Hedda Gabler 593ceptive remark in a letter to George Brandes, Ibsen’s
lifelong friend and an academic:
Greater things than [state] will fall; all reli-
gion will fall. Neither the conceptions of
morality nor those of art are eternal. To how
much are we really obliged to pin pour faith?
Who will vouch for it that two and two do
not make five up in Jupiter? (1871)Yet a human being as social animal is a site for
an examination of major values that are considered
humanity’s social and spiritual bulwark. As an artist
Ibsen creates a specific situation that shows human-
ity at work in a sociocultural context. Hedda refers
to the manuscript as the intellectual equivalent of a
baby and is in fact pregnant when she kills herself.
Hedda’s actions destroy both babies. Her Lady
Macbeth-like ruthlessness lends the play an unusual
intensity and determines the contours of her char-
acter. It would appear from the architectural design
of Hedda Gabler that Ibsen’s intention is as much
to show how self-seeking, egotistical, and heartless
human beings can be, as to point to the inescapable
fact that self-centeredness can exist only in a con-
text in which altruistic impulse exists, too. Thus, by
implication, Ibsen assures us that the finer human
urges do exist even though they are forever threat-
ened by their baser counterparts. Thea is moved by
love and devotion. George is keen to reconstruct
the manuscript that has been destroyed because it
will bring honor to a worthy scholar. Yet the strong
voices that Ibsen lends to his protagonists, including
Hedda, discourage readers from indulging in moral
judgments.
Gulshan Taneja
Gender in Hedda Gabler
Contemporary thinkers in Ibsen’s time believed that
the issue of equality of the sexes was closely bound
up with major social reforms and structural changes
in society, a view that Ibsen appears to have shared,
believing that feminist causes were part of the larger
canvas. In a speech delivered before the Norwegian
Women’s Rights League, Ibsen had said that he
must “disclaim the honour of having consciously
worked for the women’s rights movement. . . . To
me it has seemed a problem of humanity in gen-
eral” (1898). Much earlier, in his notes for A Doll ’s
House, Ibsen expressed a similar feeling: “A woman
cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an
exclusively male society with laws drafted by men,
and with counsel and judges who judge feminine
conduct from the male point of view” (1878).
There is, of course, no doubt that the question of
feminist reform was never far from Ibsen’s thoughts.
His wife, Suzannah, was an independent-minded
woman. Her mother, Magdalene Thoresen, a play-
wright and novelist, was her role model. Ibsen him-
self considered Mrs. Thoresen much ahead of her
times. Ibsen’s interaction with Camilla Collett, who
voiced Norway’s most important feminist concerns,
and his great admiration for her achievements, led
to a deep impact on his own thinking as well as
his writings. He, for instance, lent support to the
1884 petition in favor of property rights for married
women in Norway.
Despite his humanist liberal attitude to social
issues and his concern for larger questions, Ibsen’s
focus on the female characters in his plays was a
major achievement. Ibsen projects the figure of the
emancipated woman in almost all his plays. Many
of his characters value independence and sexual
fulfillment rather than marriage. Often, his female
characters are better educated, taking up jobs rather
than acting as self-sacrificing cogs in the everlast-
ing domestic wheel of life. They ignore traditional
female attire, wear boots and men’s clothing, and
deglamorize themselves. Some of them are shown
using words and expressions traditionally associated
with men. They can be blunt and aggressive in their
behavior and disregard what people might think of
their actions. Ibsen projects powerful and dramatic
female characters who do not consider motherhood
as their inescapable destiny.
By her upbringing, Hedda is more of man than
a woman. She is brought up by her father, a general:
“She has to be regarded,” Ibsen wrote, “rather as her
father’s daughter than her husband’s wife” (1890).
She plays with a pistol, loves horses, and in moments
of anxiety, paces up and down as a stereotypical man
would do. Her desire for freedom from domination
and personal independence are viewed as masculine
ambitions. In the play, Hedda reacts angrily to Judge