Girls Just Wanna Have Fun: Comparisons of Female Deception and Defiance in Tartuffe and Hedda Gabler

The themes of defiance, deception, and hypocrisy are prominent in Moliere’s Tartuffe and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. The titular characters generate conflict in their stories by lying, betraying, and denying their wrongdoings. Through each work’s respective comic and tragic lens, this essay explores how such themes are portrayed through the actions of each work’s leading female characters in order to highlight the intense pressures to conform in patriarchal environments.  Specifically, Dorine in her role as the soubrette in Tartuffe and Hedda as the tragic hero in Hedda Gabler are similar as they act as foils to the more gender-conforming feminine characters in their stories: Mariane and Thea Elvsted. Dorine and Hedda also use their disruptive dispositions to emphasize and criticize gender social norms such as marriage, motherhood, and submissiveness. Dorine disrupts the play by unabashedly criticizing Tartuffe’s religious hypocrisy and Orgon’s sycophantic behavior; Hedda does so by instigating conflict by deceiving her love interests, George Tesman and Eilert Løvborg, The characters’ portrayals of these themes begin to differ, however, towards the final act of their plays. Due to the restorative nature of comedy, Dorine does not ultimately suffer from her defiance. Moliere uses Dorine as vehicle for total restoration as she communicates with all of the major actors in the play. Ibsen, on the other hand, uses Hedda as a somber reminder of the realistic nature of deception. As the tragic hero, Hedda is forced to reckon with the consequences of defiance, causing her ultimate demise.