From Hedda Gabler to Votes for Women : Elizabeth Robins's Early Feminist Critique of Ibsen

Abstract

In Elizabeth Robins's preview of the Coronation Suffrage Pageant of 1911--the largest and most spectacular demonstration of the British suffrage campaign--she announced that the Actresses' Franchise League contingent would be led by Hedda Gabler, in the accomplished person of the Princess Bariatinsky on horseback.' The actresses' choice of a leader was at once fitting and incongruous. On the one hand, Hedda Gabler signified an anger that the actresses' professional reliance on popularity with audiences prohibited them from expressing more directly and assertively;2 and Hedda's anger, together with her brilliance and desperation, had immediately established her as one of the great roles for women in the dramatic repertory. On the other hand, Hedda hardly qualified to marshal feminist followers toward their goal of emancipation, since she lacks the courage and conviction of the many suffragists who endured such hardships as jail sentences and forced feedings. She does, after all, opt to commit suicide rather than to confront in a more constructive manner the circum-