Nancy Astor

In 1919 Nancy Astor took her seat in the House of Commons as the first woman to serve as an MP. In the 90 years since then, many more women have entered the hallowed walls of the Houses of Parliament, there's even been a woman Prime Minister, following in the footsteps of this remarkable woman. But not many people today know her name or her achievements. So here are a few facts about Nancy Astor.

1. Nancy Langhorne came into the world on May 19, 1879 in Danville Virginia, one of 11 children born to Chillie and Nanaire Langhorne. The Langhornes were not rich; the growing family lived in near poverty in a four room house in Danville. Chillie worked as an auctioneer and later with the railroads. By the time Nancy was 11, Chillie had enough money to move his family to Richmond to a grand house called Mirador.

2. Nancy wasn't the only Langhorne to make her mark on the world. Her oldest sister Irene was the first southerner to open the Patriarchs Ball in New York since the Civil War. She later married the artist Charles Dana Gibson who was known for his illustrations of the Gibson Girl. Her oldest sister Lizzie's daughter, also named Nancy, became the celebrated interior decorator Nancy Lancaster. And her youngest sister Nora's daughter became the noted British comedienne, actress, and singer-songwriter Joyce Grenfell.

3. At the age of 18, Nancy married Robert Gould Shaw, the nephew of Robert Gould Shaw who commanded the all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. The marriage was a disaster from the start. Although handsome and charming, Shaw was also an alcoholic and an adulterer. Nancy left him two weeks after they married but she was convinced to return by his family. They had a son Bobbie in 1898 and Nancy tried to stick out. She finally left him but wouldn't countenance a divorce until she discovered he had entered into a bigamous marriage with his mistress.

4. An Anglophile since childhood, in 1904, Nancy made the first of several trips to England for the hunting season, one of her great passions. From her first trip, she was a great success. Edwardian Society was fascinated by Nancy. On the one hand, she was witty and saucy in conversation, but on the other, she was devout and almost prudish in behavior. This confused particularly the men who had thought that she would be easy game. Nancy was once asked by an English woman, "Have you come to get our husbands?" Her unexpected response, "If you knew the trouble I had getting rid of mine."

5. Nancy’s first male conquest in England was John Baring, Lord Revelstoke head of Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995. However, Lord Revelstoke was 16 years older than her, and had been involved in a long-term love affair with a married woman. Although he was extremely rich, Nancy found banking boring. And like many Englishmen, he was inarticulate in his feelings, only able to tell Nancy on paper how he felt.

6. Instead Nancy married Waldorf Astor. The son of William Waldorf Astor, his father had moved the family to England when Waldorf was twelve and raised his children as English. They met onboard ship on one of Nancy's return trips to England in 1905. James Fox in his wonderful biography about his great aunt Nancy believes that Waldorf had his heart set on wooing Nancy and arranged to be on the same ship as she was. He used his time wisely on board spending time charming Nancy's father Chillie who put in a good word for him. However, Waldorf was only one of Nancy's many suitors.. Waldorf was also extremely rich, but he was a gentleman of leisure. He was also born on the same day as Nancy. Although he often suffered from ill-health, he balanced out Nancy's outgoingness, with a sweet and gentle nature. In other words, Nancy could manage him to her heart's content.

7. Nancy suffered bouts of ill-health until her conversion to Christian Science. Most of her illnesses were psychosomatic in origin. Although naturally gregarious and competitive by nature, the constant rounds of parties and social duties eventually took their toll. It was her sister Phyllis who gave her Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health. From then on it and the bible were her only reading material. The idea of mind over matter greatly appealed to a control freak like Nancy. She succeeded in converting her friend Philip Kerr, Marquess of Lothian, Waldorf, and several other relatives to the cause. Like a born-again Christian, Nancy constantly proselytized her new found religion to anyone who would listen, probably to the point of boredom. Unfortunately her religion had serious reprecussions when her daughter Wissie suffered an accident to her back. Instead of calling for a medical doctor, Nancy and Waldorf called for a Christian Science practicioner. By the time an orthopedic surgeon was called in, the damage was done. Wissie suffered from back pain for the rest of her life.

