She denies in her mind falling into the frame of the assigned female societal role and therefore slips fully into the indulgence of nothingness and boredom. This state could have remained for ever unchanged until the abrupt reintroduction of her former platonic lover Lovborg who becomes what before seemed to Hedda “impossible”, i.e. “…some goal in life to work toward.” Ibsen confronts her with the reformed alcoholic and genius Eilert Lovborg and throws her back in the idyllic past of General Gabler reading a newspaper and her experiencing the “forbidden world” through the wild and seductive stories of young roué then Lovborg on the sofa behind him. Lovborg is back on his feet fighting for a clean starting in life and writing books that are a tremendous success. But Hedda is not the inspiring power at Lovborg’s site anymore and that makes her extremely jealous of the woman who has such a positive power on him at the moment Mrs. Thea Elvsted and who is ironically a former flame of her husband. Hedda Gabler’s personality is a very complex mixture of the severely installed in her being notions of correct behaviour in social aspect of rank and class belonging and the fully suppressed personal creative potential. Hedda is lamed with fear; her whole existence is driven not by the positive force of creating, but the devastating nihilistic grip of fear and conventions of society. In order to contradict this haunting power of correctness and properness Hedda searches through Lovborg life experiences to live out her inborn human desires for creative fulfillment. But Hedda is a woman of good standing, she cannot do as she pleases, she can do as she pleases solely within the framework of the norms prescribed by public opinion. Lovborg is only a feeble opportunity for her to show her creativity, because the fear of a scandal creeps in and Hedda’s creative potential and suppressed sexuality are distorted into a storm of malevolence.
Ibsen reveals through the cold, snobbish aesthete Hedda the serious psychological implications and consequences an individual’s denial of self-realization and sexuality can have. Hedda is fascinated by Lovborg’s “hunger for life” and “courage” that she is so afraid to express in her own life. The inability directly to contradict society with a lifestyle that would have made her truly happy, hypothetically, causes Hedda to idealize Lovborg, who is in reality not the semi-god with “vine leafs in his hair” who lives as freely and carelessly as she wants herself to be. Hedda perceives Lovborg as God Dionysius and as the only one capable of being really liberated and fulfilled, and therefore she is so utterly devastated by the truth of his supposed beautiful suicide. The deconstructing of the sweeping and liberating Dionysian power is the death blow for the eternally respectable Apollonian antipode- Hedda Gabler: “What is it, this-this curse- that everything I touch turns ridiculous and vile?” Hedda realizes that once Lovborg is dead she could never ever be able even to attempt through anyone else’s life to seek her freedom, she is a living dead, and she has lost this final battle with the world as well. Hedda’s pistol is found in Lovborg’s pocket and Judge Brack is blackmailing her to reveal the true owner of the pistol unless she becomes his lover, Hedda’s response is almost hysterical:”All the same, I’m in your power. Tied to your will and desire. Not free. Not free, then! (Rises angrily). No—I can’t bear the thought of it. Never!”
Hedda from once the hunter of untamable Lovborg became a prey to the dull and banal Tesman and now to the slimy Judge Brack. She goes into the back room, pulls the curtains behind her, plays, the already moved from the front room piano, ecstatically and with disdain and mockery replies to Judge Brack’s readiness to entertain Hedda, but actually himself with Hedda “every blessed evening” that “Yes, don’t you hope so, Judge? You, the one cock of the walk—“. Hedda is finally free of it all- societal constraints, lack of real love, blackmail, conformity –she shoots herself beautifully with the relic from the military nobility-her father’s dueling pistol.
Hedda is a desperate young woman whose fight with the trolls of society is geared towards the chance for once to shine with her own light, and she wins it as the flickering light of a falling star shines upon her suicide.
