Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

Henrik Ibsen, in Hedda Gabler, tells the story of a woman who is completely shaped by her environment and who never tries to overcome that environment. Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, tells the story of a man who is only partly shaped by his environment, because he fights against and finally escapes that environment to become a free human being. The great difference between the two protagonists is that Gabler never begins to even try to overcome her environment, while Douglass struggles against his environment and turns himself into an educated and independent human being. The point of view of Marx can be used to understand these works. Gabler can be said to represent the slave, serf or worker class, ruled over by the oppressor class which owns property and rules with power and fear. Gabler stays in the slave class, alienated from herself and never really having any idea of what is going on in her life or why she is so unhappy. Douglass also belongs to the slave class, literally, but unlike Gabler he struggles against his situation and comes out victorious. Douglass can be seen as the worker who fights the class struggle and wins, at least as an individual. Gabler is a woman who never even understands that there is a class struggle going on. In Marxist theory, she is an individual oppressed by a society which gives most economic and political power to men. Her corruption shows itself in her ignorance about her situation

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g. This is something Hedda Gabler does not understand. Douglass has much awareness of his position, an awareness which Marx says is necessary if the oppressed are to have any hope of overcoming their oppressors. The slaveholders kept the slaves uneducated because it made it easier to control them. Educated and free-thinking individuals are harder to control than a group of frightened illiterates. In fact, the beginning of Douglass' education is not in books but in slave songs, songs which Douglass says "breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. . . . To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery." At that point Douglass begins his search for freedom, although his desire is still limited by his powerlessness. This powerlessness was the key to the continuing success of slavery. Even one educated slave was a threat to most slaveholders. Thinking for oneself leads to having one's own thoughts separate from the slaveholder, a fact terrifying to those slaveholders: "If one slave refused to be corrected," other slaves would disobey and "the result would be the freedom of the slaves, and the enslavement of the whites." Douglass story is about hims

Category: Literature - I