Critical Analysis of Sympathetically Unsympathetic Character of Hedda - Essay Example

In response to the bondages of life, Hedda chooses to be shrewd and secretive to tread the forbidden sphere of life in which she thinks she can exert enough freedom. Far from having individuality she continually seeks it in her ability to manipulate the male characters around her. She tries to evade Tesman; even she does not hesitate to allow her ex-lover Ejlert Løvborg to commit suicide. She rather provokes him by giving him a pistol. It is not that she unsympathetically or villainously commits this crime of provoking Lovborg’s suicide; rather she does so to assert her being in her ability to possess and manipulate her romantic hero whom she once dumped because of his recklessly free nature. It is true that she is unsympathetic towards Lovborg and others, including Tesman and Aunt Julle, who represent the social restrictions. Though she cannot but be unsympathetic to them, she herself bears secret sympathy for them, as George Bernard Shaw, in a letter to Elizabeth Robbins, says, “You were sympathetically unsympathetic, which was the exact solution of the central difficulty of playing Hedda.” ()

Hedda, a fancy-flyer entrapped by the social expectations of wifehood, is continually torn apart by her sense of the standards of appearance and her love for freedom. Her “aimless desire for freedom” makes her reproachful towards those who may meddle in her desire. At the very beginning of the play, Hedda is found to take savage delight in manipulating people to achieve her end. She instinctively hates Tessman’s relatives and family. This is because her expectation of an aristocrat life is not fulfilled and also the boundary of Tessman’s household does not allow her to enjoy freedom. Hedda has an extremely freedom-loving mind. In the beginning, she hates pregnancy, motherhood “make a claim on her freedom” (Ibsen 45). She does not like to be a mother, because it would bind her more with the duties and responsibilities.

Like any typical woman of Ibsen’s plays, she is a fancy-flyer who has been stuck into harsh reality. Her high background shows that she has been pampered in her father’s house. Being devoid of any knowledge reality, she tries to dominate matters, manipulates others and sticks to her wrong discussion trying to prove them correct. She is financially impractical. She becomes insolent when Tessman advises her to cut their expense short, she immaturely comments in front of Brack, "Tessman is forever worrying about how people are to make their living" (Ibsen 45). Her pampered psychology will not allow her to come down to earth. She remembers the effect of her beauty to attract people.

Her attempt to manipulate Lovborg ultimately exposes her vulnerability to Judge Brack’s lechery which, for her in some way or other, is a form of servitude. Thus while Hedda’s downfall from her free spirit to servitude in the hand of Judge Brack evokes the audiences’ sympathy, her morbid adherence to her goal to enjoy freedom in manipulating Lovborg and others arouses hatred. Obviously, these two bipolar reactions of Hedda to reality make it difficult to play her character.