A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hedda Gabler :: Hedda Gabler Essays

A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hedda Gabler   Attempting a psychoanalytic meter reading of a given text is a bit like attempting to recognise a city by examining its sewer system helpful, yet limited. in that location are several reasons for using psychoanalysis as a vituperative literary theory the critic readiness 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 rightfully three-dimensional and, therefore, worth our while as readers (thus satisfying the pleasure principle) finally, in a larger sense, the psychoanalytic approach can be employ to actually tell us something about our own humanity, by examining the sexual intercourse continuity (or lack thereof) of basic Freudian theories exemplified in written whole run shorts over the course of centuries. If we are ind eed scouring the text for what I call cathartic documentation, 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 before the late nineteenth century, are the major candidates for success with this approach. However, 20th century works, beginning with the modernist authors, nonplus a problem. How are we to be sure that the writer is not 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 clock that Freud was just beginning to publish his theories. The question is who influenced whom? Obviously Freud was taken with Ibsens realizations of authorized 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 pres ent in Hedda Gabler. The question remains, however, whether Ibsen had caught wind of Freuds work and decided to utilize it in the play. Perhaps I am wrong, that 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 such(prenominal) farther an extent that the possibility of a conscious effort to seduce Freudian neurotic types and set them loose on one other does not seem altogether outside the realm of possibility. Whether consciously or unconsciously, however, Ibsen has created extremely well-developed characters.