preview

Symbolism in Hedda Gabler

Better Essays

The mid-nineteenth century realist playwright Alexandre Dumas wrote the following about his drama. "If…I can exercise some influence over society; if, instead of treating effects I can treat causes; if, for example, while I satirize and describe and dramatize adultery, I can find means to force people to discuss the problem, and the law-maker to revise the law, I shall have done more than my part as a poet, I shall have done my duty as a man….We need invent nothing; we have only to observe, remember, feel, coordinate, restore….As for basis, the real; as for facts, what is possible; for means, what is ingenious; that is all that can rightfully be asked of us." Along with the realist dramatists of his time, Dumas wrote his plays with a noble …show more content…

Symbols are a magnificent tool in description of psychological stitch work, and just as Ibsen has a knack for describing great interior room settings and visually creating specific bodily attributes, he likewise has a crafty and firm handle on symbolic description of human character and more generally, human nature. One of the most pressing and popular questions in psychology at that time, which had only just emerged as a scientific discipline, was the ways in which human nature was formed by experience. It's no wonder why Ibsen created such intricate and significant character histories that occur long before the curtain rises. Given that Freud published his first major work Studies in Hysteria in 1895, and Hedda Gabler appeared five years earlier in 1890 (A Dolls House was staged as early as 1879), isn't it quite plausible that Freud's launching pad was the psychological drama of the late nineteenth century that Ibsen championed? Much of the work of a certain white-bearded cokehead/hero of the twentieth century, while brilliant and ground-breaking, might never have existed without Ibsen's darkest plays like Hedda Gabler, which explore the fierce struggle between those who demand that everyone face unpleasant realities, confronting their fear and uncertainty, and those who construct illusions to make life bearable in spite of a past trauma or a repressed horrible experience. Freud later published his ideas on the

Get Access