Ibsen's Hedda Gabler: Tragedy as Denouement

Author(s): Michael M. Dorcy

Source: College English, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Dec., 1967), pp. 223-227
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
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 THE COMIC AS A CRITIQUE OF REASON 223

than audience a comic butt because of that the historical critic does not think
his cowardice, with Maurice Morgann's the greater comprehensiveness of roman-
view that Falstaff is an admirable, though tic criticism a virtue, but for most pur-
not exemplary, character. The question poses I believe that those who are in-
is important because of its bearing on terested in the relevance of the human-
the theme of honor in the Henry IV ities will want to judge not only by the
plays. We might choose both views of standards of the past but also by the
Falstaff, as most observers of our day standards which they believe in. The
would, but such a choice is also a ro- bulk of criticism since 1800 (including
mantic reading that a consistent historical that of Eliot, Hulme, and Leavis) has
critic would deplore. been romantic, and I do not think we
I did not bring up this problem in would be creating better readers-or men
order to solve it, but I would suggest -by suggesting that they stop sympa-
that the solution depends on what kind thizing with Falstaff, Malvolio,
of knowledge we are seeking. To know Harpagon, or Alceste. To me, it would
the pastness of the past requires his- seem a far more worthwhile critical task
torical knowledge and historical imagi- in dealing with any comic character to
nation; to know the presentness of the determine "how far, in many of his
past, which is the task of romantic criti- notions, he might, tho' odd, be absolutely
cism, requires even more. I am aware right."

Ibsen's Hedda Gabler:

Tragedy as Denouement
MICHAEL M. DORCY

PROFESSOR MAYNARD MACK, among Some time ago, Richard Chase criti-
others, has remarked that drama is an cized T. S. Eliot for what he chose to
obvious, yet an often neglected, link call a "loss of the sense of the present
between literature and life, and this at moment in time and the sense of the
all levels of education. Drama is a unique world about us, the sense of what is
type of meeting, to borrow Martin present."' Chase's citing of poets whom
Buber's term. It is not a real life en- he considers to have conveyed a "sense
counter of two persons; rather, it is, of the present" at least questions the
or can be, a meeting with oneself in the sweeping indictment by some critics that
transparent other. This is especially true all poetic activity is basically romantic
of tragedy at its best. And it is especially and therefore an ahistorical enterprise,
the time element of tragedy, that an escape from time and time's stuff.
sense of the present, which controls the The artist, it would appear, has an
involvement one experiences in the much option. This is especially evident in the
discussed tragic enterprise. dramatic or tragic arts; in these the
Michael M. Dorcy is in the Department of artist can either side step or come to
English at Saint Louis University. He is prepar-
ing a book on image media and other aspects of 1Richard Chase, "The Sense of the Present,"
popular culture. Kenyon Review, VII (1945), 218-231.

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224 COLLEGE ENGLISH

grips with what Mircea Eliade has so thus myth becomes real history, history
tellingly called the "terror of history." as present. The audience has a glimpse
Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is a fine of history at the moment it is being
example of the handling of this alter- created.
native presented to the dramatist. For in Henrik Ibsen was consciously striving
this play, variously described as tragedy, for the Aristotelean ideal of a dramatic
comedy, "dark" comedy, and tragi- action transpiring within a single revo-
comedy, we find portrayed a struggle lution of the earth about its axis. But
and a conflict with time itself, resulting whereas in the Greek theater the play-
in a final imbalance between the past wright had only to evoke a myth that
and the present which affects the basic was common property and could con-
relationship between audience and pro- centrate on his own present revelation
tagonist, and ultimately prevents the of plot, Ibsen must weave the tissue
play from being real tragedy at all. of his own myth at the same time he is
The Dimension of Time: concentrating on his action. The Greek
The Sense of the Present playwright could lift the entire myth
into his own presentation and make it
Drama, even in its most primitive reverberate in the present. Ibsen, unable
forms, reveals a relationship of three to draw upon established tradition, must
basic elements: a place, set aside for a reveal all that he would have his audience
specific function, that of representation; know about the past, and in doing so
a play-community, aware of itself as a he constantly runs the risk of losing
group and gathered for a distinct pur- his presentation and letting it slip back
pose; and an actor, confining himself to into the past.
the specified area, the stage, and in all This aspect of Ibsen's dramaturgy re-
his concrete particularity enacting the ceives some elucidation from William
representation for which the community Archer's discussion of the "point of at-
is gathered. About the sacred area there tack" in Play-Making. Faced with the
is a willing suspension of the limitations vast maze of the universe fabric, the
of time and space. The actor stands playwright unravels a single strand of
present to the audience in an attempt activity; then he cuts it, arbitrarily
to stop time and to enter into the fathom- choosing a beginning. He can run the
less profundity of a single human act. curtain up whenever he wishes: at the
Through the action, the audience finds start of a crisis, or at the beginning of
itself, and is in a sense restored to the the catastrophe. Shakespeare's usual
human race. practice was to bring the entire action
History as a chronicler's account of into immediate purview, leaving little to
the future becoming the past, and as that narrative exposition which becomes
viewed from that end only, tends to the chronicler's history and looses the
produce a certain stagnating, dehuman- hold on the present. In Hamlet, for
izing effect. This kind of history must example, in the play-within-the-play, the
become myth before drama becomes myth is brought up to date, giving a new
possible. Myth is a passport out of the depth to the present; the dead past be-
chronicler's history where reason is re- comes alive again.
duced to historical trend, and where Ibsen's point of attack is always late.
human heart is forgotten in the frigid Only in the League of Youth and in
relating of fact. Through drama, in turn, An Enemy of the People could one say
man takes myth and restores the human that his whole action comes from with-
element that has been lost. These are in the framework of the play. In other
human beings performing an action and presentations Ibsen is forced to go back

