Henrik Ibsen
Contributed by Dr. Gagnon
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Hedda Gabler (1890)
To understand Hedda Freeman, it’s important to understand Hedda Gabler; and to understand Hedda Gabler, it’s important to understand Henrik Ibsen, as well as his world.
What are some of the sound bytes we often hear about him?
1) He is the most-performed playwright, after Shakespeare, in the Western world—True, though such honors are not entirely trustworthy, since there are all sorts of undocumented productions of many playwrights. However, it’s basically true for acknowledged productions. (“shakespearetheatre.org”)
2) He was nominated three times for a Nobel Prize. Yup—also true. He was nominated in 1902, 1903, and 1904. Alas, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.
3) He was an early feminist. Um, well—kinda-sorta-maybe. Art is art, and perspective does the heavy lifting, but while his play A Doll House (or A Doll’s House, depending on the translation and um, perspective) does tell the story of a woman who takes her life into her own hands within a patriarchal society, we can’t necessarily expand that consistently to some other works. For example, Ghosts also has strong women, but they generally work within—rather than disrupt–a gender-normative social structure to achieve their ends, and they don’t necessarily succeed. Hedda Gabler is a different story. One may argue for its feminist politics since its protagonist is undoubtedly oppressed by society’s patriarchal conventions, and then-contemporary audiences (and even now-contemporary audiences) identified with her for this reason–and there are reasons to suggest that we can sympathize with Hedda. Arguments to the contrary are that Hedda is in fact entirely unsympathetic and so cannot positively advocate feminism, and that Ibsen’s intentions point away from feminism, and that her suffering is the result of her own weak character, not society’s gender inequality. We will all work together to work this out in Hedda Freeman.
Of course, whether or not Ibsen was a feminist, it is true that he was a pioneer and is considered the first and most significant of the early “realists.” He did something new—or, at least, he was the first to receive broad recognition and popular success in crafting his early brand of theatrical realism.
Before Ibsen:
Western theatrical history and performance comprised a wide range of forms. Moving from the 18th into the 19th century, Western audiences were choosing from among residual Shakespeare (he will never go away—get ready for lots of jobs in royalty-free Shakespeare plays) and other heroic drama, some classical Greek and Roman revivals, and a host of other tropes, among which are the following:
1) Pathetic Drama (or “she-tragedies”; you can probably take a good guess at the subject matter. Think Lifetime Television)
2) Restoration Comedy (lots of ribald humor, naughtiness, and sly commentary on social behavior)
3) Sentimental Comedy (often with names like The Tender Husband, The Conscious Lovers, or in a neat nod in the text of Ragtime, The Thoughtful Butcher; basically, they were the Hallmark Christmas movies of their day)
4) Domestic Tragedy (the tragedies of common/working-class/middle-class lives, without the demands of Aristotelian tragedy; Ibsen finds a cozy spot in this group)
5) Italian and German Opera (watch out for Wagner, whose concept of theatre is going to sneak away from opera halls and into the world of the legit theatre)
6) Ballad Opera (a form that helped give birth to the contemporary musical comedy)
7) Music Hall, early Burlesque (not the stripper kind), Melodrama, Minstrel Shows (ugh!), and other forms of entertainment.
And, very importantly, somebody gets the idea during the late 1800s—and somebody likes the idea—that theatre can actually replicate a recognizable real world. Whether in visuals or in dialogue or in ideas or in subject matter (see the Duke of Saxe-Meinengen for more), verisimilitude becomes the new craze, taking chunks of the throne away from the traditions that Western theatre had relied on since air—primarily, theatrical artifice to engage audiences. That brings us to—
Henrik Ibsen:
He was one of the leading exponents of theatrical realism—and it happened quickly. According to critic Patti Gillespie, in the late nineteenth century, “Ibsenism became as immediate and passionate a cause as ‘Wagnerism’.” That begs the question, what is Ibsenism?
At least to begin our understanding, let’s use this equation (because theatre arts majors just love the maths):
“Ibsenism” = Realism
-Exposition is motivated realistically
-It relies on a self-contained structure
-It discarded asides and soliloquies
-It was crafted in three acts, rather than the standard five
-Its characters speak prosaic language—not verse or highly stylized diction
-Its characters are middle class or lower-middle-class
-It portrays a recognizable imitation of contemporary behavior and style
Ibsenism also refers to his general subject matter and writerly interests. We are products of the social revolution kicked off by Ibsen in the last years of the nineteenth century, one that in certain ways has not yet played itself out. His characters’ bids for personal fulfillment at the expense of social and religious institutions are unsurprising to us because the twentieth century listened to him and valorized such attempts. The rebel without (or even with) a cause became a cultural hero rather than a public menace. For perhaps one of the clearest examples of this in Ibsen’s work, check out An Enemy of the People.
