceptable pathways in the 1800’s for a woman to wield the power that Hedda desired, so I think that Ibsen’s portrayal is quite accurate of what was required for a woman to survive with some measure of independence from the equally manipulative men that surrounded her. Judge Brack used his power for sex, and Hedda used her sexuality for power; respectively they each used the tools allowed them by society to pursue their own ends.