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,

Ambiguity is a continuous battle within everyone 's mind. People are constantly pondering about one’s trustworthiness. Human beings are always questioning one another 's intentions and if there exists an ulterior motive in one’s mind. Trust is not easily earned from one another. This kind of motif is shown in many works of literature. For example, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen shows the ways of character moral ambiguity and its way in deceiving others; this is shown through the character Judge Brack. Judge Brack is portrayed to be a good friend of George Tesman and Hedda Gabler Tesman, a psychological trickster and manipulator who is ultimately revealed to be a morally ambiguous character.

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.

She is a very impulsive woman and due to her incessant state of boredom, often becomes still crazy until she fulfills the void within her. Specifically, she states “ For once, I want to feel that I control a human destiny” (Ibsen, pg. 266). Her ability to manipulate a situation can be contributed to the fact that Hedda was not raised like most women her age. As the daughter of a famous General, she was raised learning how to survive, operate weapons, and manipulate situations in her favor. As the main character, Hedda is exceedingly demanding when it comes to what she desires, power. While her newly found husband, George Tesman, is attempting to fulfill her physical desires, he continues to fall short due to their lack of communication and altered identities within their social construct. Due to this lack of similar desires, Tesman takes his wife on a six-month-long honeymoon and goes out of his way to purchase a house in which they cannot afford simply because Hedda mentioned that she would like to live in it unbeknownst to Tesman that she was simply wanting to develop the conversation. Hedda is easily jaded and because of this, she lashes out either violently or through whatever contributes to her

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

Hedda tears down everyone throughout the play, with Lövborg and Brack as the only exception. After being born to a high standing family, her expectations of power are high, but due to her biologic form as a woman she is trapped and unable to take control, “because Hedda has been imprisoned since girlhood by the bars of Victorian propriety, her emotional life has grown turbulent and explosive” (Embler). However, after succumbing to marriage with Tesman, whom she only marries for money and respect, she loses her place in society as she, as a mere woman, cannot retain it. This slowly unwinds Hedda and eventually leads her on to her fatal path. By

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

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 Hedda Gabler introduces its audience to a paradoxical protagonist, Hedda Tesman. Ibsen’s delineation of Hedda presents her as a petty and frivolous woman whose sole motivation is to seek her own amusement with no regard to those around her. If some tragedy had befallen Hedda in her formative years and thus shaped her into the cold, callous woman she would become, Ibsen purposely omits this from this play: whatever judgment the audience might make of Hedda as a character must derive almost exclusively from the behaviors she exhibits in each of the work’s four acts. Ibsen does not intend for his audience to readily sympathize with Hedda. By not endearing Hedda to his audience, the subject of her suicide in the final act is