8. Nancy soon gave birth to five Astor children over the next twelve years of her marriage starting with Bill, followed by Wissie, David, Michael and Jakie. Her relationship with all her children was tempestuous. Her favorite child was her eldest Bobbie Shaw; they had were so co-dependent that Freud would have given his left arm to get the two of them on the couch. Neither one of them could be happy with or without the other. While Nancy loved all her children, she was not demonstrative. Instead she was combative and possessive,sort of an affectionate bully, not wanting the boys to get married and have lives of their own. She would tell them that they were ‘Conceived without pleasure and born without pain.” She took it for granted that they would just love her no matter what. A psychoanalyst would probably say that Nancy was verbally and emotionally abusive towards her children. Bobbie and Jakie were the two children who could dish it out as well as they could take it. Still her children loved her despite her shortcomings as a mother.

9. While Nancy could be an affectionate bully, she could also be incredibly generous. She gave freely to her sisters Irene and Phyllis. She supported other family members and others in need over the years without question. However with her sister Lizzie, Nancy insisted that any money she gave her be accounted for.

10. Nancy was not the first woman to be elected to Parliament. That distinction belongs to Constance Markiewicz, who along with the other members of the Sinn Fein party refused to take the oath. If she had, she would have been the first woman to actually take her seat. Her husband, Waldorf had been elected to Parliament from Plymouth and was well on his way to a brilliant career when his father shocked the couple by accepting a peerage, making him Viscount Astor. When his father died, Waldorf succeeded to the title, which meant that he was kicked upstairs to the House of Lords. The seat was now vacant, and it was decided that Nancy would run in the next election to take his place. Nancy took to the British method of politicking like a duck to water. Her quick wit meant that she could deal with the hecklers without losing her ladylike demeanor. Nancy won her seat by more than 5,000 votes over the other candidates.

11. In later life, Nancy told one of her sons that if she had known what being the first woman to bridge the all male club of the Houses of Parliament was going to be like, she would never have done it. The male members were not pleased to have a woman in their midst. They would debate the most disgusting subjects possible such as venereal disease, complete with graphic photos, they would refuse to give her the corner seat forcing her to climb over their legs, and direct her to the furthest bathroom possible. But Nancy stuck it out. Her saving grace was her total disregard for the rules. She interrupted when she should have been quiet, listened intently no matter what the topic, and disarmed the men with her charm. Among her early political friends were the female MPs who followed her, by the late twenties, there were at least 15 women in Parliament. Nancy later proposed creating a "Women’s Party", but the female Labour MPs thought it was a ridiculous idea because at that time their party had power. While Nancy gave in, her closeness with teh other female MPs dissipated over time.

12. Nancy had a gift for being able to mix people of different backgrounds and social classes. It was not uncommon to find members of the Tory party alongside members of the Liberal party. She was able to make everyone feel welcome and at home, keeping up a constant stream of activities and games to entertain people. Her southern charm, and wit made intimates of many of the men who graced the table at Cliveden, including Hilaire Belloc, T.E. Lawrence, and George Bernard Shaw.

13. In the late twenties, Nancy took a trip to the Soviet Union with George Bernard Shaw, where she lectured Stalin for two hours, claiming that he was acting as autocratically as the Tsars that the communists deposed. At first, her questions were not being translated into Russian until Shaw insisted that Stalin should hear what she was saying. She took a huge risk, criticizing Stalin so openly to his face. To his credit, Stalin answered her questions, although it must have galled him to be questioned that way by a woman.

14. One of Nancy’s most famous feuds were with Winston Churchill. She once said at a dinner party, “If I were your wife, I would poison your coffee,” while Churchill replied, “If I were your husband, I would drink it.” Ironically, Nancy and Waldorf had been friends with Winston and his wife Clementine in her early years in England. However, Churchill had never favored women’s suffrage, and once Nancy became MP, the relationship cooled. The relationship got downright frosty in the 1930’s when Nancy and Waldorf favored appeasement, while Churchill among others felt that Hitler was a threat. During the War, Winston and his wife went down to Plymouth to see the damage. When he wept, Nancy said, “It’s all very well to cry, Winston, but you’ve got to do something.” This did not endear Nancy to him but it got things done.

15. Nancy’s political career began to suffer in the 1930’s during the long march towards war. Because of Nancy’s antipathy towards the French who she considered immoral as well as Catholic, her sympathies lay more with Germany who was considered industrious and mainly Protestant. However, a journalist with communist leanings named Claud Cockburn wrote an article for a newsletter called The Week calling the politicians who favored appeasement with Germany, ‘The Cliveden Set.’ The idea was that the so-called ‘Cliveden Set’ spent weekends engineering a plot to sell-out to the Nazi’s to stem the real threat, which was communism. While several of Nancy and Waldorf’s friends favored appeasement, many of them didn’t. However the name stuck.

