Hedda Gabler Essay

     Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a dark tale of sin and redemption,centers around the small Puritan community of Boston during the 17th century. In the midst of this small community is Hester Prynne. She is a woman that has defied the Puritans, taken the consequences and in the end conformed with the Puritans. It did,

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 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.

For any healthy relationship to last, both partners have to be fully committed to each other. In both plays, none of the relationships really offer any type of fulfillment. The title of Hedda Gabler, uses Hedda’s maiden name, Gabler, even though her married name is Hedda Tesman. Based off of the initial reading of the title, one can already tell that there is a strong intention behind it. Isben purposely wrote the title that way to indicate that Hedda wanted to be recognized as her father’s daughter, not as her husband’s wife. This already proves that she is not fully in love with her husband and there is more that is going on beyond just the

Towards the end of the novel Hedda gives Lovborg a pistol so he would end his life “beautifully”. They find him dead with the pistol next to him and the assumption is made that either he shot himself accidentally or was killed by Mademoiselle Diana as an act of self defense. However, when Brack first reveals the news of Lovborg’s death to Hedda he conceals this information and tells her that Lovborg shot himself in the breast. In response to this Hedda calls his death beautiful and “a deed worth doing!” (page 66) knowing that she has officially gained power over Lovborg. When Brack sees this response he gets Hedda alone and tells her the truth of what happens and that he knows that she gave him the gun. He then reveals to Hedda that she has a choice: either let Brack tell the police about the owner of the gun and ruin her reputation and social status that she has sacrificed so much for, or not tell anyone and forever be in debt to Judge Brack. Hedda is appalled by both options because they mean loss of power and everything she’s strived for. With the weight of this on her shoulders she chooses an alternative option and kills herself.

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.

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 arouses sympathy from the readers through her own personal conflicts. She is a woman trapped by herself in a loveless marriage to an “ingenuous creature” (52 Ibsen) named George Tesman. Tesman is a simple soul with very little to offer. Not only is he an entire social class below Hedda, but he is oblivious, insecure due to his own banalities, and overly reliant on his Aunts’, despite being thirty-three-years-old. Hedda married George due to a “bond of sympathy. . .” (31 Ibsen) formed between them and she “took pity. . .” (31 Ibsen) on George. This brings a sense of sincerity to Hedda that was not turned to such a high magnitude preceding this discussion between Judge Brack and herself. Hedda is a lonely, yet independent, soul that wants sexual freedom without

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,

This passage from the denouement Henrik Ibsen’s play, Hedda Gabler, before Hedda’s suicide, is an illustration of the vulnerability and defeat of the impetuous and manipulative titular character. Ibsen develops Hedda’s character by uncovering details about the conflicts between Hedda and the other characters, Judge Brack, Mrs Elvsted, and George Tesman which highlight Hedda’s transformation from an individualistic to despairing individual, conveying the theme of freedom and repression in society.

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.

Even after her success of scandals, Hedda realizes that Judge Brack is still the one, who holds the upper hand in all affairs, and to express her “freedom” or at least want for freedom, she states “I am exceedingly glad to think—that you have no sort of hold over me” (p. 55). Her words foreshadow the ending of the play as it prepares the audience for unexpected and uncontrolled actions taken by Hedda. Furthermore, the ultimate outcome of her actions is Tesmun and Thea working together to re-create the manuscript, which Hedda was unprepared for. Tesmun and Thea take over her last place of comfort, as she removes her belongings from the drawing room and the writing

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 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).