NATURALISM

Naturalism and the Character of Hedda Gabler

Naturalism and the Character of Hedda Gabler

Introduction

Naturalism is a phenomenon where characters are controlled and conditioned by instinct, chance, heredity and environment. These characters have humanistic values, which establish their life and individuality, and they maintain dignity and become heroic. The naturalism deals with the notion of individual worth and controlling forces (Reuben 2006, pp.46). This essay focuses on the idea that, in Naturalism, characters do not have free will; external and internal forces, environment, or heredity control their behaviour. This idea is called determinism. Although, determinists believe in free will, but this will is enslaved. In order to understand the concept, the essay sheds light on the character of 'Hedda Gabler'. Hedda's character will be compared to the thoughts of Stanislavski and Freud. The essay will also cover the brief history of life of women in Norway during 1890s and the link between the situation of women at that time and the character of Hedda Gabler.

Hedda's Psychology

She was bored, she was resisting every attempt to be absorbed into the bosom of the family into which she had married, and she was frankly pleased to have the opportunity of stirring up trouble.

A lady of 29 and with a certain aristocratic elegance about her, Hedda feels that she has married beneath herself. We are not allowed to forget that her father was General Gabler, whereas her husband, her elder by some four years, is a cultural historian who is short of money and has fairly tenuous prospects of becoming a professor. The fact that the title of the play is not Hedda Tesman but Hedda Gabler, like the way some of her admirers know how to flatter her by calling her by her maiden name, is a clear pointer to her unwillingness to accept her role as a wife to an unprepossessing husband whose undoubted infatuation with her is attenuated by his desire to continue collecting material for a work of what appears to be dry-as-dust scholarship (Sanders 2006, pp.12).

There are, as, is possibly to be expected after a honeymoon, some more or less discreet enquiries whether she might be pregnant, but she impatiently brushes them aside and, though she first appears in a fairly loose-fitting morning gown, she insists that her figure has not filled out. All in all, it seems that she has not yet found sexual fulfilment in marriage, and now, as autumn begins to set in, there is not much to; please her in the prospect of life in the dreary Norwegian town to which she has returned. She clearly has her own psychology looking down at her family, which she feels is not equal to her stature (Paris 1997, pp.59).

Stanislavsky's Stance on Free Will

“All action on the stage must have an inner justification, be logical, coherent, and real” (Carnicke 1998, pp.4)

This is quote from Konstantin Stanislavski, which emphasizes on actions having inner justifications and one own logic. In the following paragraphs, we will understand some characters in the light of this ...