A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hedda Gabler :: Hedda Gabler Essays

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hedda Gabler   Attempting a psychoanalytic reading of a given text is a bit desire attempting to understand a city by examining its sewer system helpful, yet limited. There are several reasons for using psychoanalysis as a captious literary theory the critic might be interested in gleaning some sort of subconscious authorial intent, approaching the text as a cathartic documentation (my own term) of the authors psyche the method might be useful in judging whether characters are well-rendered, whether they are truly three-dimensional and, therefore, outlay our while as readers (thus satisfying the pleasure principle) fin solelyy, in a larger sense, the psychoanalytic approach can be employed to actually tell us something about our own humanity, by examining the relative continuity (or lack thereof) of basic Freudian theories exemplified in written works over the course of centuries. If we are so scouring the text for what I call cathartic doc umentation, we must, at the outset, look at the period in which the work was written. Pre-Freudian works, that is to say those poems, plays, short stories, and novels written forwards the late 19th century, are the major candidates for success with this approach. However, 20th century works, beginning with the modernist authors, pose a problem. How are we to be sure that the writer is non consciously playing with Freuds theories, perhaps even deliberately expanding and distorting them for additional effect? Herein lies the problem with Hedda Gabler The play was written at roughly the same season that Freud was just beginning to publish his theories. The question is who influenced whom? Obviously Freud was taken with Ibsens realizations of certain fundamental ideas which were to be the foundation of his (Freuds) work repression, neurosis, paranoia, Oedipal complex, phallic symbols, and so on all of these factors are present in Hedda Gabler. The question remains, however, whether I bsen had caught wind of Freuds work and decided to utilize it in the play. Perhaps I am wrong, but having read A Dolls House and An Enemy of the People, both earlier works by some ten years, Hedda Gabler seems to embody Freudian concepts to so much farther an extent that the hazard of a conscious effort to create Freudian neurotic types and set them loose on one another does not seem altogether outdoor(a) the realm of possibility. Whether consciously or unconsciously, however, Ibsen has created extremely well-developed characters.