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 IBSEN'S HEDDA GABLER 225

in order to put his audience in possession Sartre does, of an antinomy between

of some of the antecedent circumstances absolute power and total subjection,
necessary for an understanding of the ruling out the possibility of participated
present action. As his talent aged, Ibsen freedom. The man who subjects being
became more and more adept at avoiding to having is never available to others.
cumbersome prologues. This he accom- He can only see others as useful or not
plished through such devices as the useful for serving his own ends. Other
confidant of the classic French theater. people must be appropriated. Insofar as
Yet the emphasis on the past remained they exercise a bit of interiority them-
strong, and as Archer remarks, Ghosts selves and do not submit totally to ap-
is a drama of exposition rather than propriation, they become living hells for
a drama of action. Ibsen fails to strike someone like Hedda.
any "reasonable equilibrium between the Marcel insists that freedom goes be-
drama of the past and the drama of the yond the Sartrean distinction between
present." In his last works the aging autonomy and heteronomy. It does not
Ibsen gave an upper hand to the past. follow, as Sartre pretends, and as Hedda
In The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John thinks, that because a person is not the
Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead plaything of his environs he is complete
Awaken, we find three-fourths of the master of himself.
action dedicated to a "passionate analysis On Marcel's analysis, Hedda's suicide
of the past." follows consistently from her previous
In Hedda Gabler Archer sees a more behavior. Brack's astonishment at play's
"sound proportion between the past and end betrays his shallowness: people,
the present." Yet the opening revelation Hedda's type of people, do do such
between Miss Tessman and Bertha in things! It is the final gesture of the
the conventional French mode, and the spectator, the antithesis of the witness's
expository tite-1-tte when Hedda first martyrdom. It is a refusal to offer testi-
encounters Thea, remain obvious struc- mony to transcendence, a refusal to say:
tural weaknesses in the play. The past "There are other beings with whom I
is constantly encroaching on the present, must exist, but whom I cannot 'have'
and Hedda is threatened with being to manipulate and control." Hedda, as
crowded off stage. She cannot, as Hamlet one whose life has centered on having,
can, thrust herself forward and assume regards suicide as the supreme act of
the role of one whose deliberations are absolute freedom. Blinded by the illusion
steeped in consequences of eternal of absolute power, she has turned against
significance. herself. Ultimately, and in the simplest
terms, Hedda's problem is an absolute
The Dimension of Freedom
inability to say "we."
The present is a notion that makes Hermann Weigand (in The Modern
sense only to a being who is free; free- Ibsen) has described Hedda as the
dom is enjoyed only by one who can "quixotic heroine" and sees in her be-
say "now." The dimensionality of free- havior signs of an "absolute concen-
dom in Hedda Gabler depends precari- tration of her whole personality upon
ously on the time dimension attributed a single act of willing." It is here that
to all of Hedda's actions. we put our finger on a vital element
Hedda is a person who, according to in comprehending Hedda's character and
Gabriel Marcel's distinction, has sub- ultimately in relating that character to
jected being to having. She has exag- the dimensionality of the tragic. For it
gerated the receptive aspect of self and is precisely her inability to concentrate
the range of freedom, conceiving, as her whole personality upon a single act