16. In 1945, Waldorf insisted that it was time for Nancy to step down as MP and not run again for re-election. Times had changed now that the war was over, and he was afraid that if she ran, she would be defeated. Nancy resented it; she wanted to run but agreed to accede to Waldorf’s wishes. The decision caused a rift in their marriage that lasted almost to his death in 1952.

17. Nancy was a life-long teetotaller. Her first husband was a drinker, as well as her brothers. While Nancy didn't mind others drinking, she herself abstained. She was completely for Prohibition in the States. Her temperance stance didn't hinder her political career, which is ironic given that she lived in a country where drinking can be a national pasttime.

Nancy died on May 2, 1964 just before her 85th birthday. She was cremated and her ashes reside with Waldorf’s at Cliveden in an 18th century Octagon Temple, just below the great lawn. A confederate flag was buried with her. Her son Bobby passed away 6 years later in 1970 from an overdose; he is buried in the temple alongside his mother.

Bibliography:

Nancy Astor - John Griggs, Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1982
The Langhorne Sisters - James Fox, Granta Books, 1998

Scandalous Movie Review: Grey Gardens

"My mother gave me a completely priceless life." -- "Little Edie" Beale, 1917-2002


Last night I was lucky enough to get see a screening of the new HBO film Grey Gardens starring Jessie Lange as 'Big' Edie Bouvier Beale and Drew Barrymore as 'Little' Edie. Since I don't have HBO, this was the only way that I was going to see the film until it came out on DVD.

As a native New Yorker, I was aware vaguely of the story of Jacqueline Onassis' relatives out on Long Island, and the documentary that was made about them, but I had never actually seen the film until two years ago after I had seen the Broadway musical of their live starring Christine Ebersole.

After seeing the documentary and the musical, I wasn't sure that the world needed another depiction of their lives unless it was in book form (so far there has been no real biography written about these two women apart from a book by the Mayles and reminiscences from people who worked for them). I'm glad to say that I was proved wrong after seeing this film. I was incredibly bowled over by the performances, particularly that of Drew Barrymore as 'Little' Edie. For the past six or seven years, Drew's performances have chiefly required her to be just adorable, which she is, but she's never really had an acting challenge in any of them. Grey Gardens definitely takes her out of her comfort zone. For the first time, she has lived up to the legacy of her last name, Barrymore. I think her grandfather John and her great-uncle Lionel and great-aunt Ethel would be proud of her. Jessica Lange, well one expects an amazing performance from her, and she doesn't disappoint. The two women play so well off of each other, almost as well as the real life characters that they portray.

The film starts off depicting the moment in 1973, when filmmakers Albert and David Maysles entered the strange world of "Big Edie" and "Little Edie" Bouvier Beale. The filmmakers spent six weeks with the reclusive mother and daughter who chose to live in squalor and almost total isolation in a decaying, 28-room mansion in East Hampton. Interspersed with the present day filmmaking are scenes from the past, starting in 1936 when 'Little Edie' is about to make her debut in front of her New York society at the Pierre Hotel. 'Big Edie' was the sister of 'Black Jack' Bouvier, father of Jacqueline and Lee. She is married to Phelan Beale (Ken Howard), but the marriage is showing signs of cracking apart. 'Big Edie' loves to entertain at parties, singing for her guests. Although 'Little Edie' wants to be an actress and dancer, her mother encourages her to get married instead, telling her that it is possible to have her cake and eat it too.

Director and co-writer (the film's other writer is Patricia Rozema, who wrote and directed the wretched film of Mansfield Park starring Frances O'Connor) Michael Sucsy's offers a wry, behind the scenes look at the lives of these two extraordinary and eccentric women. The film is told over the span of four decades, the film focuses on their glamorous and well-heeled lives long before the making of the documentary and on the circumstances behind their riches-to-rags story. The film depicts 'Little' Edie's affair with Julius Krug (played by Daniel Baldwin who sounds exactly like his brother Alec), a married man and member of Truman's cabinet during the years that she lived in New York at the Barbizon Hotel for Women (where Grace Kelly also lived) during the late 1940's.

