Psychoanalytic interpretation of Hedda Gabler

In Hedda Gabler(1890), Ibsen lays a great emphasis on individual psychology. It is a full-length portrayal of a woman character of the same name as the play. In the play, Hedda Gabler is depicted as a neurotic character and Ibsen shows his deep understanding of individual psychology, especially abnormal psychology. Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler was written at roughly the same time, i.e., in the year 1890, when Freud was just beginning to publish his psychoanalytic theories. It is amazing to observe that certain fundamental ideas which are the foundation of Freud’s work: repression; neurosis; paranoia; etc., all these factors are present in Hedda Gabler. However, it is worthwhile to note that Hedda Gabler was not understood at the time of its publication. Ibsen’s portrayal of this type of a neurotic character was met with the most vehement criticisms. The critics found Hedda Gabler to be a mysterious and incomprehensible female character. The critics outdid each other in condemning Hedda Gabler. Hans Heiberg said that ‘the playwas published simultaneously in English, German, French, Dutch and Russian and was received with almost total confusion all over the world’.

Even his Norwegian contemporaries received Hedda Gabler as a weird character. Her character traits were very unfamiliar to the people of that time. In this regard, BredoMorgenstierne remarked that ‘we do not understand Hedda Gabler, nor believe in her. She is not related to anyone we know’. Another critic wrote in Morgenbladet that Hedda was ‘a monster created by the author in the form of a woman who has no counterpart in the real world’.

     By applying Psychological theories to the character ofHedda, we discover that she ismanifesting some pre-defined behavior patterns thusestablishing a connection between fiction and reality. The story of Hedda Gabler is thatof a plight of a woman who is living in anextremely restrictive society produces innerconflicts that make her life unprolific and lead to her destructive behavior. In thebeginning of the play, the dramatist has presented Hedda as a socially prominentwoman who has a strong sense of propriety and who needs to maintain her dignity atall costs and who cannot bear the thought of anything happening in her life that would diminish her respectability. Her needs for assertion of free- will have perhaps resultedfrom an upbringing in a rigidly conventional, male dominated society, one thatemphasizes propriety in woman and hinders the free spirit inside them. But the societyfails in stifling her spirit and she becomes a rebel.If we see Hedda as trapped against herwill, what we make of the moment when Hedda herselfcomplains, "Oh that maid’s left the French windowsopen. This room is flooded with sun."? AlthoughHedda rails at her enclosure in this world, she is also partlyresponsible for being there.

Hedda is said to be a manly character. 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 choose 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.She is very keen to have power over others. She says to Thea;

Hedda: I want, for once in my life, to have power over a human being’s fate.

Hedda’s desire for power, which is related to how powerless she feels – and perhaps to her aristocratic background. The physical presentation of Hedda is also significant in showing her as a manly woman. The first time her physical appearance is referred to in the play, she is shown by Miss Tesman as "riding along the road with her father", "in that long black habit", "and feathers in her hat" (Act I): she is again presented as a manly character, riding being an essentially masculine activity, the color black, related to violence or even death, insisting on this feature of hers, and the feathers representing her freedom and independence. When Hedda finally enters the play, her lack of femininity is emphasized: her eyes "steel-grey; cold, clear and calm" and her hair "a beautiful light brown, though not noticeably abundant" are the antithesis of a feminine or womanly woman, such as Mrs. Elvsted for instance, whose eyes are "light blue, large, round and slightly prominent, with a startled, questioning expression" and hair is "remarkably fair, almost silver-gilt, and exceptionally thick and wavy".