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As for his politics—and this is important to what comes next–a myth about Ibsen is that he was a passionate advocate for democracy, women’s rights, and sexual freedom. As biographer Ivo de Figueiredo claims, nothing could be further from the truth. He says that Ibsen displayed a “blazing contempt” for representative democracy, and he nurtured no love for the common people, whose abysmal taste he excoriated. “The minority is always right!” he often exclaimed, according to the biographer. “The majority? What is the majority? The ignorant mob. Intelligence is always to be found in the minority.” According to de Figueiredo, his political opinions were neither of the Left nor the Right, but were unclassifiable and often contradictory and could be described as “aristocratic individualism.” However, history shows that Ibsen himself lived a conventional life, and as he enriched himself, he enjoyed all the material perks of the new bourgeois culture of the nineteenth century. De Figueiredo says the “signs are that he lacked the basic ability to understand and to relate to complicated social questions and the practical mechanics of political life.” In other words, he was a bit of a political idiot.
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Oh my. People may ask, “What about A Doll’s House? What about that strong feminist statement of the woman taking charge of her life?” I mean, A Doll’s House Part II was a strong feminist statement, even if A Doll’s Life (the musical) didn’t know quite what to do with Nora. That shouldn’t stop you, however, from investigating its score, which has some lovely and pertinent songs and musical ideas.
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Check out what critic Brooke Allan has to say about Ibsen’s House: “The myth of Ibsen, the great liberal, is probably due more than anything to the radical message of A Doll’s House. Published and first performed in 1879, when the early feminist movement was already undermining traditional ideas about women and their lives, the play had a seismic effect on contemporary culture. It was taken then, and is taken now, as a feminist manifesto, but it turns out that’s not what Ibsen had in mind at all. It was Nora Helmer the individual—not Nora Helmer the woman—whose right to an independent identity was being asserted. [Ibsen has stated,] “I write to describe human beings, and it is a matter of complete indifference to me what the fanatics of the women’s movement do and do not like!”
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“Fanatics.” He said it.
Now what do we think of Ibsen? What do we think about our Hedda?
Hedda Gabler was first performed in Norway (though in Danish) in 1890—about thirty years before American women (well, American white women, anyway) were allowed to vote legally. This is not a random serving of dates and figures; it helps us to understand why a strong, proactive woman figure might be seen as being a feminist powerhouse or icon or, at least, inspiration.
She is a commanding personality, one that is able to “arouse curiosity and speculation,” according to Rolf Fjede, who continues: “The vivid, anguished, dangerous character of Hedda has long impressed actresses and audiences alike as tinder enough to ignite the play—so much so that she constantly threatens to become her own stereotype.” Think about Joan Crawford with a couple of cocktails in her system.
However, a stereotype limits the depth of its subject, whereas Hedda is, in the words of Henry James, “infinitely perverse.” Under her icy exterior—just read her dialogue—passions burn, and not necessarily romantic ones. Check out the text and its repeated references to the stove and burning things and fire; I’m not imagining this. However, it’s a complex fire that burns within Hedda: she wants to live vicariously through the subject of her intense gaze, to control that life, to use it not only as a means of access to her vision of herself, but also as a warning to others. In other words, let’s go back to Joan Crawford’s immortal/apocryphal line, “Don’t fuck with me, fellas.” (You haven’t seen Mommy Dearest?) For a more contemporary dramatic creation, check out that of the Dyonisian Miss Jean Brodie, especially in Maggie Smith’s thunder-striking, Oscar-winning performance in the movie version of the play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Like Brodie, Hedda also envisions her lovers as Dionysian heroes, adorned with laurel wreaths.
What else do we know about her?
-She is “dangerously bored” (Frank N. McGill)
-She is manipulative, perhaps a result of that boredom or her own nature
-She is her father’s daughter. Her father is a general, and his portrait doesn’t just hang in the living room of her house; it practically looms and glowers over it. I mean, come on—the play is entitled Hedda Gabler, her maiden name when her name in the play is Hedda Tessman.
At the risk of doing students’ character research for them, I’ll stop there, but those characteristics are as salient as any others and should be stable starting blocks.
Before we cross the finish line, then, I want to go back to McGill and his classification of Hedda and her problem: “Hers is not a problem of social justice but of private insight. She knows nothing of personal or political power; hence, she appears to use people, to exploit them—but, in reality, more out of näiveté than cold calculation, for she does not recognize or appreciate her influence. The metaphorical evolution of Hedda’s personality—from a self-indulgent child to a falsely confident adolescent, to a desperate and despairing (and pregnant) woman who puts a bullet through her head—starkly depicts the life of an individual, not a symbol of a social issue. As such Hedda Gabler is a problem play, not a social problem play.”
Now, we begin.