What Is Social Determinism In The Note From Underground?

836 Words2 Pages

Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henrik Ibsen were two famous writers of the nineteenth era who became famous by writing about realism with their masterpieces; Dostoyevsky with the “Notes from Underground” and Ibsen with “Hedda Gabler”. Both works are based on the realistic picture of the whole society, between rich and poor, where their protaonist’s actions are result of social determinism. Social determinism is the theory that describes a person whose behavior is influenced by the society. According to this concept, the characters of “Notes from Underground” the underground man, and “Hedda Gabler” Hedda Tesman, are products of social determinism. The underground man is the product of the social determinism due to all the personal experiences that he had throughout his life with the society. He is a person who always wanted act in a different way but he stops himself and act as how the society wants him …show more content…

Even though he was just a servant for some reason he always seems to act like he was superior to him. This behavior from the servant makes the underground man hate him so much and make him develop this way of always feeling less than other people. At the same time, there is Hedda Gabler, who is a product of social determinism. She was raised in an upper middle class ambient with different ambitions from the women at her time, where they supposed to stay at home and have kids. But just to meet the expectations of the society, she got married to a man that she never loved, and she started to live a life she never wanted. Hedda married Tesman, an academic student who supposed to have a potential success, not because she loves him, but just because as she said “It was a great deal more than any of my other admirers were offering”. In this quote she is showing her real feelings meaning that she never loves him and she just married him because he was the best option among the

Show More
Related

  • Comparing The Corner Residents and Dostoevsky’s Underground Man

    2340 Words  | 5 Pages

    Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote these words around 1864 to describe the mental state of a hyperconscious retired bureaucrat whose excessive analysis and inability to act separate him from the mainstream of the society in which he lived. Dostoevsky's underground man, as he termed his character, is characterized by alienation, spite, and isolation. Dostoevsky presents the life of his character as a testimonial to the possibility of living counter to an individual's own best interests.

    Read More

  • The Mole People Analysis

    1314 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is a given that our culture will vary differently than of one that dwells in the tunnel. In prehistoric time, the underground was seen as a place of safety, much like it is seen today for the mole people. Throughout literature, the underground man, as Toth explains, is extreme, withdrawn and isolated. He is self exiled from human society and only maintains as much contacted as needed to survive. He believes in nothing and is often filled with rage and anguish (177). Many of the tunnel dwellers share many of the same practices and use of material objects key to their survival like eating rodents, using loose electrical wires for electricity, finding water through leaky pipes and cardboard and garbage for building a home. They all share the same knowledge and ideas of how live in the tunnels. They evolve by the changes in their environment and learn how to change to better protect themselves from predators like outsiders or from the dangers of trains. They have norms like we do but what they considered to be a norm, is what we may see as a folkway. Some may even develop their own language so others in their group can understand them. The nature of this counterculture and its formation shows that our society has the ability to create various countercultures that can either show how we excel or fail as a society. However it does show that if we were to

    Read More

  • Hedda Gabler Analysis

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    When her past wit LØvborg is brought up the reader sees a different side of Hedda. We can see that with LØvborg she feels comfortable and therefor confident. This can be seen by her willingness to discuss her thought of herself being a coward seen when LØvborg says, “Yes, Hedda, you are a coward at heart. And Hedda replies, 
”A terrible coward.” This shows that she think of herself as a coward. She thinks she has no power over anyone and is poor because of her choice to comply with society. She is able to show LØvborg this side of her because he knew her before the change in her life. She knows that he still thinks of her for who she was before Tesman and this is why the audience is shown Hedda’s coward side with LØvborg.

