Foils In Hedda Gabler

In the play Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen’s main character, Hedda Gabler, is a sociopath and acts out of sociopathic tendencies including but not limited to a lack of empathy and impulsive behavior, shallow emotions, manipulativeness and secretivity, sexual deviance, and a low tolerance for boredom.

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

Hedda becomes more and more obsessed with controlling people as the play unfolds, gaining momentum on her manipulative actions until her intense fear of society and judgement (scandal) paralyzes her. Throughout the play, the author Ibsen, alludes to Heddas instability through her subtexts and the contradiction between her thoughts and actions. Ibsen's use of literary foils highlights Heddas weaknesses, revealing her true nature of cowardice. Building up to her ultimate demise, brought about between the collision of [her lack of] control and fear.

Hedda is equally rebellious and independent in her choices as Desdemona. Hedda is also a newly wed and has just come back from her honeymoon with Jürgen Tesman. In a traditional society, it is custom for a woman to take the last name of their husband. This custom is recognized in societies everywhere, but Hedda becomes the exception. She is the only character that refuses to take her husband’s name. Hedda, being the stubborn rebellious individual does not conform to this tradition because it takes her identity away from her. Ibsen called his play Hedda Gabler to symbolize the break away from the traditions of society. The use of her maiden name symbolizes her independence, which she affirms repeatedly

Hedda is a play written by Carol Brown and adapted by Max Hunter. The play is set in a dark room centered around five characters, depicting how they react and communicate with each other through their individual dark fantasies. The play was produced as an adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in a modern day and age version. It portrays an absurd and darkly comedic perspective of playwright and actress Carol Brown, disrupting the conventional assumptions about classic theatre while injecting the familiar with spontaneity and vitality, "bridge" the divide between the plays of "then" and the audiences of "now”. As such, it dismantles and exploits an audience's expectations of mundane theatre. By restructuring and reimagining scripts, utilizing mixed media, and blurring genre and theme, the play creates an experience that is visceral, stimulating, and immediate. Each character embodies a certain emotional and inner psychological struggle that is triggered by one another, pertaining to themes of perverted self-love, suicide, self-destruction, deprivation, angst, desire for freedom, desire to be loved, women in society, wealth and success, sexuality, manipulation and borderline mental illness. Hedda, the daughter of General Gabler and married to George Tesman, seems to be miserable, craving entertainment through unremorseful manipulation of Eilert Lövborg, Thea Elvsted and Judge Brack. As far as costume design, each character's outfit portrays its personality. Hedda, is dressed

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.

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.

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

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.

Whilst women of this era were expected to raise children, Hedda demonstrates an inability to sustain such maternal feelings, causing her to view herself as separated from society. This is illustrated in Ibsen’s use of diction in the title, naming the play ‘Hedda Gabler’ rather than ‘Hedda Tesman’ to suggest that Hedda is unable to conform to such traditional customs as taking her husband’s name. This is perpetuated through Tesman’s constant hints at pregnancy. In this, it is shown how Tesman believes Hedda to be pregnant, saying how Hedda has “filled out on the journey”. Ibsen’s use of metaphor in Tesman’s comment emphasises how, at even the suggestion of pregnancy, Hedda becomes derisive, as she replies “Oh, do be quiet - !” Likewise, Ibsen uses the foil of Miss Tesman to emphasise Hedda’s isolation. Miss Tesman is seen to be excited at the suggestion of Hedda’s perceived pregnancy, highlighting the unusual nature of Hedda’s displeasure. Her dislike of the prospect of motherhood causes Hedda to experience a sense of isolation and exclusion from those around her. This societal isolation is presented to the audience through Ibsen’s use of physical description. Mrs. Elvsted’s hair, being described as “unusually abundant” becomes symbolic of one’s ability to fit into society. She is characterised as “beautiful”, “stupid” and an ideal women of the period. In comparison, Hedda’s hair, described as “not particularly abundant”, illustrates her inability to conform. Yet it can be seen that Hedda hopes to conform to society and thus suggesting that her anguish is as a result of her separation from society, a situation that can be attributed to her character faults, rather than the constraints of society itself. This is demonstrated through Ibsen’s use of backstory which illustrates Hedda’s life-long obsession with Mrs. Elvsted’s

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

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.

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

Alienation in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is based particularly on personal alienation highlighted through the main character Hedda. Hedda is the perfect representation of an alienated individual asserted against a conventional society. Ibsen focuses particularly on the ownership of Hedda Gabler, from the ownership of her father into the hands of George Tesman, to see Hedda to never be in complete ownership of herself until she takes the matters into her own hands and claims her own life by committing suicide at the end of the play. She is lost in a world where she no longer has anyone, beside herself and her pistols, which she continually shoots off as these pistols can be seen to dramatize Hedda’s disconnect from the world and the frustrations she feels towards it. Arguably she has nothing to look forward too, besides the continual hounding from George