On the surface, Hedda,¹ Ibsen's gun-toting aristocratic protagonist, is the polar opposite of I. B. Singer's Yentl² [in “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”], the lower middle class Jewess, whose greatest ambition is to study Torah i.e., Jewish Law on an equal footing with Jewish males. Deeper examination of the personality of each, however, reveals basic affinities the two share.

Both lack a positive female role model; Hedda's mother is never mentioned in Ibsen's play, while Yentl's mother died at an early age. Hence, they seek to identify with their respective fathers. Like her military male parent, Hedda loves guns, which serve as a central symbol of Ibsen's drama.³ When Judge Brack encounters Hedda at the beginning of act II, she points her pistol at him. Later we learn that when a former admirer, Lovborg, comes too close to her, she wards him off with her father's gun. When Lovborg is disgraced, Hedda offers him the same pistol to die gloriously at his own hand. She herself finally commits suicide with one of her father's guns.

In similar fashion, Yentl strives to emulate her own father, who belongs to an aristocracy far different from General Gabler's, the noble class of learned Jews who mastered the Talmud. Lacking a male child, Yentl's father did something very unusual in the male-dominated Jewish society of the pre-modern era. Secretly, he taught his daughter Bible and Talmud and all the abstruse commentaries on them. Yentl not only identified with her father's sacred studies but often, while he napped, would dress herself in his trousers, fringed garment, skull cap and velvet hat. Sometimes she would hide away and smoke her father's long pipe.

Ibsen emphasized Hedda's extreme attachment to her father and its effect on her personality by calling his play Hedda Gabler rather than Hedda Tesman, her married name. The playwright notes that he deliberately chose this title “to suggest that as a personality she is more to be considered her father's daughter than her husband's wife.”⁴

Hedda's closeness to her father influenced her attitude toward men. At one time she seemed to cultivate the brilliant but erratic Lovborg, but her attraction to him was not physical. When he tried to embrace her, she prevented any close contact by pointing her father's pistol at him (a Freudian touch?).

As we shall see later on, the absence of the parent of the opposite sex, whether by death or divorce can, in Freud's view, lead to homosexuality. In his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud argued that girls' attitudes about their choice of sexual partners is influenced by the presence of their mother, who rigidly supervises the sexual activities of their daughters, arousing thereby the younger women's hostility to them and to all members of the female sex.

However, when the mother is absent, due to either death or divorce, the father absorbed the whole of the daughters' love and thus determined the sex of the person who is later to be chosen as a sexual object. “This,” states Freud, “may open the way to permanent inversion” or homosexuality.⁵

What really drew her to Lovborg was his lurid and vulgar accounts of his erotic adventures with women. She identified with his masculine role and got a vicarious thrill from his sensual descriptions. While he mistakenly viewed her as “a bitch, cold, marble-cold bitch,” she inwardly shared his lusts, perhaps ever for the members of the same sex.

Hedda's marriage to Tesman was certainly not based on any physical passion that he aroused in her. His pudgy appearance and fussy mannerisms made him the least masculine of all Hedda's suitors. She wed him purely for convenience to acquire the mansion that he promised her and to avoid the social stigma of remaining “an old maid.” When she became pregnant, she hated her condition and avoided any mention of it. The female role of childbearing was so repellent to her that she even destroyed the “brain-child” of Lovborg and Thea, i.e., the manuscript of his new book.

Her relationship with Thea is somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand she seemed to resent Thea's rich femininity as indicated by her luxuriant hair. At school, where both were students, Hedda, when meeting Thea on the stairs, would pull Thea's hair and threaten to burn it off.⁶ On the other hand, Hedda seemed to have a deep desire for Thea, which is shown on three occasions as she strokes Thea's hair softly and rather affectionately.

The first time occurs when she encounters Thea together with Lovborg, Hedda strokes Thea's hair “lightly” and remarks to Lovborg that she is lovely to look at.⁷ Later we are shown that when Hedda and Thea are alone, Hedda clasped her “passionately in her arms.”⁸

In the last part of the play, Hedda handles Thea's hair twice. Ibsen's stage directions call for Hedda to ruffle Thea's hair “gently.” Near the conclusion of the drama, once again Hedda “passes her hands softly” through Thea's hair.⁹

The tragic dilemma of Hedda is that she finds it impossible to love men, (except her father) but is afraid of the scandal that would arise if she showed her love for women. Her suicide becomes inevitable when Judge Brack tries to blackmail her and demands from her a life-long clandestine liaison. So abhorrent to her is the notion of being compelled to have relations with a vile man that she feels death is her only escape. Appropiately enough, the weapon she uses is her father's gun.

Like Hedda, Yentl was very confused about her sexual identity. The loss of her mother at an early age made her father her chief role model. As previously noted, she secretly wore his clothing and smoked his pipe. Moreover, her Talmudic discussions with him whetted her appetite for higher learning. As intellectual pursuits for Jewish women in Polish villages were almost non-existent, she decided to disguise herself as a young man in order to enter a yeshiva (i.e., a school for the advanced study of the Talmud). The changeover was not too difficult, as she was small-breasted, with narrow hips and a faint down on her upper lip. She adopted the male name of Anshel.

After being accepted by the yeshiva of Bechev, she applied herself to her studies with alacrity. As the students generally studied in pairs, she selected as her partner, Avigdor, a bearded young man with burning eyes who struck her as more refined than the other students.