    Read More

  • What Is The Sympatheticism In Hedda Gabler

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hedda’s symbolic age--twenty-nine--forced her to get married because society’s age limit for marriage was catching up to her; she needed a stable and secure arrangement to avoid any scandals. However, by marrying George, Hedda was trying to get what she wanted the most: control. Attempting to maintain material wealth and status was her way of doing so; both become obvious in Hedda’s complaints. She wants another piano because the old one “doesn’t really fit in with all these other things,” and asks for a butler and horse, knowing she cannot have these things (232;247). More importantly, Hedda is trying to recover the previous status she had when she talks to George about how “It was part of our bargain that we’d live in society--that we’d keep a great house--” (247). This becomes the ultimate proof that Hedda’s love for George is fake. The marriage was a bargain; therefore, it seems that Hedda is only preoccupied with the betterment of herself. She does not care for others, not even for George. Hedda is consumed in her materialistic world, and cannot realize that this world will never actually materialize. It is apparent that what is important in life has somehow omitted her and she is lost in her own

    Read More

  • Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground and Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver

    1562 Words  | 4 Pages

    He constantly attempts to seek out revenge, but the concept of revenge, paired with the underground character’s actions and inertia, becomes problematic with the underground ideal. The underground character is steeped in contradiction, and how one interprets his actions, or his inactions, is what ultimately determines whether the he is, truly, an underground man. Notes from the Underground and Taxi Driver both depict a protagonist, the underground character, who scoffs and scorns at those aboveground, termed the “normal man” (PDF 15). Notes describes the normal man as someone with “normal interests,” who “act[s] in accordance with the laws of reason and truth” (). Notes were written at the time of the Enlightenment, and used to criticize the then-popular theory of material determinism: that “all choice and reasoning can be.calculated” by science, and if this is applied to human behavior, it is possible that “there will some day be discovered the laws of our so-called free will” (PDF 42)....

    Read More

  • Freedom in Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground

    1805 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, the Underground Man proposes a radically different conception of free action from that of Kant. While Kant thinks that an agent is not acting freely unless he acts for some reason, the Underground Man seems to take the opposite stance: the only way to be truly autonomous is to reject this notion of freedom, and to affirm one's right to act for no reason. I will argue that the Underground Man's notion of freedom builds on Kant's, in that it requires self-consciousness in decision-making. But he breaks from Kant when he makes the claim that acting for a reason is not enough, and only provides an illusion of freedom. When faced with the two options of deceiving himself about his freedom (like most men) or submitting to ìthe wall,î (a form of determinism), the Underground Man chooses an unlikely third option - a 'retort'. I will conclude this paper by questioning whether this 'retort' succeeds at escaping the system of nature he desperately seeks to avoid.

    Read More

  • Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

    1925 Words  | 4 Pages

    Hedda is a product of the nineteenth century, when women were ordained to become either proper old maids (like George's aunts) or modest housekeepers (like Mrs. Elvsted), however Hedda is an anomaly. She has been raised by a dominating father and rebels against his leadership at the same time she revels in his power. General Gabler taught Hedda to ride and shoot, which symbolizes the origin of her attraction with the violent and the romantic, Hedda's intense preoccupation with pistols, her desire to have control over the fate of another individual and take part in the public life of men, her rejection of family life shown in her at times mal...

    Read More

  • Hedda Gabler: Ambition, Etiquette, and Emotional Neglect

    731 Words  | 2 Pages

    It doesn’t take a genius to realize that throughout the play Hedda’s greed to gain power over her friends, pushes her to do unthinkable things otherwise. “I went and burnt the manuscript.” For her husbands “sake” Hedda goes and burns

    Read More

  • Powerful Female Characters in Theater

    1843 Words  | 4 Pages

    according to the plot of her own play. Hedda finds a “way out” after the internal conflict

    Read More

  • Notes from the Underground, the Tormented Narrator

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    To put it briefly, the Underground Man is the sole reason that he himself cannot be free despite is overwhelming desire. His obsessive behavior will not permit him to lead a normal life and he will forever be a prisoner of his own mind. The only reason that any other people have a hand in this imprisonment is because the Underground Man allows them to. Even when writing his “Notes” the Underground Man cannot help but to become consumed with scribbling down every little bit that he can, to the point that his “notes” must be cut short by an outside source.

