Eccentricity in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

Abstract

Eccentricity is the quality of difference. Both the state of being different, as every individual of every age is. It is different from an indifferent difference in our state of being different in which we are more or less accidentally the unique individuals that we are. Eccentricity is the quality of deliberate difference whereby we intentionally embrace the difference that we are and that we can become in order to make a difference.

In Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, the main character Hedda does not conform to the norms of the society. Rather she acts like her male counterparts. She rejects the notions of masculine and feminine activities. She wages a life and death struggle to overcome her sense of futility, to escape from her despair at being unable to live creatively. For Hedda is no more able to create a living conception of her own life than she is to conceive of a life for the child she has conceived with Tesman. So, Hedda shoots herself to prove that her eccentricity bypasses the social norms and codes. Her death doesn't confirm her fragility; instead it makes her a winner in both present and next worlds that she is going to delve into.