Hedda as a Neurotic Personality in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler

Abstract

Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is the story of a psychologically intricate character, who is in search of her existence. Hedda is a female character but doesn’t want to define herself in this personality. As she is grown up in man’s world, she acts totally in male way. This obsession grows in her and she is ultimately put face to face with the regulative modes of patriarchy. She seems like a pendulum between male and female biological urges, but can not become male or female. Hedda’s attraction towards masculinity and repression of her female biological urges leads her in the path of frustration, desolation and becomes a victim of neurosis. And due to her entrapment between dual personality finally she ends her tension through suicide.