Faulkner's Drusilla and Ibsen's Hedda

Faulkner's Drusilla and Ibsen's Hedda EDWARD L. TUCKER THE SCENE SEEMS FAMILIAR. In the last section of The Unvanquished by William Faulkner, entitled "An Odor of Verbena," Drusilla, like a "Greek amphora priestess of a succinct and formal violence," presents two identical duelling pistols to Bayard Sartoris, who has returned home upon the death of his father. 1 Pressing the pistols into his hands and watching with a "passionate and voracious exaltation," she says: "Take them. I have kept them for you. I give them to you. Oh you will thank me, you will remember me who put into your hands what they say is an attribute only of God's, who took what belongs to heaven and gave it to you ... the long true barrels true as justice, the triggers ... quick as retribution, the two of them slender and invicible and fatal as the physical shape of love" (p. 273). Bayard stares at 'her "face tearless and exalted, the feverish eyes brilliant and voracious" as she continues: "How beautiful: ... to be permitted to kill, to be permitted vengeance, to take into your bare hands the fire of heaven that cast down Lucifer" (p. 274). The scene is familiar: a female agent of destruction desires control over a vacillating man at a most decisive moment in his life. Drusilla has numerous sisters in literature: Clytemnestra persuading Aegisthus to take revenge against Agamemnon; Electra urging Orestes in counter-revenge; Edward's mother giving her son "sic counseils"; Lady Macbeth guiding Macbeth in destruction. But, in particular, Drusilla, who joins the host of Medeas, Delilahs, lezebels, and Normas as "a symbol of the ancient and eternal Snake" (p. 262), has a most interesting counterpart in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. Hedda, "charmless never, disagreeable always, [with a] serpent's charm, the charm that slowly slays its victim, opens at a most decisive moment in the life of Eilert Lovborg, a pistol case containing two identical pistols. She hands one to the man, who is despondent because his manuscript has been lost. Urging him on, she says: "Take it. You can use it now.... But beautifully ... 157 158 EDWARD L. TUCKER promise me that.,,3 Upon hearing of his death, she exalts: "What a sense of deliverance it gives one ... to know that it's still possible to do something of one's own free will in this world - a fearless act - and an act of uncontrived beauty.... Eilert L6vborg had the courage to live life in his own way - and then this last moment, with all its beauty .. , that he had the strength and will to turn his back on life - and so early ..." (p. 87). There is a remarkable similarity in the two women - Hedda and Drusilla. Both Ibsen and Faulkner were working with timeless emotions and a pattern that has appeared often. Comparing these two complex women will help in the illumination of both. For one thing, the age of the two is approximately the same. Drusilla Hawk was born about 1842. In The Unvanquished Colonel Sartoris is killed in 1874; so that would make her about thirty-two years old. When Hedda first appears in her play, she is described as "in her late twenties" (p. 10). The names too appear somewhat alike with their double letters and the final a. Roman in sound, they have a classical simplicity. Drusilla, which comes from a word meaning "strong,"4 also has the meaning of "dewwatered ." In connection with this second meaning, an older woman in folklore collects dew in a bottle and washes the face of a child with it; the child in turn, as a result of the washing, becomes beautiful as an angel.5 The name Hedda often appears in Teutonic compounds with the meaning of "warlike."6 So both names are similar in appearance, and both suggest fierce or warlike qualities. But. the chief similarity is that these two women follow an almost identical pattern of action. Each had a vigorous youth. Hedda had been "beautiful" with "so many admirers" (p. 6). People had noticed her riding down the road in her "long black habit ... and the feathers in her hat" (p. 3) in the company...