After the death of her father, Edie moves back home to Grey Gardens. Krug ends their relationship, and 'Big' Edie convinces her daughter that she will have other chances for an acting career. The deterioration of these women's lives was an incredibly slow process. Some of the saddest scenes in the movie are when 'Big' Edie pretends to be a maid while answering the phone. Afte Phelan Beale leaves 'Big' Edie, she no longer has the money to keep up Grey Gardens, which eats up huge amounts of cash, but she refuses to give up the house. Slowly the two women end up living in one room, surrounded by cats and refuse. It's not until the local health inspectors threaten to evict them, and articles are written about them in The National Enquirer and New York Magazine, that Jackie and Lee come to the rescue, spending money to fix up the house from its prior disgusting appearance.

The brief scene of Jackie O (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) visiting her Aunt and cousin after what appears to be years is priceless. The contrast between what Jackie's life became and 'Little' Edie's is captured. 'Little' Edie is eaten up by envy, she wanted to be famous and adored, and doesn't understand why it should have happened to Jackie who didn't seem to want it.

What keeps people coming back to this story is that these two women, 'Big' Edie and 'Little' Edie are every bit as much of an enigma as Jackie Onassis. Why didn't 'Big' Edie's sons do something about the house and the situation before it became an embarassment? What happened in the years during the war? Why did 'Little' Edie really leave the city and come back to Grey Gardens? Was she afraid to really go for her dreams? Was it just a guilt trip from her mother? The relationship between the two women is one of co-dependence, they can't live with each other but they can't seem to live without each other.

The film ends with the premiere of the film of Grey Gardens and 'Little' Edie's cabaret debut at Reno Sweeney's in New York. 'Big' Edie died shortly after the movie opened, and her daughter sold the house to Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post and his wife with the proviso that they had to restore the house, not tear it down. 'Little' Edie lived in Manhattan for a time, before finally retiring to Bal Harbor in Florida.

I highly recommend this film. In fact, I would suggest a double feature of the HBO film and then watching the documentary.

Scandalous Book of the Month: Mistress of the Sun

I'm very pleased to be featuring Sandra Gulland's latest novel Mistress of the Sun, as the book on the month here on Scandalous Women. Sandra is well known for her trilogy about the Empress Josephine, but Mistress of the Sun tells the story of Louis XIV's first official mistress, Louise de la Valliere.

I've always been fascinated by Louis XIV ever since I read the Angelique series as a teenager. There's something about the Sun King and life at Versailles that is just so delicious. Sandra Gulland's book did not disappoint me. If you love historical fiction, then you must pick up a copy of this book.

The book opens when Louise, called Petite, is four years old, and precocious beyond her years, already reading, and obsessed with animals. She sees a wild white horse that she names Diablo, that she convinces her fahter to buy. Petite wants to tame him but she uses measures that are forbidden by the Church. Although Diablo is successfully tamed, bad things happen, she falls from the horse while in the woods, threatened by a boar and breaks her leg, which leads to a limp, and then later on her father dies, leaving the family with no money. Petite's mother sticks her in a convent while she goes off to find a new husband. Petite is happy at the convent, and wishes the religious life but fate and circumstances have other ideas. Her mother's new husband, a marquis, secures her a post to the daughter of Gaston, the Duc D'Orleans, brother of Louis XIII and uncle of the new king. Although Louise is beautiful and shy, she has a limp and no dowery, which makes her prospects of marriage dismal.

When Princess Marguerite is sent off to marry Cosimo Medici, the Duke of Tuscany instead of her cousin Louis XIV as planned, Louise finds herself in the household of Princess Henriette, called Madame, the wife of the King's brother Philippe. Henriette and the King share a close friendship, and rumors abound that they are lovers. Henriette encourages the King to flirt with Louise, which ultimately ends up with the two involved in a passionate love affair.

Louise is shocked that the King would fall in love with her, when there are so many other women at court who are more high-born than she is, including her good friend Athenais. Although one of Louise's ancestors fought along side Jeanne D'Arc, the de la Valliere's family can't trace their ancestry back to Charlemagne which makes them minor nobility. But Louise is an excellent horsewoman and huntress, two interests that she and Louis have in common. Louise struggles with her decision to become the King's mistress, committing adultery is a sin, but she is convinced that she is doing a service to the monarchy. Still the relationship is kept secret initially and Louise's children sent out to be fostered by others. She must also suffer the disapproval of her family until Louis officially recognizes her as his mistress.

