Imagined Human Beings. Bernard Jay Paris

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      Ejlert provides a solution to Hedda’s problem until he drags their intimacy down to reality by making sexual advances. Hedda is so alarmed by this that she threatens to shoot him, but she is afraid to do so because she has “such a fear of scandal” (act 2). When Lövborg accuses her of being “a coward at heart,” she wholeheartedly concurs: “A terrible coward.” She confesses that her “greatest cowardice that evening” was in not responding to his advances.

      Hedda is caught in a conflict between a desire to act out her rebellious aggression by leading a wild, free, bohemian life, like Lövborg, and an even stronger need to comply with the norms of her society, to be a refined, respectable lady, the proper daughter of an eminent general. To escape the agony of this conflict, she becomes cold, aloof, detached, out of touch with her own emotions and indifferent to other people. She does not believe in love, marries for convenience, and then is terribly oppressed by the boredom of her empty existence. When she returns from a lengthy wedding trip with a husband she cannot bear, she wants a butler, a saddle horse, a new piano, and an active social life partly for reasons of status and partly because she is spoiled, but mostly because she feels desperate and is searching for distractions. She becomes even more frustrated when she learns that they will have to curtail their expenses.

      Hedda’s plight is vividly depicted in her conversation with Judge Brack at the beginning of act 2. After greeting him with pistol shots and explaining that she is “just killing time” because she doesn’t know “what in heaven’s name” she is to do with herself “all day long,” Hedda complains about the boredom of her wedding trip. She makes it clear that she does not “love” Jörgen (“Ugh! Don’t use that revolting word!”), and that she married him because he had a promising career and she “wasn’t getting any younger.” Hedda is twenty-nine and has a dread of aging. Brack and Hedda then engage in a devious exchange in which Brack proposes an affair and Hedda makes it clear that she would rather continue her tête-à-tête with Jörgen than enter into a triangle that would compromise her respectability. She has no objection to Brack’s coming over to amuse her, however.

      In response to Hedda’s complaint about how “incredibly I shall bore myself here,” Brack suggests that she find “some sort of vocation in life,” but Hedda cannot imagine a vocation that would attract her. Perhaps she could get Jörgen to go into politics, despite the fact that he is completely unsuited for such a career. Like most of the women in Ibsen’s plays—and in his culture, no doubt—Hedda can find an outlet for her expansive tendencies only through identification with or manipulation of a man. There are variations on this theme in A Doll’s House (as we have seen), The Master Builder, and Rosmersholm.

      Hedda feels that life is “so hideous” because of her “genteel poverty”; but, sensing her detachment, Judge Brack astutely observes that “the fault lies elsewhere,” in the fact she has never “really been stirred by anything.” He suggests that this may change when she finds herself “faced with what’s known in solemn language as a grave responsibility.” Hedda angrily replies, “Be quiet! Nothing of that sort will ever happen to me.” She is already pregnant, however, and is trying to deny her condition, both to herself and to others. Not only is she confined to a woman’s narrow sphere in life, but she can find no satisfaction in what her culture regards as feminine joys. She puts off marriage as long as she can, partly because its restrictions do not appeal to her and partly because the men who attract her are not eligible and the men who are eligible do not attract her. She is appalled by the prospect of motherhood, again because of her detachment: “That sort of thing doesn’t appeal to me, Judge. I’m not fitted for it. No responsibilities for me!” Terribly frustrated herself, she has nothing to give a child, who will further limit her freedom. In rebellion against the feminine role but unable to find any other, she tells Judge Brack that the only thing she is “really fitted for” is “boring myself to death!”

      Hedda is in despair about her life. From the beginning of the play, she is full of frustration, irritability, and anger, which she displaces at first onto the self-effacing Aunt Juliane, who lets in too much sunlight, thus revealing Hedda’s aging face and filled out figure, and whose hat Jörgen has indecorously left on a drawing room table. When Judge Brack scolds her for tormenting “that nice old lady,” Hedda explains that she suddenly gets “impulses like that” and cannot “control them” (act 2). She is not callously amusing herself, but is compulsively discharging some of her pent-up rage, just as she does when she fires off her father’s pistols, those symbols of male power.

      Constantly looking for something that might interest her, Hedda regards the possible competition for the professorship between Ejlert and Jörgen as an event in which she can take “a sporting interest” (act 1), despite the fact that her husband’s professional and financial fortunes are at stake. The arrival of Thea takes her in a new direction, since Thea announces the presence of Ejlert Lövborg, who had once provided Hedda with a way of dealing with her frustrations and inner conflicts. When she learns that Ejlert is in town she has a vague hope that he can somehow be of help to her, and she immediately asks Jörgen to invite him.

      Upon Lövborg’s arrival, Hedda becomes involved in a competition with Thea for influence over him. Hedda is threatened by Thea and has a powerful need to triumph over her. When they knew each other at school, Hedda used to pull Thea’s hair and once said she was “going to burn it all off” (act 1). Ibsen describes Thea’s hair as “extremely thick and wavy,” while Hedda’s is “not especially abundant.” Thea’s thick hair symbolizes fertility and makes Hedda all the more conscious of the sterility of her own existence, despite her pregnancy. The contrast between the two women is developed throughout the play. Whereas Hedda reveled in Lövborg’s debauchery, Thea inspired him to write books, which he describes as their children. Hedda’s fear of scandal made her afraid of responding to Ejlert’s advances, but Thea leaves her husband in order to follow him to town: “But, Thea, my darling!”—exclaims Hedda—“How did you dare do such a thing?” (act 1; my emphasis). When Thea declares that she will never go back to her husband, Hedda is shocked: “But what will people say about you, Thea?” “They can say,” replies Thea, “whatever they like.” In pursuit of what is really important to her, Thea ignores public opinion in a way that Hedda cannot. Hedda’s envy is exacerbated when Lövborg praises Thea’s “tremendous courage” where her “comrade is concerned”:

      Hedda: God, yes, courage! If one only had that!

      Lövborg: What then?

      Hedda: Then life might perhaps be endurable, after all . . . (act 2)

      Thea is Hedda’s nemesis, the woman who demonstrates that it is possible to have a fruitful life if one has the courage to defy convention.

      There can be no doubt that Hedda manipulates Lövborg into taking a drink and going to Judge Brack’s party in order to disrupt his relationship with Thea and to show that she has more power over him. But she is not yet out to destroy Lövborg, as she is later when she conceals the fact that Jörgen has found his manuscript. At this point in the play she wants Ejlert to enact a scenario she has conceived for him in which he will be a triumphant author who is free of self-doubt and anxiety about himself. She wants “the power to shape a human destiny” in what she regards as a positive way.

      Lövborg’s refusal to take a drink and go to Brack’s party disturbs Hedda because it seems to be motivated by the same kind of fear that has made her life unendurable and filled her with self-contempt. Hedda despises herself for her conformity, her dread of scandal, her cowardice. She taunts Ejlert with not daring to take a drink or go to the party: “Didn’t dare! You say I didn’t dare!” (act 2). She cannot bear to see him afraid and eggs him on because she wants him to lead the free, uninhibited life that she cannot lead herself. She is caught in a crossfire of conflicting shoulds, since she hates herself for her cowardice but knows that she would hate herself even more for any breach of propriety. СКАЧАТЬ