Human infants are born into an environment that is rich with expectations, norms, values, and traditions; all of these help in shaping a personality. (Craig & Baucum 2001 204) Every individual maintains different personality traits from others, and nature, as well as nurture, plays a decisive role in personality development. The same is the case with Hedda Gabler. Hedda Gabler is a fictional character and the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s famous play under the title “Hedda Gabler.” Ibsen (1828-1906) is one of the greatest playwrights Norway has ever witnessed. His socio-psychological plays won marvelous applause and got popularity all over Europe. The works produced by Ibsen wide opened new avenues of thoughtfulness by pointing out the prevailing so-called social norms and values targeting the individual freedom and liberty of the people at large.
The play revolves around the manipulative, arrogant, grumpy yet attractive, and intelligent personality of Hedda Gabler who is the central character of the play. She is a beautiful young lady of twenty-eight years, and the daughter of a military general Mr. Gabler, and has been married to a middle-class scholar George Tesman, five years senior to Hedda. She has conceived a baby during her honeymoon trip comprising of a six-month duration. But she does not want to reveal her pregnancy due to the fact she neither likes the physical contact of men nor wants to give birth to the child of an individual belonging to a middle-class family. She contains dictatorial disposition, and cannot be convinced of an idea, notion, or moral obligations altogether.
Born in an aristocratic-military household, Hedda experiences the complexity of her socio-economic mobility from the elite stratum of society to the middle class; it is, therefore, it becomes very hard for her to adjust herself according to the changing circumstances. Although the members of her in-laws’ family try their hard to keep her happy and satisfied, yet her personality has been groomed in such a way that can neither accept a new environment far below than her past life, nor she is ready to make amendments in her personality traits and disposition. Hence, she always pretends to be a haughty lady who persuades others to choose the disappointing path leading towards unpleasant and uneven consequences. She inspired the beloved of her husband’s rival Mrs. Elvsted to desert her lover Eilert Lovborg in his dissipation on the one hand, and encouraged Eilert Lovborg to commit suicide with Hedda’s pistol out of utter distress and perturb mental condition. Her arrogance and pride also led her towards her own fateful demise as she did not want to remain under the threats and influences of any other person including the blackmailing Judge Brack and her own husband i.e. Tesman even.
Here appears Maslow’s need for hierarchical theory to be applied in order to estimate Hedda’s queer personality traits. Famous psychologist and the father of humanistic psychology, Abraham H. Maslow has elaborated five levels of motivation in his famous Need Hierarchy Theory in 1943. These levels include physiological, safety, social, ego, and self-actualizing ones. Maslow opines that as the motivation takes to start from the primary level, so the primary and foremost level needs and requirements of the individuals must be fulfilled in priority to motivate and inspire them towards their work and to develop as well as strengthen their interest in the activities and tasks they are to fulfill. He submits that if senior members of the family are interested in patronizing the addressing of most significant motivational factors in other individuals, all these above-mentioned levels of motivation should be satisfied.
Physiological needs, according to Maslow, are those, which offer individual contentment and pleasure; these include hunger, thirst, and sex. Though physical relations with the members of the opposite sex fascinate Hedda, yet she considers it an awkward activity as soon as she gets married. She is not ready for the physical touches of men and actually abhors that all. Perhaps, she does not look ready to develop physical relations with a person lower than her status. Maslow declares the interesting activity as the first and foremost factor of motivation and the part of his concept of self-actualizing factor. More attractive and relevant to the disposition and aptitude of an individual the work is, higher will be the level of his motivation while performing his obligations and interacting with others. Hence, Hedda seeks no motivation while living in a house inferior to her past dwellings, as well as interacting with the employees of low worth, according to her.
Thus, Maslow’s notion comes true that if an individual’s position is not sufficient to enjoy basic necessities including food, clothing, and shelter for him according to his socioeconomic status and his family, his motivation level will surely be below and he will be unable to pay due heed to his work and obligations. Hedda’s parents did not conduct her learning process in such a way that she would make herself adjusted to a comparatively lower level of her unmarried life, so her motivational factors remain low and in a sorry state of mind.
Similarly, Maslow lays stress on admiration and appreciation from the senior members for doing a good job and showing commendable performance at the job by the employee. The same can be the case with an individual at home. It will raise an individual’s self-esteem and he will work more arduously in the future. Tesman does not encourage Hedda on burning the manuscript of his rival Lovborg’s would-be awarded book; rather, he is startled at knowing the very fact that Hedda has set it into the fire. It creates feelings of repentance in her, and her motivational factor lowers to a sorry state. Consequently, she advises Lovborg to commit suicide in a dignified manner; by this, she may not only escape suspicion of being declared as responsible for destroying the manuscript on the one hand, and make Lovborg earn a respectable death on the other. Thus, the frailty of Hedda’s personality and fears prevailing in her mind appears before us while making an estimate of her personality traits.
Maslow declares physical and emotional security as the safety factor, which is the fourth one in his list of motivational factors. If an individual does not feel secure, he may be involved in trying his luck to some alternate atmosphere on the one hand and may choose a destructive line of action on the other. The protagonist character Hedda, who chooses to commit suicide to evade Brack’s blackmailing, reveals the same. Hedda has got the clue that Brack knows Lovborg’s using Hedda’s pistol for committing suicide, so Brack may seduce her for his own purpose. Being mentally a dominant and dictatorial personality, she is not ready to comply with Brack’s ill temptations. Her personality has developed in such a way that she hardly compromises with the fair demands of the family, how such a powerful egoist can bow down before the needs of a person who stands far lower than her in the social hierarchy. It is, therefore, she commits suicide and ends her life rather than stepping down from her dignified personality.
Hedda Gabler also describes the conflict between the individual psyche and existing social values in his environment. The feelings of pride, isolation, jealousy, and self-praise dominate Hedda’s intellect and sobriety, and she becomes critical and moody while interacting with the members of her in-law’s family. Her arrogance and pride also led her towards her own fateful demise as she did not want to remain under the threats and influences of any other person including Brack and Tesman.
Hedda Gabler is so authoritative and powerful personality that all other characters around her look like minor ones in the play. The sluggish and complying Dr. Tesman, too subservient and submissive Auntie Juliana, always worried and anxious Mrs. Elvsted, drunkard, irresponsible and impatient Lovborg and naïve and timid Brack cannot have any audacity to challenge the powerful character of arrogant and confident central figure Hedda. She always keeps others under her strong influence that everyone looks busy just to please and gratify her. She criticizes Auntie Juliana’s act of placing the hat on the chair by declaring it an old one. In addition, she appears in a commanding position while instructing Juliana to cover the French window panes with curtains. Her apathy towards Tesman’s excitement on finding his childhood slippers and refusal to have even a look on them instead of his insistence proves her commanding character of the drama, playing a pivotal part throughout the four Acts of the modern tragedy.
Hedda appears indifferent to the excitement of the family while finding her pregnant. She has the least care regarding the feelings of others and forces them to gyrate around her till the play finishes. Lovborg is devastated by the loss of his manuscript as he believes that it is the loss of Mrs. Elvsted too, who contains an equal share in conceiving of the ideas, though he is not too much disappointed to think of committing suicide. It is Hedda who shows him the path of total destruction and demise. Hedda’s personality consists of intellectual dishonesty, selfishness, jealousy, and arrogance. She looks busy playing with a pistol in loneliness to evade boredom also discloses the level of stress and frustration, rather than sitting in the company of others and giving vent to her ideas.
References
Henrik Ibsen. Hedda Gabler. Grace J. Craig & Don Baucum. Human Development Ninth Edition Prentice Hall 2001.