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 226 COLLEGE ENGLISH

of will, whether for good or for ill, confirm one forever in a chosen path.
which keeps Hedda's actions on the But any deviation from that initial choice
periphery, just skirting the fully tragic. must emanate from an act of freedom
Such a concentration of will is denied as deep and as deliberate as the original
Hedda from the beginning of the play. elections.
There are three basic ways in which The extreme ideal found in some exis-
a man can confront existence: He can tentialism (notably the Sartrean variety)
yield to the beast that broods within of the full commitment of oneself, or of
him and confine his activity to a simple the raw confrontation of naked will
response to his environment. Or, turning against the cosmos, places an impossible
into himself, he can chart and lay strict burden on man and can only result in
claim to that meager half-acre we call frustration. Flesh-bound and time-bound
ourselves, and fend off all comers. Or man is, "when found at best." And never
again, man can attempt to balance the is he at one single moment all that he
extremes of living completely without or would be, or all that others would have
of living completely within. He can pick him to be, or all that God would have
his way along the precarious tightrope him to be. Man is an aspirant. He tries;
that lies between. then he tries again. But never being able
He must chart his half-acre, but he to grasp himself completely in his two
cannot completely fence it off. He must hands, he can never offer his complete
respond to the "without," but not totally. self-his "best self"-to a single situation.
Maintaining the avenue to the "within," Once or twice in a lifetime he may rouse
which is a sense of himself, he must the greater part of his personality and
forage in the uncharted woods that sur- bring it to a single act of willing. But
round him. Before he can live fully, for the most part man aims at further
he must, as Jacques Maritain says, assume adequacy-of self-comprehension, of self-
the ethical category of "existence with." expression. Such is man's plight, such
This he must do before he can act for is finitude. Man expresses himself, as
or act with. Teilhard points out, over a lifetime.
Hedda's plight, and it is a plight of I have dwelt at some length (for a
her own making, is the choice she has paper of this size) on the psychology of
made of the hedgehog existence; self free choice because I think it is at this
enclosed and with spines alert, she fends level that we can ground the discussion
off all comers. Or to use the figure of the "tragic" element of the play.
Claudel employs to describe Mesa in Great tragedy has always wedded two
Partage de Midi, she has so tightly sealed essential elements: a character who has
herself off that God himself would break some hand in making his own history,
his fingernails trying to pry her open. and an action which is permeated with
In his Range of Reason, Maritain an awesome sense of the present. The
speaks of that initial act of choice, or tragic hero must be an individual. To
what he chooses to call "the immanent some extent at least, he must be the
dialectic of the first free act," when, self-made man, appropriating and inte-
however young or however beyond the grating his diffused forces and giving
recall of memory the act may be, the direction and impetus to his activity.
individual, reflecting upon himself, He cannot be completely the chattel of
chooses or rejects goodness as something that modern form of fate which lurks
in itself and thus comes to a decision in one's genes or in one's neighbors. The
about the "direction of his life." This hero must have presence; he must be
decision binds the future, but only in present. He must be able to say "now."
a fragile way. It does not necessarily And the audience is overwhelmed with

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 IBSEN'S HEDDA GABLER 227

that presence. The newspaper headline first locked herself away. Only once is
account of a "tragedy" breeds pathos; there a hint of such an opportunity,
foreknowledge of future doom engen- and that occurred before the action of
ders anxiety and a feeling of helplessness; the play, when Hedda first felt a spark
presence demands awe. One feels the of love for Eilert. But even then she
urge to loosen one's sandals on those was content with her vicarious partici-
rare occasions when one experiences pation, spectator-like, in Eilert's careen-
presence, albeit only in another man. ings. Three times in the play-when she
This lies at the heart of tragedy. It gives Loveberg the pistol, when she
transcends the utilitarian and bourgeois burns the manuscript, and at her suicide
reaction of "if only. . . ." At true -she displays a certain strength, a cer-
tragedy's end we cannot make a state- tain force of will. But these displays are
ment of "if only. . . ." Finitude is not in accord with that direction of life
that clean, not that clear cut. Over- she had previously set for herself. The
whelmed with a sense of presence and question remains whether in the context
with a sense of the present, we can only of the play, whether in the fragmented
exclaim in awe: "This is it!" condition in which Ibsen has placed her,
Hedda Gabler is tugged at and fought Hedda has the capacity for the profound
over by a thousand different designs. sort of act of freedom which can ex-
Her pregnancy, her boredom, her sense tricate her from the self-centered bi-
of unfulfillment have fragmented her to ography she has carved on time.
the point where she no longer is able Hedda's real action has been in the
to concentrate the forces of her person- past. She remains free, fragilely free, but
alitv on that single act of willing of given the time structure of the play
which Weigand spoke. And if Hedda is with its concentration on the past, she
to open herself to others, there is re- is unable to exercise that freedom. Her
quired, as Maritain pointed out, an act activity for the most part is confined
of deliberation and freedom as deep and to catastrophic re-action. Tragedy has
as penetrating as the act by which she become denouement.

Rhetoric Prize
THE MAY COMPETITION (see below) laid treatises like Against Interpretation and
bare a distressing infirmity of our pro- The Language of Silence, which has re-
fession, to wit, a sorry incompetence in fined the short poem to a wordless
the shorter rhetorical forms. Readers of quintessence in Christian Morgenstern's
this column will agree, we feel certain, "Fisches Nachtgesang"-that this age
that our constituency has acquitted it- should have so ill prepared its English
self handsomely in the making of devious teachers for the drafting of compact
decanal deliverances, subtle scholarly messages.
strategems, and the like. All the more A timely communication has arrived,
unsettling, therefore, to discover that from Roger B. Rollin of Franklin and
same constituency inept and ill at ease Marshall College:
in the expression of great matter in few
words. Odd, too, that the age which I have a suggestion which may well aid
has produced the lean styles of Heming- you in your inspirational contests and
way and Beckett, which has prompted money-making schemes. Buttons are of

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