Ibsen Versus Strindberg

Compare and contrast views of the family and family relationships shown in the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg, commenting on the relative importance in each case of social and psychological pressures, as well as physical environment, and showing how these are expressed in theatrical terms.

This essay will be focusing on three texts written over a three year period: Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1890) and August Strindberg’s The Father (1887) and Miss Julie (1888) . In approaching this topic, I have decided it best to confine my study to these three plays rather than attempt an overview of either playwright’s canon. I intend to focus on the relevance of the father in these plays, specifically analysing how the role of fatherhood is explored. Furthermore, instead of trying to take into account every possible reference to �family’, I will be limiting my focus to what I regard as the three central family relationships in these plays: Miss Julie and her father; Hedda and General Gabler; and finally, the Captain and his daughter Bertha. Though other characters will obviously be relevant in this study, it is the dramatic significance of these three relationships that I will be studying closely.

Both playwrights present families as institutions prone to major tensions. While Strindberg chooses to place family firmly in the context of an instinctive psychological war between the sexes where the protagonists are rendered almost helpless, Ibsen stresses how the accumulation of psychological, social and environmental factors all contribute but not necessarily determine the outcome of the play. Strindberg’s characters seem trapped in a natural pattern of motivations from which they cannot extricate themselves, and the audience are made aware that the characters onstage are in some sense archetypes, illustrating a central point about life’s absurd struggle. By contrast, Ibsen’s work is deliberately produced to emphasise that the circumstances portrayed, though largely a product of universally recognisable factors, is still an individual case. Through its presentation, an audience can possibly identify the factors prevalent in the situation, and so learn what circumstances they must strive to avoid developing in their own lives.

Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Strindberg’s Miss Julie are named after the central female characters of their respective plays. Importantly, both are daughters of fathers who, although absent from the stage, still manage to exert an influence over their children. There are a striking number of similarities in these two plays. Both Hedda and Miss Julie are daughters of families belonging to branches of the upper-class aristocracy. Moreover, this fact is of pronounced social significance in each woman’s case. Hedda, having recently married Jorgen Tesman, is still referred to as “General Gabler’s daughter” by her husband’s aunt. That Miss Tesman doesn’t naturally refer to Hedda either by her first name or by Jorgen’s surname hints at the close association of father and daughter. Ibsen stressed Hedda, “is to be regarded rather as her father’s daughter than as her husband’s wife” . The General’s daughter belongs to a different class, one associated with rank, and which still retains a sense of formality. Hence, Miss Tessman confides to Jorgen how she bought her new hat especially so that “Hedda shan’t be ashamed of me if we go out together” . Jorgen, rather than admonishing her for her servility, proceeds to congratulate his aunt on taking this measure; there exists a pronounced, mutually acknowledged class divide. Miss Julie is also defined by her father’s rank; the subject provides the main source of comment when Jean observes how she (a member of the aristocratic family of the household) is happy to dance with her social inferiors: “I just popped into the barn to watch the dancing, and who do I see but Miss Julie leading the dance with the gamekeeper” . It is thus possible to draw another parallel in observing that each woman, a member of a distinctly upper-class family, is presented to us in the context of mixing with her (and her family’s) social inferiors, and that in both cases this provokes immediate comment by others. When Hedda finally arrives onstage, she still regards herself as belonging to a different class from the Tesman’s. Her calculated dismissal of Miss Tesman’s best hat, a theatrical symbol of the aunt’s valiant attempt to raise herself to something approaching the Gablers’ level, demonstrates how the new daughter-in-law carries with her an air of social superiority derived from her aristocratic upbringing. Miss Julie, by contrast, toys with the precepts of class difference much more openly, encouraged as she is to fraternise with the servants, thanks to the drinking, dancing, and numerous other factors . She too is conscious of the social divide between herself and the servants with whom she flirts. Her ordering around of Jean plays upon her position as lady of the house; she is “his lordship’s” daughter, and Jean is ever wary of the power the upper-class aristocrat has over him, represented by her father’s boots. Yet the nature of her requests betrays their self-consciously un-aristocratic origin (like her dancing and drinking with servants). There is a playfulness in her actions which highlights Miss Julie’s public revelry in her social superiority.

There is also a fundamental difference between the two daughters in that while Hedda is a lady always mindful of maintaining her association with the upper class, there is a part of Miss Julie that certainly isn’t, as is evident at the beginning of the play. Both women’s motivations partly extend from the influences their fathers have had over them. In Hedda’s case, the audience are aware that most of her actions are motivated specifically by her objective of maintaining a place in Norway’s aristocratic circle. With the portrait of General Gabler already installed in her new house, one gets the impression of Hedda being conscious of her father’s gaze, even from the grave. When in Act Two, Hedda recollects her time with LÐ"¶vborg always being subject to the watchful eyes of her father, Ibsen provides an insight into the nature of the Gabler father-daughter relationship. Hedda’s upbringing has rendered her highly conscious of social appearances, to the extent where they have a primary importance.