Mrs. Alving will have to take a life away just like Hedda Gabler, but it will not be hers directly, it will be even more dramatic, important and difficult act. Mrs. Alving attempts to break free from the constraining her norms of society through the full of light, joy and new ideas life of her son Oswald and through her merely intellectual clarification. She is conditioned by the immense weight of duty and conformity drilled into her soul since she was a young girl. In the image of the protagonist, Ibsen masterfully reveals a human being robbed of her freedom, dreams, and proximity to her child, but “rewarded” with the belonging to a house and a family of good standing. “The central theme is the clash between moral courage and convention, between respectability and happiness” according to the words of F. L. Lucas and also facing the truth expressed by Ibsen’s powerful linguistic emphasis on the relations to the light especially the fear of light or Lysraed. Ibsen pierces with the blinding force of the bright light the half-dark homes of the seemingly perfectly functioning society and shows the suffocated, devastated, sick human beings living in it. Mrs. Alving has suppressed her desires to be free and independent for the reality of her own life and married the alcoholic and “dissolute” Captain Alving in the name of duty and keeping a respectful home. She lacks the courage to have broken this unholy union and have faced society. All her life is a tremendous struggle of keeping the image of the well-to-do family and the greatest sacrifices of all is sending her only son away from home to the city of freedom and light Paris. In the play there is a great accent on the importance of the light which is equated with freedom of self-expression, self-realization, and truth. Unfortunately though Mrs. Alving sounds determined to release herself from the ghosts that possess her and enter a life filled with the avant-garde ideas that make her feel “somehow--more confident”as she points out to Pastor Manders, she easily gives in when the Pastor contradicts her. Mrs. Alving is not capable to break from the subdued light dominating her human relations all her life so she chooses her son Osvald as an agent of her liberation and emblem of the Apollonian that would destroy the Dionysian power that rampages her entire existence. She feels that Osvald is the one to speak for her because he has the courage she is lacking and he is the one who is to scatter the ghosts that inhabit her soul and the society. Mrs. Alving attributes divine qualities to her all too human and mortal son, who pays the price for his “honourable” father’s livsglaede or joy of life the same Mrs. Alving could never fully understand and experience due to her enormous feeling of duty and need to conform. Mrs. Alving is conscious of her loss of freedom and incapability to face the truth: “I should think there must be ghosts all over the country- as countless as grains of sand. And we are, all of us, so pitifully afraid of the light.” Osvald is not afraid of the light he paints light and the joy of living, he is free and Mrs. Alving tries through his enlightenment to experience hers, but she is unsuccessful.
In the final scene Mrs. Alving fails once more to save her son from the devastating world of Captain Alving, who has bequeathed his son nothing but syphilis. Mrs. Alving cannot give Osvald the sun- she never breaks free from the social conventions, she never sets herself free and hence she is never able to attain the sun, the metaphor for freedom. Mrs. Alving’s decision to take her son’s life or to spare him is equivocally left to the spectator to ponder upon. The tragedy and drama of the heroine is reinforced with the stage directions:”The sun rises; the glaciers and peaks in the distance glow in the morning light” not only the society and the people are against her, now Ibsen brings in the nature itself as the final element to crush the dutiful Mrs. Alving and her failing to face the light.
Bibliography
Bjorn Hemmer, 1996. The Dramatist Henrik Ibsen
Ibsen: Four Major Plays: Volume I, revised edition by Rolf Fjelde, 1992. Hedda Gabler, Signet Classic, New American Library, New York.
F.L. Lucas, 1962. The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg, Macmillan Company, New York.
H. Ibsen, 1964. Ghosts and Other Plays, Penguin Books, London.
M. Esslin, 1971. Reflections: Essays on Modern Theatre: Ibsen: An Enemy of the People, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.
K. Brynhildsvoll, 1988. Studien zum Werk und Werkeinfluss Henrik Ibsens, Literaturverlag Norden M. Reinhardt, Leverkusen.
Suzman, Janet: “Hedda Gabler” in E. Durbach (ed.) Ibsen and the Theatre.
Bjorn Hemmer, 1996. “The Dramatist Henrik Ibsen”
Ibsen: Four Major Plays: Volume I, revised edition by Rolf Fjelde. “Hedda Gabler” p.255
F.L. Lucas, 1962. The Drama of Ibsen and Strindberg, Macmillan Company, New York, p.164
H. Ibsen, 1964. Ghosts and Other Plays, Penguin Books, London, p.32