As the two pored over the tractates of the Talmud, their friendship grew. They would go on long walks together, since they greatly enjoyed each other's company. Although Avigdor loved to swim and often invited Anshel to join him for a dip in the neaby lake, she would always turn down his invitation by offering some excuse.

One day, deeply agitated, with deep circles under his eyes, Avigdor confided to Anshel that his need for a woman prevented him from sleeping, as he was disturbed by strong sexual urges. So desperate was he that he felt he would marry any woman he met. He also mentioned that he was still in love with Hadass, an attractive blond woman he once was engaged to marry but could not because her father had compelled her to break off their relationship.

Soon after this revelation, Avigdor announced that he was planning to marry Pesche, a wealthy but rather gross widow. After his departure from the yeshiva, Anshel (Yentl) began to miss him more and more. As the weeks went by, she began to regret her deception and wished she had revealed her true sex to him and won his love. At the same time, she realized that she enjoyed the intellectual stimulation that her disguise as a man gave her so much that she felt strongly she could never resume her identity as a woman.

The conflict within Yentl's mind became so disturbing to her that she thought she would go mad. One night she had a very frightening dream, in which she saw herself as a hermaphrodite: she was wearing a woman's slip and a man's under-garments.

As fate would have it, Anshel (Yentl) ate regularly twice a week at the home of the family of Hadass, who considered it a pious deed to give free board to yeshiva students. Longing for her friend Avigdor, Yentl couldn't eat much and lost a lot of weight. Hadass became very alarmed and pleaded with Anshel to consume more food. One evening an insane idea overcame Anshel. Even as he (she) realized that the notion was irrational and even absurd, he (she) could not overcome the powerful compulsion to ask Hadass to marry him. Perhaps in some strange way Yentl thought that this liaison would bring her close to Avigdor.

Somehow Anshel persuaded Hadass to get her parents' permission to wed him (her). Perhaps Anshel's excellent reputation as a fine Talmudic scholar convinced them to accept the match.

Fantastic as it may seem to us, the marriage not only took place but continued for several months without Hadass becoming aware that she was actually wed to another woman. Much like some Victorian women, Hadass knew almost nothing about sex and felt that Anshel's embraces were the real acts of love between husband and wife.

As the months passed and Hadass was still not pregnant, her parents grew worried, but said nothing to her. However, Yentl's conscience began to disturb her more and more. Eventually she felt that could no longer carry the burden of the conflict and would have to reveal her terrible deceit to somebody.

Since it was close to Passover, Yentl decided she would invite her former companion Avigdor to a nearby inn for a holiday meal. This would not arouse any suspicion since the half-holidays in the middle of the festival were traditionally used to exchange visits. Eager to escape his shrewish wife, Avigdor accepted Anshel's invitation.

When the day arrived and Avigdor entered the room where Anshel was staying, he was told to prepare for a shock. At this, Anshel blurted out that “he” was really a woman. Stupefied, incredulous Avigdor burst into laughter. Thereupon, Anshel opened his robe and red-faced Avigdor recognized the truth.

Quickly Anshel closed his robe and donned his male garments. Anshel then explained to Avigdor that her father's training had kindled within her a deep yearning for the study of Jewish lore and that the only avenue to accomplish this aim was to dress as a man and enter a yeshiva. Overcoming his surprise and temporary disgust, Avigdor told Yentl that if she had revealed her feminine identity sooner, things would have turned out much differently.

Yentl quickly interrupted him and explained that their relationship would never have worked, as she was “neither man, nor woman, neither one or the other,” since she had “the body of a woman and the soul of a man.”¹⁰

The story ends in a rather artificial and melodramatic way, as Yentl slips out of town and arranges to send Hadass a “get” (i.e., a Jewish writ of divorce). At the same time, Avigdor manages to divorce his unloved mate. The two forbidden lovers meet again and are blissfully wed. When their first born son arrives, they mutually agree to call him “Anshel.” Yentl, presumably, will wander for the rest of her life through the never-never land inhabited by those hermaphrodites.

While Yentl, unlike Hedda does not commit suicide, her confusion about her sexual identity forces her into a ghost-like existence reserved for those who go through the motions of living but aren't really alive. Both Hedda and Yentl are sisters in suffering because of the unwillingness of their societies to accept their nonconformist sexual orientation. Like round pegs in square holes, they did not fit into the heterosexual majority and paid a heavy price for that.

Notes

1. Henrik Ibsen: The Complete Major Plays, trans. Rolf, Fjelde (New York, 1978). All references to Hedda Gabler are taken from this source.

2. “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy,” trans. Marion Magid and Elizabeth Pollet. In Isaac Bashevis Singer: Short Friday (New York, 1968), pp. 131-159. All references to Yentl in this article are taken from this edition.

3. Caroline W. Mayerson: “Thematic Symbols in Hedda Gabler, in Ibsen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Rolf Fjelde, (Englewood, N. J., 1967), pp. 131-138.

4. The Correspondence of Henrik Ibsen. Trans. Ed. Mary Morison (London, 1905), p. 437.

5. Sigmund Freud: “The Transformation of Puberty,” in Three Essays on The Theory of Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (New York, 1972), p. 133.

6. Hedda Gabler, Act I.

7. Ibid, Act II.

8. Ibid, Act IV.

9. Ibid, Act IV.

10. Singer, op. cit., p. 157.