Louise must cope with loss of many kinds throughout the book, along with her many illnesses. She also learns a harsh lesson, one that many royal mistresses have learned throughout the centuries, that the love of a King can be inconstant. Yet her saving grace is always her goodness, along with her yearning for spiritual peace.

This is a fascinating look at life in 17th century France, and Sandra Gulland doesn't spare the reader details of the less savory side of life back then, along with the richness and magnificence of palace life. Reading the descriptions of the often barbaric medical treatments, the filthiness of the palaces, as well as the superstitions that ruled at the time, it made me glad to live in the 21st century. Although I would happily time travel again. This was the first book that I have read by Gulland and it won't be the last. I found it hard to put Mistress of the Sun down, although I knew how the story ended. Here's hoping that Gulland gives us more books from this period. I would love to read her take on Louis XIV's relationship with Madame de Maintenon, his morganatic wife.

Upcoming in April

Some exciting things coming up this month on Scandalous Women

• Guest blog by historical author, Alisa M. Libby, author of The King's Rose, a new novel of Katherine Howard.

Review of Sandra Gulland's Mistress of the Sun

15 Facts about Nancy Astor

Review of the new HBO Film Grey Gardens

Penelope Deveraux

Belle da Costa Greene

Another cool Award

I just received this awesome award from Amy at Passages to the Past.

"The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken - excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all..."

So I've now passing this awesome award to some other deserving bloggers:

Kwana at Kwana Writes

Megan Frampton

Leanna Renee Heiber

Hope Tarr's Sort of Blog

Eliza Knight's wonderfully informative blog History Undressed.

I also want to thank Herr Mozart and Mrs. Woffington for the awards that they gave me. I'm so sorry I've been behind in thanking everyone and posting the awards. I'm way behind researching my next post on Nancy Astor and also working on my book proposal.

Mixing Fact and Fiction: The Devil's Whore

Last night I watched a miniseries set in the English Civil War that was broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 last November. I picked up a copy of the DVD in the airport while waiting for my plane back to New York. I'm fortunate to have a region-free DVD player which means that I can play English DVD's as well as American (for some reason Europe has a different system than we do). I had planned to write about the miniseries as part of my reviewing of fictional Scandalous Women but instead I've decided to write about mixing historical fact and fiction, something that crops up a lot while watching movies and TV films based on historical scandalous women.

The story revolves Angelica Fanshawe (who is fictitious) in the years 1623 when she is born until the restoration of Charles II. When Angelica is small, her mother who is Catholic decides to go to France to become a nun, leaving Angelica to the care of her cousin's family. As the boat is leaving, Angelica declares that she no longer believes in God, and she sees the Devil standing on a branch of a tree. When she is sixteen, she marries her cousin Henry who is the heir to Fanshawe manor. On her wedding day, Elizabeth Lilburne begs her to ask the King to pardon her husband John Lilburne who is being flogged within an inch of his life for his radical views. Angelica declines to intervene.

Her marriage to her cousin Harry is not smooth. Angelica has opinions which her husband does not like, and he treats her coldly for being enthusiastic in the marriage bed. When the Civil War breaks out, Harry offers his manor up to the enemy without a fight which leads to the King ordering his death by firing squad. This leaves Angelica feeling betrayed by the King, and disenchanted with the royalist cause. After her husband's death, she is left penniless and alone. She is taken in by a merchant who buys her dinner but wants sex in exchange. Angelica threatens him and when he doesn't take her warning seriously, she stabs him to death, leading his friend Jollife seeking revenge for his death. Sexby rescues her from being attacked in the woods.

She becomes involved with Thomas Rainsborough when the Roundheads occupy her families manor house, and they fall in love and are married. Unfortunately Rainsborough is assassinated leaving Angelica a widow for the second time. A friend, Edward Sexby offers to marry her, although Angelica no longer wants to be married. She wants her freedom. However there is a war on and marriage will protect her as she goes back to live at the manor house which has no been given to the Dissenters.

