“Hedda Gabler” by Henrik Ibsen: Does Hedda have multiple personality?

According to Ben Brantley’s New York Times review of a 2006 production, Hedda has “multiple personality disorder” (1). I don’t know whether Brantley was being serious or sarcastic. But is there any evidence in the original play that Hedda has a split personality?

At the play's end, after Hedda has just committed suicide by shooting herself in the head, another character comments, which are the last words of the play: “People just don’t act that way!” (2).

Ibsen is reminding us, emphasizing the point, and leaving us with the thought, that Hedda’s behavior is puzzling, and has been for many years. In an old example from earlier in the play, one of the other characters says she has been afraid of Hedda since their school days:

HEDDA: Afraid of me?

MRS. ELVSTED: Horribly afraid. Whenever we’d meet on the stairs you always used to pull my hair…and once you said you’d burn it off.

Hedda says she doesn’t recall that. But at a later point in the play, she indicates that she does recall it. Was she just lying the first time, or does she have one personality who doesn’t recall it and another personality who does?

Another example of Hedda’s puzzling behavior—puzzling even to herself— is an incident regarding a hat belonging to her husband’s aunt:

BRACK: What were you saying about a hat?

HEDDA: Oh, just a little run-in with Miss Tesman this morning. She’d put her hat down there on that chair (Looks at him smiling.) and I pretended I thought it was the maid’s.

BRACK: (Shaking his head.) My dear Mrs. Hedda, how could you do such a thing to that harmless old lady?

HEDDA: (Nervously walking across the floor.) Oh, you know—these things just come over me like that and I can’t resist them. (Flings herself into the armchair by the stove.) I can’t explain it, even to myself.

Puzzling behavior—puzzling even to those who know the person well, and even to the person herself—and inconsistent memory, may be clues to multiple personality, but there is nothing definitive in this play. In the future, I will look to see if any of Ibsen’s other plays is more explicit.

1. Ben Brantley. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/03/theater/reviews/a-heroine-in-a-hurry-via-ibsen.html

2. Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen’s Selected Plays [including Hedda Gabler, 1891]. Edited by Brian Johnston. Translated by Rick Davis and Brian Johnston. New York, W. W. Norton, 2004.