Examples Of Realism In Hedda Gabler

Realism is the period in American literature from 1860 to 1890. This movement in writing focused on writing about how things really appeared and how they really were instead of writing in a dark manner. The stories, Life On The Mississippi and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County written by Mark Twain best represent the realism movement in American literature at this time.

Many of Ibsen's plays contain criticism regarding marriage, which portrays a dominant and complex female character that are generally trapped in unhappy and unsatisfied marriages due to the Victorian era traditions (Richard Chang and Richkie Chiu). Hedda Gabler (1890) is one of his well known plays, that contains a family's character with that role. Hedda plays the role of the primary female character, she struggles to find her spot in her new life, and adjusting to her dominant side, due to that she will never become

Realism can be defined as view in which the author tries to depict life as truthfully and accurately as possible. The use of realistic or lifelike settings described by the author or narrated by a character, add a layer of realism to the story, even if the story itself is fictitious. The characters themselves are often portrayed as believable as possible, to the point that the character being described could actually exist; they are often depicted as very average people, void of extreme wealth, influence, or astounding abilities. The reason characters and settings are often

One of Hedda's main points in life is to control her position in society. She does everything in her power to avoid any type of scandal in the community and to go along with the norms of society. This occurs with her decision of marrying George Tesman, even though she had feelings

The judicious actions foreshadow disaster. Having no control over their relationship, she maximizes this opportunity of diverting his life. Although she is conservative, she also tries pushing the boundaries by continually being discontented, as opposed to what is expected of women during that era, and thus she is a victim of society. Her curiosity towards the outside world is a result of her being trapped indoors and explains her jealousy towards Lövborg, Thea or anybody who has freedom. Hedda withholds and controls her emotions; nonetheless this gives the audience an impression that she is mysterious and secretive.

Realism, in contrast to Romanticism, represents the reality of life in America. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, America experienced enormous industrial, economic, social, and cultural change. Realism focuses on showing everyday activities and events among the middle and lower class society without romantic ideas. In the early 20th century people started to pull away from fantasy and started focusing on the reality around them. Realism emphasises on truth, class, and social commentary.

With no focus on Hedda’s mother we can imagine that the general did little to prepare his daughter for wifehood or motherhood. Hedda inherited his pride, coldness, and an authoritative attitude toward others of a lower rank. She lacks compassion for weak and submissive characters like Thea and Aunt Julia but has admiration for power and freedom, qualities she finds in Brack and Lövborg. Even after marrying Tesman, she keeps her father’s portrait and guns, which signifies her desire for masculine control as well as her personal form of mourning of the power she has lost by marrying Tesman. This perverse behavior can be attributed greatly to the era in which Hedda lives, because her choices are highly influenced by the male dominated society.

Everyone could relate to realism because it was more realistic. Realism lasted through the mid 19th century and included writers such as Flaubert, Zola, and Dickens.

Hedda Gabler is a play in which the author, Henrik Ibsen, demonstrates the heavy shackles of society and the burden it impinges on women through the words and actions of the protagonist, Hedda Tesman. Hedda is a woman living for her own pleasure. At twenty-nine-years-old and having been recently married, she is under enthused with her surroundings and yearns for titillating experiences. Obsessed with the aesthetics of the world, she wants to lead a poetic life filled with lust and luxury, yet is too frightened by what her Victorian values deem proper, to do so. Ibsen constructed a brilliant character that simultaneously arouses both sympathy and scorn from the reader through Hedda’s own words and actions.

In Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, the author reveals the oppressive qualities of minority groups who seek to express individuality rather than conformity. The most critical population that Ibsen chooses to address in the play are women living in Western Europe during the Victorian era. When considering Norwegian culture during the 1800s, Ibsen refers to his surrounding society as an environment where women are unable to look forward to anything other than marriage and motherhood (Lyons 164). Ibsen’s country is inclusive of issues relating to alcoholism, prostitution, exploitation, and poverty (Lyons 128). As a result, the only respectable lifestyle for many women is domestication. To confront these issues,

Ibsen uses the relationship and conflict between Hedda and Brack to illustrate Hedda’s struggle to assert her free will and power in a male-dominated society. The two characters are united as social equals who are members of the aristocracy as

Realism in literature is basically the successor to romanticism. It first took off and gained footing in 19th century France. The literary style is a more straightforward and realistic style of writing in comparison to romanticism which was all about exaggeration and symbolism. Realism is often interchangeable with naturalism and branches out into regionalism which is interchangeable with local color. This type of writing is responsible for one of the greatest era of literary works.

Hedda Gabler is a text in which jealousy and envy drive a woman to manipulate and attempt to control everyone in her life. The protagonist, Hedda, shows her jealousy in her interactions with the other characters in the play, particularly with Eilert Loveborg and Thea Elvsted. Because Hedda is unable to get what she wants out of life because of her gender and during the time of the play, her age, she resorts to bringing everyone else down around her. Hedda lets her jealousy get the best of her and because of this she hurts many of the people around her as well as ultimately hurting herself.

In Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen portrays the hopeless struggle of woman in the Victorian era through the protagonist, Hedda. From 1837 to 1901 in England, women experienced unrestrained oppression, were expected to follow the orders of their husbands, and were believed to be unwise. In the play, the newly wed Hedda has just arrived to her new husband, Tesmun’s home town, and her whole world seems to be shrinking inch by inch, expressed mainly through elements of stagecraft. The play is mostly focused around the main character, Hedda, a tragic heroine. Her need to manipulate others grows ever stronger as her boredom and despair increase, due to the new middle class atmosphere she is forced into. At last, she frees herself from all of the social restrictions society has imposed on her, by completing the act of suicide. Through the characterization of Hedda, Ibsen explores the oppression of woman in the Victorian Era.

Hedda is the product of aristocratic birth.  She is, as I mentioned earlier, the daughter of General Gabler, whose portrait hangs over this play not unlike the portrait of the absent father in Williams' The Glass Menagerie.  And in case we have missed the significance of the portrait in the stage directions or have overlooked it as an audience member, Miss Tesman rivets our attention to it and the reality of Hedda's aristocratic life:  "Well, you cant's wonder at that--General Gabler's daughter!  Think of the sort of life she was accustomed to in her father's time.  Don't you remember how we used to see her riding down the road along with the General? In that long black habit--with feathers in her hat?"  (Ibsen  2).  Her aristocratic birth and her past is contrasted by her choice of a husband who has neither noble blood nor bourgeois money.  We are told that this motherless child of an aristocratic general often gave in to fits of cruelty as a child:  "At the finishing school the presence of a girl with a head of abundant, wavy flaxen hair irritated her and provoked her to outbursts of cruelty which had their source in equal measure, perhaps, in envy and in a deep-seated temperamental antipathy; for dearth of abundance, physically and temperamentally, is a characteristic of Hedda's nature" (Weigland  246-247).