The reference to "the only cock in the yard" is only a glimpse at Hedda's psychological profile. Moreover, probably the most interesting feature of her profile is her apparent schizophrenia shown by the absurdity or incoherence of her behavior throughout the dialogues. In these moments, Hedda really seems to be a man's brain and heart trapped in a woman's body and the frustration she endures is sometimes extremely obvious. For instance, she pretends to be feminine in the presence of strangers like Miss Tesman. In Act I, she insists on the delicacy of her sleep -she says she has slept "tolerably" when her husband is aware that she has slept "like a log"- and on her love for "precious flowers", a purely feminine symbol. In one of her conversation with her husband, when the possibility of Hedda being pregnant is mentioned, it is obvious that she totally refuses her role as a potential mother, a role that would show her as a fulfilled womanly woman. This conversation starts with Tesman telling his aunt:

Tesman: "But have you noticed how plump she's grown, and how well she is? How much she's filled out on our travels?" and then, "Of course, you can't see it so well, Aunt Juliana.

Hedda cutting him nervously and violently,

Hedda:"oh, can’t we forget it”.

And later,

Hedda:I’m exactly the same as I went away.

Hedda's refusal to assume a role as a mother is another example of her manly personality.Hedda's relationship to Tesman is certainly the most significant of the play.It is the trigger that reveals Hedda's true identity, and consequently, the evolution of Tesman from an androgynous man to a more manly man is partly what leads to Hedda's fall in the final scene.

Hedda is portrayed in the play more as a victim of her upbringing as a General’s daughter rather than as a victim of the restrictions her society placed on women. The portrait of General Gabler that adorns the inner room, and which can be seen throughout the length of the play, has significant importance in the understanding of the character, Hedda Gabler. Ibsen himself intended Hedda Gabler to be portrayed in the play more as the General’s daughter than as Tesman’s wife.

"The title of the play is ‘Hedda Gabler’. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than as her husband's wife. It was not really my intention to deal in this play with so-called problems. What I principally wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies, upon groundwork of certain of the social conditions and principles of the present day.”

 The General has imbibed in her a strict sense of discipline. Moreover, her father taught her all kinds of masculine acts like riding horses and firing pistols instead of preparing her for wifehood or motherhood. These masculine lessons transformed her to admire the attractive and often sexual pursuits which men enjoy. In the play, she is found playing with her father’s pistols, a possible Freudian ‘phallic symbol’ which shows her latent wish to be a man. Thus, she wishes to shove away all feminine ways. But being a woman with a strict compliance to social conventions, she cannot become the sort of person she wishes to be.

She is the one who cares for society but there are some desires that she wants to fulfill. These are clearly revealed by her dialogues with Judge Brack:

Hedda: Yes, I often longed for a third person while I was away.

…………         …………              ………….

And “I was bored to death”.

The reason behind this boredom, described by Hedda, is quite surprising

Hedda: Having to spend every minute of one’s life with-with the same person.

Thus, her unfulfilled desires are repressed and she keeps on yearning for things she can never attain. This psychological ‘repression’ ultimately makes Hedda Gabler a ‘neurotic.’

With this mental unbalance, she grows up into a handsome young woman. However, none of the flirts surrounding her propose her for marriage. And as she becomes advanced in age, she starts to suffer from depression. Finally, when Tesman proposes, she accepts readily. However, she accepts Tesman’s proposal on the basis that Tesman is almost sure of being appointed as a professor. Hedda sees only the money that Tesman will get from such a lucrative post. In this regard, HarvardNelson said:

“It becomes obvious as the events unfold that she has not married her newlywed husband out of love, but out of a strange blend of convenience and desperation, possibly depression and loneliness”.

However, Tesman’s expected post of professorship keeps eluding him. This means that Hedda could not get enough money to enjoy the kind of life she wants. Tesman keeps on rejecting her demands, which include among other things a man servant and a saddle horse, saying that they ought to be careful with their expenses till he gets the post of professorship. This makes her terribly dejected and she plays with her father’s pistols. And, as she has not married for love, she could not find pleasure in her married life. Her life becomes more and more boring. Her personality keeps on deteriorating day by day. One most important thing to keep in my mind in prospecting the character of Hedda is that she married Tesman not out of love but out of necessity as she mentions to Judge Brack, also taken sometimes as her confidant.

