Viola Davis: Oscar-winning actress is asked “What character from literature would you most like to play?” (1)

She says, “Hedda Gabler from the play by Henrik Ibsen.  Hedda is the King Lear for women. When you meet her, you cannot figure her out.  There’s an angst, an unsettled quality that you begin to judge. In the ending, you find that it’s just a cover. It reminds me of life. Anyone you meet is a ‘representative’ of themselves until they make themselves known” (1).

If Hedda Gabler had multiple personality, Viola Davis may mean that when you meet someone, it is only their host personality, until their alternate personalities are known.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/books/review/viola-davis-memoir-finding-me.html

2019

“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.

2019

“The League of Youth” by Henrik Ibsen (post 2): Interpretation that Hedda Gabler had split personality is supported by Ibsen’s thinking in those terms

In my previous post on Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, I cited clues in the play that suggest Hedda had multiple personality. But is there evidence in any of Ibsen’s plays that he ever actually thought in those terms?

The League of Youth, an early Ibsen play, is usually cited today for having one situation and a bit of dialogue that anticipate A Doll’s House. But the following passage shows that Ibsen had also been thinking about split personality.

“A patchwork! I’ve known him all his life. His father was a little wizened idler — a scarecrow, a nobody. He ran a little general shop, with some pawnbroking on the side — or, more accurately, it was his wife who ran it. She was coarse and gross — the most unwomanly woman I’ve ever known. She had her husband declared unfit to manage his affairs. She hadn’t a kindly thought in her…That was the home where Stensgård grew up. He went to the grammar school. ‘He must be educated,’ said the mother, ‘he’ll make a fine debt-collector.’ An ugly life at home — high ideals at school; his mind, his character, his will, his talents, all pulling different ways…what else could it lead to but a split in his personality?” (1, Act 5, p. 126).*

* [translator’s note] “a split in his personality: This looks like an anachronism now that ‘split personality’ has become such a part of our fashionable psychological jargon, but ‘splittelse i personligheden’ is what Ibsen wrote” (1, p. 332).

Why had Ibsen been thinking about split personality? Had he read about it? Did he know anyone who had it? Did he have it? If you are an Ibsen scholar, maybe you can answer those questions.

1. Henrik Ibsen. “The League of Youth: A Comedy in Five Acts” [1869], pp. 23-143, in A Doll’s House and Other Plays by Henrik Ibsen. Trans. Peter Watts. London, Penguin Books, 1965.

Comment:  Viola Davis identifies with a classic literary character who probably had multiple personality.