The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-10-11

not 70 many stigmata Of the man whose
| wife will deceive him2 The beauty Of the
| situation Is that Heddd does not betrSy
| George, and yet she seems more criminal
than the timid Thed. who boldly deser her
| old husband 10 follow the scrapegrace
L60borg. BY o species Of intellec ual per-
versi,y -or Is II Ibsen confusing moral
issues?-Hsdda is the woman OF he brink,
the adult eress In thought, the eternal typo
| Of one whose will Ia weakened by egoism
Her soul, its roots nur. ured in rank soil,
has expanded secretly into @ mons rous
growth. Her whole life has been one Of
concealment She has lied. presumably
in her girlhood, as she lies in the married
state. She is never happy except when
| teasing the desires OF & man. Laura Mar
holm paints her portrait a. the detrdques;
Her wanton curiosity. her constant long
ing, infame the decadent and appeal di-
rectly to his sensuality but her cowardice
and disinclination to satisfaction drive her
forever from attack to flight, and no sooner
has she retreated than she street ches forth
her antenne and gropes for him again
70 80. man burning-that IL what she lives
upon: II she cannot have this atmosphere
about her she becomes sallow. hollow
checked and hyst eric"
Here is Hedda Gdbler sketched In few
words. A cold heart, q cool head, curious
but not sensual, combined with cowardly
fear OF the conventions-a snobbish tribute
to virtues in which abe does not believe
these sent Hedda Gabler to her destruction.
to that Button-moulder who fashions anew
the souls Of the useless In his cosmic dust
heap. She went through her life with the
chip Of chastity on her shoulder; yet dare
man approach her and abe lie in the throes
OF mock virtue. She made L6vboro feel this
Brack, with the measuring eye Of q worldly
man, was not deceived by her tantruns;
he saw the essential baseness Of the creature.
Withal, Hedda 10 not monster Of vice.
no. L. she norma! woman. She glands for
q certain order Of her sex-not the strong.
minded" or advanced that ia, happily,
In the minority. In Ibsen's judgment she
Is doomed to failure because she did not
dare. She feared TO Sin, not because OF
scrupulosity. but because of the worlds
opinion. II she ever allowed tender feel
ings to usurp the hard image Of herself
enthroned in her soul they were for Low
borg. He struck in her depraved chord
Of feeling. Both loved pleasure. Both took
the seeming for the actually. II there Is
ono thing that discredits L6uboros claim
as man OF genius it is his worship Of trivial
things. The scholar, the philosopher. the
poet seek pleasure, seek the qualification
Of the senses; but L6cborg's attitude is too
base. He il worthy Of Hedda's admiration
and Hedda's only.
With his incompatible irony Ibsen gives
the victory to the weak. to the stupid.
We may foresee the future Of George and
Thee when the shock Of battle has passed.
Both, dull persons, plodding, painstaking,
absolutely devoid Of humor, settle down
to peaceful existence Oct us hope Sheriff
Elpstsd grants his runaway wife divorceD
and to put together the great" work Of
tho dead L6rboyg. 1t Is all piteous. all
hopelessly banal-and it is also daily life
to its very central core.
There were several important clues
missing In Mrs. Fiske's stage version.
The point sufficiently insisted upon by the
author. that Hedda Is enceinte, was omitted.
Nor did Hedda tell how she came to lure
that Heddd's acts were the result OF her
condition would be to place the drama
sxtthin the category Of the pathologio.
Rather u the point made that, despite her
approaching motherhood. Heddu's manifest
disgust at any reference to it Is sign OF
her deep seated depravity. She loathes
children. especially a child OF Tesmdn.
She Is too selfish to enter even imagina-
lively, into the joys OF maternity. Ibsen
notes this when he puts into Georges mouth
the silly speech about young wives and
the burning OF the manuscript. Hedda
Is, on the contrary, less hysterical and
before Nothing could be more damnably
cold-blooded than her deliberate nanipula-
ton Of L6vboro's vain nature. Only at the
CRATE as she burns the manuscript and In
the outburst OF wild music pre- ceding her
suicide are the d1monic forces Of her
nature unlooeed
The former act IL. nevertheless, controlled
BY slow, cautious hate. and the latter
occurs OF the STAGE the pistol shot Is the
final punctuation mark to this destructive,
restless existence No, Ibsen aimed at
something more profound than exhibition
OF maternal hysteria The causes OF Heddd's
behavior dated back to her girlhood. She
was perverse, how perverse we see in her
shameless confession that she had led
George to an avowal simply because she
wanted the comfortable Falk villa for
residence. Her revolt against life was
bounded by her petty appetites. nothing
more: and for this reason she Is an invaluable
human document.
Removed from her cramping environ
ments Hsdda would have developed along
more normal lines; and herein lies the
beauty of Ibsen sproblem, Ibsen who always
asks questions--like Rembrandt in his Night
Watch with its mystic daylight-and never
wise man--answers them. Hedda might
have become an actress or one OF the hor-
isontald circus riders, anything less evil than
her position as the trouble breeding wife OF
Tesman. By enclosing her within the Tes-
man walls, surrounding her with stupid
and dissipated people, she was driven In
upon herself, and passing from one mood
OF evaporation to another she finally be-
came shipwrecked. As Allan Monkhouse
writes -Hedda Gdbler Is a personification
OF ennui, daring effort OF Imagination, a
great piece Of construction. study OF
essentials with all accidental human element
omitted, a work indeed not OF realism,
though surrounded by realistic details. but
belonging rather to such ideal art as the
'Melancholia' of Albert Dtirer" Mr.. Monk
house could have quo ted La Bruyare about