Hedda: I’d danced myself tired, Judge. Ifelt my time was up.

She remarks to love as “sticky stupid word”.

Hedda is also said to be suffering from ‘Electra complex.’ None of the flirts surrounding her, as also her husband, were as charismatic as her father. And thus, though she wants her sexual desires to be fulfilled, she could not as she was not attracted physically to any of them. In this play, Ibsen shows that Hedda’s ‘suppression’ of her sexual desires affects her behavior throughout the play so much so that she becomes a victim of ‘sexual frigidity’. Thus all her life, all that she wants is suppressed. Her utterly neurotic character is born out of this suppression.

There are not only dialogues which reveal Hedda’s psyche but there are certain actions and stage directions which stand for Hedda’s inner state.For example, after the departure of Miss Tesman (Act one)

Hedda crosses the room, raising her arms and clenching her hands, as if in fury. Then she pulls back the curtains from the glass door and stands there looking out.

Hedda expresses her feelings physically rather than verbally. Here is an important role of the set: the glass door could be seen as symbol of the social and material barriers that keep Hedda unhappily inside the domestic realm.Hedda’s own action clenching her hands could be seen as her way of suppressing her feelings. She contains her emotion; just as she feels contained within a world she has no desire to remain in, but cannot bring herself to leave.

Hedda has no respect for her husband; she doesn’t care for his feelings. There are various references to it in the play; one of them is when he is very glad to see the slippers which his aunt embroidered for him. He wants her to see them but she says curtly:

Hedda: Thanks, I won’t bother.

She has no respect for her husband and clearly mentions his troubles and problems to others even in front of him as she says to Judge Brack:

Hedda :( laughs slightly scornfully) Tesman is always worrying about making ends meet.

She asks him for a new piano even she knew that Tesman is almost free of money. She is very happy to listen that Eilert is back in the town but she doesn’t give any importance to Tesman’s chances of getting jobin presence of Eilert as a strong rival. She is getting pleasure

Hedda: How exciting Tesman. It’ll be a kind of duel, by Jove.

And

Hedda: I can’t wait to see who’s going to win.

It has already been noted that Hedda is a woman who is attracted by the freedom with which man enjoy. When she was a young girl, she used to force Loevborg to tell all his wild sexual adventures. Later on in the play, she even tells Brack that she would like to ‘come along as an invisible onlooker’ and watch the free kind of enjoyment the men will have in the party. She really wants to experience all these unfeminine pursuits. But being a sexually frigid woman who has gone down the feminine path of marriage, she keeps on suppressing her desires. To quote the words of Gail Finney:

“The clash between Hedda’s unfeminine inclinations and the steps she takes down the feminine path of marriage and, inevitably, pregnancy results in hysteria”.

Hedda’s ‘hysteria’ is the reaction to her female roles to which she is unsuited. Hedda rejects marriage and pregnancy but it does not mean that she achieves the way of living she wants and thus she becomes very depressed. Her unwanted marriage and pregnancy is thus the major cause of her hysteria. It is seen in A Doll’s House that Nora’s hysteria finds release in the Tarantella dance. Likewise Hedda’s hysteria finds release in the wild dance tune she plays on the piano.

Hedda’sresentment of her father is directed towards others in the form of hatred, violence and destruction, which is a form of ‘transference.’ It is worthwhile to mention that ‘transference,’ according to Freud, is the redirection of feelings and desires retained from childhood towards a new object. Thus, the utter resentment she had for her father from childhood is redirected to everyone who comes onto her path. She hates all those who could achieve those desires she cannot attain. And in her hatred and subsequent jealousy, she tries to manipulate the lives of others to ruin them. The most glaring example of this is when she instigates Loevborg to go to the party.

Hedda: People might think you didn’t feel absolutely and unashamedly sure of yourself. In your heart of hearts.

……………                 …………..                    …………

Hedda: I saw him (the judge) wink at Tesman when you showed you didn’t dare to join their wretched little party.

