A Critical Analysis of Sympathetically Unsympathetic - Character of Hedda - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of “Sympathetically Unsympathetic” Character of Hedda The main challenge that an actor faces while playing the role of Ibsen’s protagonist Hedda is to fit a self-contradictory persona. Hedda seems to love Lovborg; yet she mercilessly pushes him towards death. She wants freedom; yet she cannot but stay with her husband, Jorgen Tesman. George Bernard Shaw refers to this very self-contradictory aspect of Hedda’s character noting that she is “sympathetically unsympathetic”. Indeed, this phrase “sympathetically unsympathetic” literally means “compassionately heartless”. It means that though she is heartless, she is compassionate at the same time, a paradox created by Ibsen in his masterpiece. There may be another connotation of this phrase: Hedda acts heartless but she draws the audiences’ sympathy. Possibly the most remarkable scene where the trait of Hedda becomes the most visible is the one when she gives Lovborg the pistol to commit suicide. The scene is as following: LOVBORG: None. I will only try to make an end of it all--the sooner the better. HEDDA: [A step nearer him.] Eilert Lovborg--listen to me.--Will you not try to--to do it beautifully? LOVBORG: Beautifully? [Smiling.] With vine-leaves in my hair, as you used to dream in the old days---? HEDDA: No, no. I have lost my faith in the vine-leaves. But beautifully nevertheless! For once in a way!--Good-bye! You must go now--and do not come here anymore. LOVBORG: Good-bye, Mrs. Tesman. And give George Tesman my love. [He is on the point of going]. HEDDA: No, wait! I must give you a memento to take with you. [She goes to the writing-table and opens the drawer and the pistol-case; then returns to Lovborg with one of the pistols. LOVBORG: [Looks at her.] This? Is this the memento? HEDDA: [Nodding slowly.] Do you recognize it? It was aimed at you once. LOVBORG: You should have used it then. HEDDA: Take it--and do you use it now. LOVBORG: [Puts the pistol in his breast pocket.] Thanks! Throughout the whole play, Hedda appears as a vain and pampered flirt who always “fishes for compliments”. She is incapable of doing anything decent; rather she asserts her ability in mischief-making and manipulating her male counterparts. The image of Hedda as a cosseted high-society, luxury girl who has been bereaved by the prospect of a lowly life in husband’s household is quite vivid. She cannot tolerate anything lowly, filthy and ugly in life. She cannot bear looking at sickness or death. So, she resorts to be manipulative with a view to ensure a social status and to live life vicariously with Jorgen. In this effort, she even reaches the extent to mar the prospects of her ex-love Lovborg’s life. She mercilessly provokes him to commit suicide, as she says to him, “You must go now--and do not come here anymore” (Act III). It does not mean that she does not love Lovborg. Rather the dialogue between her and Lovborg reveals that she had an affair with good-looking and handsome Lovborg in her college. It is evident that she used to love him vehemently. Still she had to threaten him with a pistol in order to shake him from his life. Ibsen’s play does not reveal much about Hedda’s premarital love-affair. But one can easily guess that despite being handsome and loving, Lovborg, because of his inability to satisfy Hedda’s luxurious romanticism, had been rejected by Hedda. In Hedda’s luxurious romanticism, there is no place for miseries, poverty or other earthly sufferings. This luxuriously romantic persona of Hedda is glaringly visible in her suggestion for Lovborg to commit the suicide ‘beautifully’, as she says, “Eilert Lovborg--listen to me.--Will you not try to--to do it beautifully?...... No, no. I have lost my faith in the vine-leaves. But beautifully nevertheless! For once in a way!” (Ibsen). Hedda is a highflyer who has been trapped into what her society expects from her as a wife. She is continually tormented by her failure to achieve the high social status which she has enjoyed in her father’s house. She desires to be free from her worldly duties, responsibilities and also from common miseries of life. Her “aimless desire for freedom” makes her reproachful towards anyone who seems to intervene in her desire. As a result, in the play, she takes cruel pleasure in manipulating her male counterparts to achieve her end. Since her expectation of a luxurious life has been marred and also since Tessman’s household does not allow her to enjoy the romantic freedom, she impulsively hates Tessman’s relatives. Hedda possesses an awfully freedom loving mind; but she fails to perceive the duties which such freedom might impose upon her. In the beginning, she hates pregnancy, motherhood “make a claim on her freedom” (Ibsen 45). She does not like to be a mother, because it would bind her more with the duties and responsibilities. In Henrik Ibsen’s play, “Hedda Gabler”, the difficulty in playing ‘Hedda’ role essentially evolves from Hedda’s bipolar reaction to reality. Hedda, a woman ensnared in stern reality of life, craves frantically for freedom from bourgeois wifehood, from financial crisis and, in generally, from what the society wants her to be. In response to the bondages of life, she chooses to be shrewd and secretive to tread the forbidden sphere of life in which she thinks she can exert enough freedom. Far from having individuality she continually seeks it in her ability to manipulate the male characters around her. She tries to evade Tesman; even she does not hesitate to allow her ex-lover Ejlert Lovborg to commit suicide. She rather provokes him by giving him a pistol. It is not that she unsympathetically or villainously commits this crime of provoking Lovborg’s suicide; rather she does so to assert her being in her ability to possess and manipulate her romantic hero whom she once dumped because of his recklessly free nature. While performing Hedda’s role in the above mentioned scene, a prospective actor must keep in mind that the “Hedda Gabbler” does not tell any traditional love story. Again, though it has a tragic dimension, it is not a tragedy. Both Aristotelian and Shakespearean tragic protagonists are endowed with some positive qualities which necessarily make them noble as well as desirable. For example, both Othello and Oedipus are not the men of noble status but also of noble minds. But though Hedda belongs to an aristocratic society, her actions can be considered as stupidity and therefore, they evoke displeasure. Then what is tragic in her character is that she is like most other women in modern society who are locked away from the reality of the world. They are provided with good food, fashionable clothes, and luxurious living style. Normally, they remain deprived of the scope of the stern realities of life. So, they grow as stupid as Hedda when they face difficulties in life. In this sense, Ibsen’s play is a modern problem-play. Hedda remains the same naively stupid in her husband’s household. Also she suffers from an identity conundrum. She tries to assert her ‘self’ in an erroneous way of manipulating others. Her manipulation backfires on her instead of vesting freedom to her. Her manipulation of Lovborg finally makes her vulnerable to Judge Brack’s lewdness. For Hedda submitting to Brack’s lechery is a form of servitude. While Hedda’s downfall to servitude evokes the audiences’ sympathy, her moody adherence to her desire for an aristocratic life and failure to see the reality arouses the readers’ annoyance. Obviously these two bipolar reactions of Hedda to reality make it difficult to play her character. Work Cited Ibsen, Henrik. Hedda Gabler. Masterpieces of the Drama. 6th ed. New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1991. Read More