Hedda Gabler: A Dancer In The Dark

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), the outstanding Norwegian playwright of the late nineteenth century, opens a new epoch in European modern drama and exerts an extensive and far-reaching influence on the development of realistic drama. Ibsen created twenty-nine plays altogether. With the keen observation of an artist, he brought into European bourgeois drama an ideological gravity, a psychological depth and a social significance by placing the problems of the bourgeois family on the stage and dramatizing the hidden conflicts in the nineteenth-century European society.Hedda Gabler has been regarded as the most accessible play among Ibsen's later creations. The play reveals the inner conflict and tragic fate of an aristocratic decadent woman——Hedda Gabler in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Stamped with the brand of her class, Hedda is unwilling to adapt herself to the changed situation. She refuses any compromise. The idealist Hedda suffers much from the incongruity between free will and real prospects. Ibsen chisels the protagonist Hedda Gabler, a special and multi-faceted figure.The dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One, Introduction, concentrates on the life and works of Henrik Ibsen, a brief summary of Hedda Gabler, a literature review and the aims of the dissertation. The play Hedda Gabler has aroused the interests of numerous critics and scholars since its publication in 1890 and its premiere in 1891. Critics have different even opposite ideas on the contradictory protagonist Hedda Gabler. Hedda Gabler possesses dual identities: an aristocratic decadent figure in the latter half of the nineteenth century and a female in the patriarchal society. The tragic fate of each identity gathers and reaches climax in the one figure of her, which makes her destiny appealing and striking. So the objective of the dissertation is to interpret the destiny of Hedda Gabler from her dual identities from the socio-historical perspective and the feminist perspective, and to exhibit how the tragic fate of an individual is determined in the conflict between one's free will and real prospects.Chapter Two, Hedda's Marriage and the social background of the Play, starts with an analysis of Hedda's marriage——a commercial transaction. Hedda's marriage refracts social changes in the latter half of the nineteenth century——the gradual triumph of the middle class over the aristocracy. Before coming to the careful study of Hedda Gabler's personality, it is necessary for us to make a survey of social background of the play to get a thorough understanding of her personality and destiny. Thus, this part comes to a general analysis of social background from the following aspects: economic investigation, class analysis and women's position in the latter half of the nineteenth century.Chapter Three, A Detailed Analysis of Hedda Gabler's personality, consists of three parts. Part One summarizes Hedda's life and her contradictory nature and analyzes the title of the paper. During her short life, Hedda remains a contradictory character, beset with many irresolvable contradictions. As the central figure of the play, Hedda has been entangled with four men,who perform four distinct functions for Hedda: General Gabler being the invisible commander, George Tesman the material provider, Eilert Lovborg the ideal embodiment, and Judge Brack the entertainer and the threat. Therefore, Part Two gives the detailed analysis of Hedda Gabler through her relationship with these male figures to illuminate various sides of her complex personality. Part Three deals with Hedda's last dance——her suicide, which is the way to control her destiny and realize her freedom.Chapter Four, A Comparative Study of Hedda and Thea, is a study of the personality of the protagonist of the play in contrast to that of other female figures in the play, the angels in the house. The comparative study of Hedda and Thea,the self-pursuing unwomanly woman and the selfless womanly woman, will provide a further understanding of Hedda's personality and her spiritual dilemma. Hedda and Thea have the same martial tragedy, while they have different attitudes towards love and marriage. Though Hedda is the embodiment of dominance, jealousy and destructiveness, she has the consciousness of the self and pursues her self-realization incessantly, which makes her a new aesthetic angel. In contrast with the conventional womanly woman Thea, Hedda remains a fascinating and striking figure.Chapter Five, Conclusion, discusses Hedda's spiritual dilemma and its universal significance. Meanwhile, this chapter points out the intention of Ibsen's creation and some ideas of the author herself.