She gives him a hint to the conversation between her and Thea which was held in the morning: she says:

Hedda: Didn’t I tell you so this morning when you came here in such a panic?

 Her sinister influence is the result of her envy of Mrs. Elvsted when she sees her having control over Loevborg. OrleyHoltan says in this regard that:

‘Hedda’s jealousy is immediately aroused and her action is at least partly motivated by the desire to win Eilert [Loevborg] away from her rival [Mrs. Elvsted]’.

 And when Loevborg finally comes back from the party frustrated over his lost manuscript, Hedda, instead of giving him his manuscript, encourages him to commit suicide. , she neither took pity on the miserable plight of Eilert nor considered the sobbing of Thea. The situation would be different if she had told them about the presence of manuscript in her custody, but she didn’t do that as she was driving pleasure from these incidents.  She even gifts him one of her father’s pistols so that he may end his life beautifully. It is because of this destructive nature of Hedda that Harold Clurman said, ‘the neurotic temperaments, the frustrated, the physically or morally unsatisfied often see beauty in destruction’.

Hedda: Do it beautifully, Eilert Loevborg. Only promise me that.

Moreover, she eventually burns Loevborg’s manuscript out of her jealousy for Mrs. Elvsted. It is precisely for this reason that AugusteEhrhard referred to her as ‘the demon of destruction’. However, this cruel destructive side of Hedda was present in her right from her childhood. She used to torture Thea, as Thea says:

Thea: Whenever you met me in the staircase, you used to pull my hair.

Hedda’s complete unwillingness to accept responsibility is one of the biggest aspects of her neurosis. Hedda is not in a right frame of mind as she thinks that she can marry but should not get pregnant. She bluntly rejects every reference Tesman unknowingly makes of her pregnancy. She even keeps on counting the months in dread of her approaching childbirth. And when Brack refers to her responsibility of having a child, she becomes furious as she resents all kinds of responsibilities and even pregnancy because she wants to enjoy life and ‘shuns everything painful and ugly’.

Hedda: I can’t bear illness or death. I loathe anything ugly.

 Her burning of Loevborg’s manuscript which she refers to as Mrs. Elvsted’s child is the manifestation of her desire to kill her own child. It can be aptly said that Hedda is more dangerously neurotic than Nora because while Nora only leaves behind her children, Hedda vehemently avoids the very notion of childbirth and murders her unborn child by killing herself.

Her cruelty and her jealousy of others’ happiness are revealed by her dialogues when she burns the manuscript:

Hedda :( throws one of the pages into the stove and whispers to herself) I’m burning your child, Thea! You with your beautiful wavy hair! (She throws a few more pages into the stove.) The child Eilert Loevborggave you. (Throws the rest of the manuscript in fire). I’m burning it! I’m burning your child!

Hedda is so much bored of the mundane events of her life that she derives pleasures by giving pains to others.On the very first day of her return from honeymoon, she insults Miss Tesman by disliking the hat, despite she knows that the hat belongs to the lady.

Hedda:Tesman, we really can’t go on keeping this maid.

………………….                  …………..               …………..

Hedda: Look at that! She has left her old hat lying on the chair.

And she explains the reason behind doing so to Judge Brack by saying:

Hedda: Sometimes, a mood like this strikes me. 