Sexby is in love with her but she tells him that she will never love him. She gets involved with another one of the dissenters who is actually being paid by Jollife to get Angelica arrested for indecency and promiscuity. Sexby again rescues her and this time she is willing to allow herself to love him. Unfortunately Sexby has been disallusioned by his good friend Cromwell who he suspects of ordering the death of Rainsborough. He was also disgusted by Cromwell's actions in Ireland and the idea that Cromwell might become King. He decides to take matters into his own hands and assassinate Cromwell, however he is betrayed and commits suicide when he realizes his plan has been foiled.

The miniseries ends with Angelica giving birth to Sexby's daughter and living to see the restoration of Charles II.

The Devil's Whore is sub-titled the 'true adventures of Angelica Fanshawe.' However Angelica is fictional although the majority of characters in the miniseries that she mixes with are not. My biggest problem with this story is that she marries real life historical characters. This may sound hypocritical. I have no problem with fictional characters sleeping with historical figures known to be particularly promiscuous such as Charles II, Byron, Edward VII, George IV, Alexandre Dumas, etc. But having fictional characters marry real life historical characters is going to far.

The other big problem is even though the miniseries is called The Devil's Whore, there is nothing particularly outrageous or scandalous about Angelica. She's actually quite boring compared to the real life historical figures she mixes with. Elizabeth Lilburne, who spent her life helping her husband John Lilburne with his causes, and who fought like a demon to have him set free during his imprisonment, is a more interesting figure than Angelica. Angelica seems to have no opinions of her own, she takes on the opinions of the men that she's involved with. Compared to real life women Brilliana Harley who defended her home Brampton Bryan Castle for seven weeks against the Royalist, Angelica really does nothing much of note during the miniseries.

One of the writers Martine Brant is married to a man who is descended from Lady Anne Fanshawe, the wife of King Charles I's Chancellor, who wrote a diary about this period. I would rather the miniseries be based on one the actual women who lived during the Civil War than this hodge podge that was created. When Peter Flannery was asked if he was worried that people will take their history from the miniseries, he was quoted as saying that people don't take Gone with the Wind as fact about the American Civil War, which is true but at least Margaret Mitchell didn't have Scarlett O'Hara involved with Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee.

The saving grace of the miniseries was that it was set during the English Civil War which is a neglected period in English history. I found the men in the series to be the most compelling characters, particularly Cromwell, who fought so hard against the royalists, only to end up not having achieving what he set out to accomplish when he becomes Lord Protector of England, in defacto King but without the title.

Unfortunatley I don't know when or if this miniseries will ever be available in America. If you are lucky enough to find it on You Tube, I would watch it simply for the story of the English Civil War.

Hedda Gabler - Fiend or Heroine?

Last night I went to see the Roundabout Theater's production of Hedda Gabler starring Mary Louise Parker at the American Airlines theater here in New York. As I was watching the play (before I walked out during the interval), I started thinking about the fictional scandalous women, women whose stories shocked the reading public at the time. Women like Madame Bovary, Forever Amber, Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, and Fanny Hill.


This blog has been mainly about the real life Scandalous Women in history, but I thought I would start a new feature, tackling some of these fictional women and why their stories were so outrageous to readers at the time.


I have long had a love/hate relationship with the play Hedda Gabler. I have seen many productions of this play and I still can't get around the fact that I hate this character. Last night, I started wondering what it was about this fictional woman that pushed my buttons. And was it the same for audience members in the late 19th Century when Hedda was first produced?

The character of Hedda is considered to be one of the great dramatic roles, the "female Hamlet." Over the years, Hedda has been portrayed as an idealistic heroine fighting against society's stricture on women, a victim of circumstance, a feminist icon, or a manipulative villainess. When the play opened in Germany, in 1891, it garnered mainly negative reviews. The idea of a character, especially a woman, committing suicide on stage had to have been controversial.

Here are some of the earliest reviews and commentaries on the play:

So specious is the dramatist, so subtle is his skill in misrepresentations, so fatal is his power of persuasion that for a moment we believe Hedda Gabler is a noble heroine, and not a fiend, and that Lovborg is deserving of our pity and not our condemnation. (Clement Scott - The Daily Telegraph, 1891)

Ibsen's greatest play and the most interesting woman that he has created - she is compact with all the vices, she is instinct with all the virtues of womanhood. (Justin Huntly McCarthy, London Black and White, April 25, 1891)

What a hopeless specimen of degeneracy is Hedda Gabler! A vicious, heartless, cowardly, unmoral, mischief-making vixen. (The Ledger, Philadelphia, February 13, 1904)

What a marvel of stupidity and nonsense the author did produce in this play! It is incredible to think that only a score of years ago the audience sat seriously before its precious dullness. (G.B. Shaw)

Ibsen himself wrote: The title of the play is Hedda Gabler. My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than her husband's wife. It was not really my intention to deal in this play with so called problems. What I principally wanted to do was to depict human beings, human emotions, and human destinies upon a groundwork of certain social conditions and principles of the present day.

