Feminism In Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler is portrayed as an extremely strong-willed woman. During the times in which this play is set, numerous women’s rights and suffrage movements were occurring across the world. It can be inferred that Hedda’s assertive attitude is characteristic of the time period. To Hedda, it is preposterous that she would have to be under the power of a man. When Judge Brock implies that he will disavow all knowledge of the source of the gun that killed Lövborg if Hedda becomes “subject to [his] will and demands” (Ibsen 262). She states, “No longer free! No! That’s a thought that I’ll never endure!” (Ibsen 262). At this time women across the world were adopting new ideas on their place in society. The atmosphere of the era provides an explanation of the source of Hedda’s manipulations.

The mind and mental processes can affect and shape human behavior. Some of the subtlest actions are outcomes of a person’s emotion, treatment, and provide underlying messages unknowingly exhibited and communicated. This occurs internally and is exposed through accidental or unintentional conduct. Hedda Gabler is an affluent European woman living a life of nobility and service. Pampered and easily neglected by her companions, she is unfulfilled by the amount of praise she receives in her household. Her strange and awkward behavior reveals the lack of foundation in her marriage. In Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen uses stage directions to portray Hedda as a furtively vexatious, manipulative, and discontented woman trapped in marriage and in doing

Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler portrays the societal roles of gender and sex through Hedda as a character trying to break the status quo of gender relations within the Victorian era. The social conditions and principles that Ibsen presents in Hedda Gabler are of crucial importance as they “constitute the molding and tempering forces which dictate the behavior of all the play's characters” with each character part of a “tightly woven social fabric” (Kildahl). Hedda is an example of perverted femininity in a depraved society intent on sacrificing to its own self-interest and the freedom and individual expression of its members. It portrays Nineteenth Century unequal relationship problems between the sexes, with men being the independent factor and

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.

The elegant image of a bourgeois society with its emphasis on wealth and property, is only a mirage. Underneath it all is a different world of oppression—specifically, for women in the bourgeois class. In Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler and Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, both works depict female characters in the bourgeois class who face the societal oppression and cope with it in their own way. These oppressions are often set off by the male characters, constructed by the bourgeois society.

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,

The reflection of women in literature during the late eighteen-hundreds often features a submissive and less complex character than the usual male counterpart, however Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler features a women who confines herself to the conformities that women were to endure during that time period but separates herself from other female characters by using her intelligence and overall deviousness to manipulate the men in her life and take a dominant presence throughout the play. Hedda challenges the normal female identity of the time period by leaving the stereotype of the “quiet, subservient housewife” through her snide and condescending remarks as well as her overall spoiled aristocratic demeanor.

Hedda has been interpreted as an “unreal, as a defective woman, as vicious and manipulative in nature, as a failed New Woman, or as a woman who is afraid of sex” (Björklund 1). She also could be seen as a woman who is afraid of sex or her own sexuality because homosexuality wasn’t accepted like it is today. According to Björklund, “Hedda’s masculinity defeats the dysfunctional masculinities of Tesman and Lovborg, but, in the bathe with Brack’s hegemonic masculinity, Hedda’s female masculinity becomes absorbed into the dominant structures. Hedda desires masculinity as represented by Brack—power and control—but, in the end, that masculinity is what kills her; she shoots herself with one of her father’s pistols, and her masculinity is absorbed into the patriarchy. Hedda’s masculinity is rejected, but what it represents—power and control—is mirrored by Brack, whose masculinity is reconstructed: he is the one cock of the walk” (Björklund

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 Gabler - (married name: Hedda Tesman) Daughter of an aristocratic general who spoiled her. She’s used to a life of luxury in which she gets anything she wants. She is bored with her life because there’s nothing new for her to see or experience. She marries George Tesman so that she won’t be an oddball in society. She’s nearly thirty and realizes that she’s not getting any younger or desirable. He’s the only one of her suitors who grovels for her hand in marriage, so she chooses him. She immediately sees that she will be able to manipulate him into giving her anything she

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was a controversial play for its time because it questioned society's basic rules and norms. Multiple interpretations can be applied to the drama, which allows the reader to appreciate many different aspects of the play. This paper examines how both Feminist and Marxist analyses can be applied as literary theories in discussing Ibsen's play because both center on two important subject matters in the literary work: the roles of women in a male-dominated society, and, the power that money has over people.

Although her general dissatisfaction with life did not directly precipitate her suicide in the play’s final act, Hedda’s disposition certainly laid the foundation for what would come. The disparity between life as a general’s daughter and the life of an uninspired scholar’s wife vexes Hedda. Ibsen’s introduction of Hedda’s father’s guns as both relics of Hedda’s past as well as the instruments of her destruction illustrate the link between her privileged upbringing and her unwillingness to shed her bourgeois mentality. Just as her father’s status helped mold her into the materialistic, self-serving woman Hedda would become, the lavish firearms he bequeathed to her also contribute to her undoing.

    Hedda Gabler is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in Ibsen.  She has been the object of psychological analysis since her creation.  She is an interesting case indeed, for to "explain" Hedda one must rely on the hints Ibsen gives us from her past and the lines of dialogue that reveal the type of person she is.  The reader never views Hedda directly.  We never get a soliloquy in which she bares her heart and motives to the audience.  Hedda is as indifferent to our analysis as she is to Tesman's excitement over his slippers when she says "I really don't care about it" (Ibsen  8).  But a good psychologist knows that even this indifference is telling.  Underneath the ennui and indifference

In Victorian England, “the bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (Engels). This upper middle class, the bourgeois, was divided into separate spheres determined by their “natural characteristics” such as being male or female (Gender 1). The bourgeois society’s main concern was their outward appearance and materialism while gaining respectability among their social class. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, criticizes Victorian bourgeois society and their strict adherence to gender roles. As Nora Helmer walked away from her family, she generated a “door slam heard around the world” (“A Doll’s House” 1).