How may an audience respond to Hedda as a tragic heroine in Act 1?
Hedda Gabler is a dramatic, exciting, confusing and at times unpleasant character, who is frustrated by a lack a freedom where she cannot be the wild and unstable free spirit that she wishes and this shines through throughout the play. From this frustration comes immense boredom which is in her case very deadly. She embodies some of the typical Aristotelian qualities of a tragic protagonist but Ibsen has put a strange twist on it. For example she is a woman of fortune. It has been made clear in the book that she was born into this high class lifestyle and has this fortune by no endeavour of her own. Therefore, by being placed at the top of the hierarchy, she has further to fall and there is more at risk than the average person. However, she is not really someone that people can identify or can have sympathy for, as neither generous nor courageous.
Also, as is common her fatal flaw is her snobbery or pride. However, Aristotle’s notion of hamarita states that it is a ‘ matter of action’ not the character themselves. I don’t believe this applies her and agree with the 20th century interpretation. This is not brought about by the unfortunate circumstances more than the character themselves. This applies very much to Hedda as her ‘conflicted individual moral psychology which brings about the opposite of what the character intends’.
The Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen was very specific about the time when he set Hedda Gabler. The late 19th century was a time where woman were secluded and deluded into an oppressive and subjugate lifestyle. Ibsen puts Hedda in this male dominated were she challenges the conventional middle class bourgeois housewife by acting in a dictating and manly way witch were to shock the 19th century audience at this truly outrageous and outspoken character.
