Volume 16, Number 5 · March 25, 1971
Ibsen and Women II: Hedda Gabler
By Elizabeth Hardwick
Hedda Gabler is one of the meanest romantics in literature. She is not offered as a grotesque, but given the very center of the stage, and yet she is always mean-spirited and petty in both large and small matters. The only other romantic figure of a corresponding hardness and cruelty is perhaps Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. He marries Isabella out of sheer hatred and says: 'She cannot accuse me of showing a bit of deceitful softness. The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog; and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of everything belonging to her.'
Feature, 3346 words
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