Hedda_Gabler

‘Composers contextual concerns are explored and reflected in the texts they create’ Discuss how the prescribed texts are a reflection and exploration of contextual concern Historical contexts significantly influence composers; to an extent where their contextual concerns are explored and reflected in the texts they create. This is evident through the characters of Hedda in Hedda Gabler and Esther in the Bell Jar, where Ibsen and Plath explore the duality (the divided self) of women in their social contexts. They also depict the social, cultural and political expectations of women, establishing the suffocative limitations of these on one’s life. Written in 1890, Ibsen wrote Hedda Gabler at an interesting time in European history, where woman the term ‘new woman’ was beginning to emerge to describe those who were ‘pushing against the limits which society had imposed on them. While the new woman sought self-determination and freedom as well as equality with men and a true understanding of female sexuality, the ‘old woman’ believed in self-sacrifice, her duty to her husband and sexuality only in terms of childbearing. From an external perspective, it may be concluded that Hedda is that of an ‘old woman’, however as we further come into terms with her character, the inner person within becomes apparent, depicting elements of the ‘new woman’ who is masked by the conventional public persona. Hedda is a prime example of a woman who finds no satisfaction in liberation. Her inner frustration regarding her powerlessness and dependency is represented through the recurring image of her looking out the glass door. In itself, the glass door presents only a tenuous, easily breakable barrier between her entrapment and the outside world. She yearns for freedom to catch a ‘glimpse of the world one isn’t supposed to know about’, but this transparent barrier confines her. The constant images of her ‘walking nervously’ across the enclosed, claustrophobic space of the drawing room to look out, or ‘tap nervously’ on the glass door, stresses that the society in general has imprisoned her due to its restrictive femininity. She is entrapped by her life choices, which were shaped by the female expectations of the time. Although Hedda tries increasingly hard to maintain the image or façade of a conformist woman in the 19th century, there are moments within the play where we understand her internal world is at odds. This is established through the number of references of Hedda ‘clenching her fists tightly’ to indicate the suffocate effect the contexts expectations place upon Hedda, demonstrating the tension and inner frustration within her which is masked behind her conventional persona. What we see in Hedda Gabler is the confining restrictive pressures of a woman in social and cultural situations. In an age where nations were striving for independence, so was Hedda, her desperation as a result leading her to undermine a masculine prerogative - symbolized by the recurring motif of her fathers pistol, expressing her hindrance in destructive attempts at self realization and freedom “then what in heavens name will you have me do with myself. Those impulses come over me and all of sudden, and I cannot resist them”. Undermining her husband with her coldness, denying her pregnancy, destroying Thea’s life work, burning Lovberg’s creative product, ruining the child manuscript and finally committing suicide with the pistol are all perverted attempts to satisfy her ‘craving for life’. Also exploring the suffocative effect of women in their social contexts is Plath in one of her most renowned works – The Bell Jar. Plath composed The Bell Jar in the late 1940s and early 1950s where the absence of feminism was perceptible. Both decades were fairly prosperous ones in American history, where a woman’s social and financial standing depended on her husband’s occupation and respective income. Within this context, certain pressures were placed upon women to uphold a number of expectations. These included – to be proper, well behaved and mannered, slim and experience motherhood and marriage. Being a woman during this time, the expectations placed upon Esther triggered a suffocative sense of entrapment. Esther is initially torn between her desire to write and the social pressures to conform – become a domesticated housewife to meet the expectations of the external world causing responders to question how she is supposed to fuse her scholastic success with being a truly feminine creature of her era. “I saw my life branch out before me like the green fig tree…I couldn’t make up my mind which one to choose, I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one, meant loosing them all”. She is tempered by her fig tree metaphor, which later becomes symbolic of the life choices Esther must encounter. Each fig presents a different womanly role, a different life path. She can only choose one, but because she yearns for all, she sits there paralyzed with indecision and the figs rot and fall to the ground, indicating her loss of opportunity. Another moment in the text initializing the dual self is where Esther refers to herself as Elly Higginbottom, out of curiosity adopting a new and different persona to allow the experience of things that are deemed by society to be improper. This alter ego of Elly assumed by Esther masks the true desires and intentions of Esther’s supposedly conventional self “my names Elly Higginbottom, I come from Chicago. After than I felt safer. I didn’t want anything I said or did that night to be associated with me”. The suffocative effect triggered by the extreme social pressures placed on Esther is signified by the recurring bell jar metaphor. The bell far is a fragile, inverted glass jar generally used to display an object of scientific curiosity. For Esther the bell jar demonstrates her fragility and is the symbol of suffocation and limitation, she feels as if she is inside an airless jar that distorts her perspective on the world and prevents her from connecting with those around her. This idea causes responders to imagine someone literally under a bell jar, where the air breathed would eventually run out, “I would be sitting under the same glass bell, stewing in my own sour air”. In conclusion, through the depiction of the contextual ideas explored by Ibsen and Plath in both Hedda Gabler and The Bell Jar it is evident that societal contexts are in fact reflected through the texts composers create. In this case the social pressures and expectations of women within the context is highlighted through the characters of Hedda and Esther, where a suffocative sense of entrapment is triggered within them, initiating the dual self.