    Read More

  • Comparing Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground

    490 Words  | 1 Pages

    Dostoyevsky's characters are very similar, as is his stories.  He puts a strong stress on the estrangement and isolation his characters feel. His characters are both brilliant and "sick" as mentioned in each novel, poisoned by their intelligence.  In Notes from the Underground, the character, who is never given a name, writes his journal from solitude. He is spoiled by his intelligence, giving him a fierce conceit with which he lashes out at the world and justifies the malicious things he does.  At the same time, though, he speaks of the doubt he feels at the value of human thought and purpose and later, of human life.  He believes that intelligence, to be constantly questioning and "faithless(ly) drifting" between ideas, is a curse.  To be damned to see everything, clearly as a window (and that includes things that aren't meant to be seen, such as the corruption in the world) or constantly seeking the meaning of things elusive. Dostoyevsky thought that humans are evil, destructive and irrational.

    Read More

  • Social Issues in Hedda Gabler

    1613 Words  | 4 Pages

    She was forced to cross beneath her social class and marry this commoner in the hopes that he would make a name for himself as a professor. As for love everlasting, Hedda disgustedly comments to Judge Brack, "Ugh -- don't use that syrupy word!" Rather than having become a happy newlywed who has found true love, "Hedda is trapped in a marriage of convenience" (Shipley 445). Hedda was raised a lady of the upper class, and as such she regards her beauty with high esteem. This is, in part, the reason she vehemently denies the pregnancy for so long.

    Read More

  • Literary Review: Hedda Gabler

    2676 Words  | 6 Pages

    Hedda asks herself, “Oh, why does everything I touch become mean and ludicrous? It’s like a curse!” This comment emphasizes the fact that her ennui is affecting all of those around her. It has caused her to become nihilistic and wreak havoc on the lives of others for her own amusement.

    Read More

  • Pursuit of Freedom Depicted in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Albert Camus’ The Stranger

    1432 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Hedda Gabler, Hedda becomes destructive towards ordinary objects which remind her of the life that she does not want. Ibsen chooses flowers, veranda doors and a manuscript as these objects because ironically, they symbolise life. These objects ultimately lead to the annihilation of her life for she believes death is the only outlet from her pregnancy- which would be the last factor to losing liberty. When Hedda enters the drawing room the day after her honeymoon, her first complaint is that “fresh air we must certainly have, with all these stacks of flowers” (Ibsen 19). These flowers are a welcome home gift from Mrs Elvsted, therefore symbolizing what Hedda does not want to be reminded of: her new marriage. The life of these flowers reminds her of her own new life, which she does not want, because it means becoming a ‘typically married woman’ rather than an independent one. Therefore at the start of the second scene, “most of the bouquets have been taken away” (Ibsen 36). By getting rid of the flowers, Hedda does not have the consta...

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

    1815 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout the play, there is a feeling that the room gets darker and less lively with the piano removed as well. The play takes a turn to Hedda being more clear and intentional with her manipulations. She is very bored and irritated in her general life. Her obsessive nature to cause trouble and trying to control everything is evident very early on in the play. She starts out in a quite middle-class setting and seems very annoyed at Tesman, she does not want to be close to him, yet they just returned home from their honeymoon which is supposed to be the most romantic thing at the beginning of marriage, but hers seems just tolerable. She appears to enjoy the fact that Tesman gets worried about the competition with Lovborg, it appears to give her new “fun” activity in her life. There are parts of the play that lean towards Hedda seeming slightly hysterical or bipolar as she goes from being bored and calm to loading pistols as if it is not a big deal and then grasps Thea wildly announcing her expectations for Lovborg. She seems obsessed with trying to control those around her because she has no other “outlet” to her life. Physically, she is repelled by marital sex and, however, flirtatious with the Judge, frightened by extramarital affairs. Like so many women, she is left miserable among the

    Read More

More about What Is Social Determinism In The Note From Underground?

Open Document