The Characters That We Involved in the Death of Hedda Gabler

Judge Brack is introduced into Hedda Gabler as a man of authority, which allows him to able to aid George Tesman and act as his financial planner. As a great help to Tesman and Hedda, the couple “can’t thank you [Judge Brack] sufficiently” in expressing their gratitude and the great help that Brack is, being a man of power (Ibsen 20). By lending a hand to George and Hedda, this exploits the friendship between the three characters. If Judge Brack was not a friend to the couple, then he would not assist them in their accumulating debt. It is shown that Judge Brack does help George regarding his financial needs even when they are involved with Eilert Lövborg, the professor. Although Hedda does acknowledge Brack’s effort in improving her and her husband’s financial situation by

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.

Hester is introduced as a beautiful and graceful young woman. Although she has committed adultery, she is prideful and has force of character. Her situation does not stop her to present herself in front of everyone with class. I believe that is very admirable. Although she is being disgraced and ridiculed in front of everyone she knows, she does not show she is hurt. Hester Prynne is brave not only is she judged for her actions, but so is her baby. Although the child has done nothing wrong it is seen as the offspring of adultery, and the mother’s sin. The child is used to make Hester reveal the father of the infant but she refuses, once again proving her determination and force of character. As expected the crowd does not welcome Hester.

The townspeople, in shock, sympathize Hester because the unknown adulterer exposes his secret. As Dimmesdale finishes his last words to his true love, he dies in Hester’s arms. Watching Hester lose the love of her life and Pearl lose her father allows others to sympathize them because once again they are left to fend for themselves. The shared feeling between the Puritan town

Towards the end of the novel, Hester gets the break in life she’s been waiting for. She put up with seven years of shame and guilt, to finally be the person she used to be. Her rekindled love with Arthur makes her happy again, and everything just seems right for them. She’s filled with hope that her life will finally turn back to normal again. She feels redeemed, and the guilt is no longer on her shoulders. She’s now ready to take on the world, and start her life over to the way it was before the “A” entered her life. Having the courage to show her face in the colony again is just a sign of her bravery.

She wants to have a certain control and power over her life and this means pushing away those who are close to her. Limited by the new responsibilities, she is facing, Hedda points her attention to others around her.

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.

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

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

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

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