Hedda is a woman of complex passions and emotional extremes. In a sense, if you want to get technical, you could say that she is manic-depressive or bi-polar as it is called nowadays.

Spoiler Alert: If you have not read and seen the play, you might want to skip this portion of the blog as I give a brief plot summary of the play.

The action takes place in a villa in what is now Oslo but was called Kristiana back in Ibsen's day. Hedda Gabler has just returned from her honeymoon with Tesman, an aspiring academic, who has turned their honeymoon into a research trip. It becomes clear over the course of the play that she has never loved him but has married him for reasons pertaining to the boring nature of her life, (she is 28 and was presumably on the shelf when she finally got Tesman to marry her) and it is suggested that she may be pregnant.

The reappearance of Tesman's academic rival and Hedda's old love, Ejlert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Løvborg is an alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), he shows signs of rehabilitation and has just completed a bestseller. The critical success of his recently published work transforms Løvborg into a threat to Tesman, as Løvborg becomes a competitor for the university professorship Tesman had been counting on. The couple are financially overstretched and Tesman now tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that Hedda had been looking forward to.

Upon meeting Løvborg however, the couple discover that he has no intention of competing for the professorship, but rather has spent the last few years labouring with Mrs. Elvsted over what he considers to be his masterpiece. Hedda, apparently jealous of Mrs. Elvsted's influence over Løvborg, hopes to come between them. Tesman returns home from a party and reveals that he found Løvborg's manuscript which he lost while drunk. When Hedda next sees Løvborg, he confesses to her that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Hedda encourages him to commit suicide, giving him one of her pistols.

She then burns the manuscript, telling Tesman she has destroyed it to secure their future. When the news comes that Løvborg is dead, Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted are determined to try to reconstruct his book. Hedda is shocked to discover, from Judge Brack, that Løvborg's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental. Worse, Brack knows where the pistol came from. This means that he has power over her, which he will use to force Hedda into a sexual affair. Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and ends the play by shooting herself in the temple.

Not exactly a feel good play. Hedda is a very hard character to root for her. A product of her class, she is a woman who has married down, it is clear in the play that Tesman is of a different class from her. She's probably rejected many suitors over the years. Now she's 28, and probably married Tesman out of a sense of desperation, hoping that he had a bright academic future ahead of him. She clearly is spoilt and materialistic, caring more for appearances. She envies Mrs. Elvsted for doing the things that she would never dare to do, leaving her husband, throwing her lot in with Eilert. She lives vicariously through life versus living her life.

But is Hedda a heroine or a fiend who destroys everything in her path? Are we, the audience to pity her, for not having the courage to take a stand? For a 19th Century audience, Hedda must have seemed incomprehensible, particularly to the men in the audience. For the women, I suspect she made them look into themselves, and their choices, and it wasn't a very comfortable evening at the theater. Her suicide must have been particularly shocking, a last and tragic attempt to escape her environment.

Even today, there are women out there, who live through the men in their lives, instead of using their ambition and their talents for themselves. Perhaps, they have a fear of failure and find it easier to live through either their children or others. Hedda fears scandal above everything. It is why she will stay married to Tesman despite the fact that he bores her to pieces, it is why when Eilert tried to make love to her when they were younger, she refused. It is why she chooses suicide over being forced into an illicit relationship with Brack.

Her destructive impulses, which even she has no idea why she does the things that she does, take over. And ultimately destroy not just Eilert but also her life. Hedda is bored, and has no other outlet in her life. For some women in the 19th Century, their children were an outlet, but Hedda refuses to see children as a gift. She just sees them as another way to trap her in a life that she doesn't want but has chosen. Ironically, in Kate Williams' new biography of Queen Victoria, the young Queen expresses the exact same sentiments about having children.

So is Hedda a heroine or a fiend? In the end, it all comes down to the individual audience member how one feels about this woman.