Hedda's final act is the climax of the play: she has been disappointed and frustrated by her own inability at controlling people's lives, which was her only way to live a manly life. Her failure in mastering the other characters' actions and personalities has actually lead to each character finding his true personality, with Hedda not having a part to play: Loevborg, as a man having lost his manhood in losing his manuscript, is dead, Tesman takes over as a responsible manly man near the womanly woman Mrs. Elvsted, and Brack, a homosexual manly man, finds himself as an outsider as he always ought to be. Only Hedda does not have a place in her own house near her husband and because she cannot live vicariously, her only way to regain her identity is to kill herself "in the temple", which is the most masculine, and according to her, perfect and beautiful, moment of the play. Having no more roles for Hedda Gabler to play, Henrik Ibsen literally kills his heroine: in wanting to master the game, she has lost her place in it. The indecency and even obscenity of her final act of despair -" But, good God! People don’t do such things!"- is not so much due to the act itself, but much more to the meaning of it: she is a woman, expected to act as a womanly woman, actually acting as a man. Throughout her life, she is afraid of having a scandal, it was the same reason that made her repel Eilert Loevborg;what people will think she (General Gabler’s daughter) married a drunken man who has no considerable rank in society. Again here was the same fear of scandal that made her tempt suicide; that scandal would have been crafted if she had been alive as the pistol she gave Eilert to make an end to his life beautifully was now in police’s custody. If people come to know about that, there might be many questions; why she gave pistol to Eilert Loevborg and she couldn’t answer such type of questions.Like Löevborg’s death, Hedda’s suicide is less an act of courage than ‘done in despair’, the result of a kind of ‘madness’ in which life is regarded as having less intrinsic value than death. She is trapped in circumstances she has little capacity to change; she yearns to cross a threshold into freedom, but knows that the only physical thresholds available to her are the doorways of her own house, beyond which there are few prospects for an improved situation. As limiting as her circumstances are, Hedda’s longing for ideas and experiences that transcend the everyday further exacerbates her sense of entrapment. Finally, the only beauty she can imagine is the pure, unchanging state of death; Hedda is driven to take her own life in an effort not merely to be free, but to create her tragic vision of ‘beauty’ in privilegeda scene completely of her own making. It is also – and this is perhaps the real tragedy of Hedda Gabler – a vision that no one among her family or friends is able, or even desires, to share or understand.

The study of Hedda’s character leads us to manypsychological allusions especially that of “paranoia” which is a thought process heavilyinfluenced by anxiety often to the point of irrationality. A paranoid person often has anexaggerated opinion of his own importance and may also reflect feelings of Jealousy(Richard.M.Suinn, 1970). Hedda’s actions can be aptly linked to various defensemechanisms related to a person suffering from such anxiety. The need of maintainingher dignity and propriety is so strong in Hedda that in order to achieve this she adoptscertain Ego-defense methods, which are well defined in the world of psychology.

·                     Denial of Reality: In this mechanism an attempt is made to “screen out”disagreeable realities by ignoring or refusing to acknowledge them (Coleman,1969). Under this category can be counted Hedda’s refusal to acknowledge herpregnancy, which according to her was the sign of “domestication” of women.

·                     Repression: It is often referred to as “Selective forgetting” (Coleman, 1969) bymeans of which threatening or painful thoughts and desires are excluded fromconsciousness. This includes Hedda’s preference to forget about her deep love for Eilert Loevborg which however she fails to erase from her memory.

·                     Rationalization: This mechanism includes justifying maladaptive behavior byfaulty logic and ascribing it to noble motive that did not in fact inspire it(Richard.M.Suinn, 1970). This can be related to Hedda’s deliberately hidingEilert’s manuscript and urging him to commit suicide telling him to let his endbe ‘beautiful’ she believed it to be “an act of deliberate courage- an act ofspontaneous beauty” (Hedda Gabler, Act IV)

·                     Displacement: In displacement, impulses are discharged by means of asubstitute object (Coleman 1969). This becomes explicit in the courses of theplay when Hedda wants to achieve those objectives through Eilert, which shecannot attain herself. In Act II we find that Hedda cannot bear to see him afraidbecause she wants him to lead the free, uninhibited life that she cannot leadherself.

At the end we can say that the play deals with the story of a woman who is torn with an inner conflict between her unfeminine cravings on the one hand and her journey along the feminine path of marriage and pregnancy on the other. She is portrayed as a woman who cannot find her own identity. And in her quest for identity, she ends up killing herself. In this regard, Randolph Goodman said that ‘Hedda Gabler (1890) has for its protagonist a neurotic woman who is unable to find her identity and destroys herself’.