The Concept of a Person in Ibsen's Dramatic Works of the 90s: Hedda Gabler and the Master Builder
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The article examines Henrik Ibsen’s works Hedda Gabler (1890) and The Master Builder (1892), which belong to the later period of the renowned creator of the "new drama". The exploration of the of the concept of a person in these plays, primarily manifested through the central characters – a man and a woman – in both works allows for the identification of pronounced tragic elements in Ibsen's worldview and reveals its close ties to decadence as a crisis-ridden perception of the world at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The decadent disbelief not only in the possibility of happiness but also in the prospect of continuing to exist in an increasingly complex modern world leads to catastrophic events in the lives of the characters, thus giving H. Bloom the reason to refer to Ibsen’s plays as "northern tragedies". A detailed artistic analysis of the tragic deaths of Hedda Gabler and Halvard Solness in the context of the respective plays is conducted through a synthesis of the literary traditions established in European literature up to that time, as well as within the Norwegian playwright’s oeuvre. Thus, the portrayal of "ill-fated couples" in Hedda Gabler is framed within realist, neo-romantic, and naturalistic traditions of depicting love, each highlighting the inability of modern individuals to achieve happiness, the lack of demand in society for achieving harmonious coexistence of people, ensuring the continuous spiritual growth of the individual. Without such factors, the accumulation of internal contradictions inevitably results in the characters’ spiritual and, eventually, physical demise. In The Master Builder, Ibsen combines neo-romantic-symbolic and realist-naturalistic traditions in his depiction of the characters’ external and internal lives, bringing to light an insoluble conflict between the true and false spiritual needs of a person, real and illusory life goals, and internal guidelines and the feasibility of their realization in the real world. The interplay of various artistic traditions establishes the groundwork for profound artistic analysis, enables a demonstration of the whole range of possible versions of the unfolding of human existence in the circumstances of modern life, uncovers hidden contradictions in the spiritual lives of the characters, and prepares the foundation for the modernist artistic synthesis that would emerge in the early 20th century.
Author: N. Astrakhan
Institution: Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4405913238