Next term we will be studying Hedda Gabler -our first exam text!!It will be interesting to see how you interpret the character of Hedda. Is she just a trapped woman searching for independence? Is she just statement for Ibsen of the way women were treated? Is she a psychopath?
As you read the play, record your view of Hedda.
19 comments:
Hedda, to me, seems overly cynical and downright rude - moreso than can be explained by mere frustration. Yes, her domestic life may be unsatisfying and boring, but there are far worse positions to be in... I like the fact that Hedda is blunt and generally honest (though this is due to her lack of regard for others' feelings), but I dislike her obsession with maintaining respect in society, and the pity she feels for herself, given that she got herself into the whole situation - despite having "danced herself out". If she was not so conscious of public opinion, she could have remained an unmarried woman, after all, she certainly had the money for it.
To me, Hedda is without a doubt one of the most fascinating character I have encountered in a work of Literature. She is a mystery, false facade over false facade all serving to conceal her true self. Such elements are intertwined, and surface alternately at various instances so as to grant the reader a glimpse into her "soul", her true self beneath that scathing, haughty shell that encapsulates her. Hedda is primarily a manipulative and calculative predator that serves to demolish those around her for the sake of her entertainment. While readers are first presented with a cultured, classy Hedda, her vile tendencies then reveal themselves as the play goes on, ranging from the brandishing of General Gabler's pistols to the picking apart of Thea's and Lovborg's trust. And yet, throughout the play, subtle (or not so subtle) hints of Hedda's frustration and desperateness is revealed, with notions that Hedda is in fact a victim who is being subjected to the unfair and restrictive laws of Norwegian society.
I see Hedda Gabler as a very intriguing and overpowering character. Although, as a child, she grew up in luxury and high class living, she hasn't grown up to become a simple-minded, upper class housewife, devoted to her husband. Instead, she is a hard-headed woman, keen to get what she wants, and approaching everything in a feline manner. As a reader, I quite enjoy her subtle aspersions towards her Berte and Tesman and her manipulation over Thea. Only a handful of characters are able to be as selfish and malicious as Hedda, but yet hold the admiration of those around them.
Hedda Gabler is a selfish woman who holds herself in higher regard than the new family she has married into. Although she never goes out the glass door and is seemingly trapped in a world where all she is capable of is 'boring herself to death', I am not sympathetic to her entrapment. It was her decision to marry Tesman even though she clearly was not in love with him. She is driven by the power she holds over him, as he would do anything for her, but quickly becomes bored because for someone like Hedda, Tesman is an easy game to play.
Cold, calculating and cunning best describes the initial impression of Hedda Gabler. She is rich, beautiful and the daughter of General Gabler. HOwever, as Hedda learns soon after her marriage, wealth, beauty and reputation does not equal happiness. Hedda adores 'leading them [Brack and Lovborg] on', she threatens to burn off Thea's hair, and she finds beauty in the death of Lovborg. Is she the epitomy of intimidation? Yes. Is she a psychopath? I dislike calling an individual a psychopath, but yes. Is Hedda a villain? Yes.
Villians however, aren't invincible, and Hedda is the perfect example.
What Hedda does and doesn't do is based on either 1. society and/or 2. fear of scandal. She accepts Tesman's hand in marriage because society expects a beautiful woman like Hedda to be married by the time she's 29. She doesn't give in to having an affair with Brack, due to her fear of scandal. She refuses to talk about 'the old days' with Lovborg because she is a married woman.
While many would consider Hedda's final act as an act of cowardice(gosh, "Hedda's final act"? Everybody knows what happens in the end already!), I don't necessarily see it as a sign of courage-I don't know how to put it-but in a way I like that fact that she chose to end her life, the way she wanted to, rather than sitting in her luxurious home whinging about how miserable her life has become.
I think I'll stop ranting now.
Hedda Gabler is not a typical woman of her time, and that makes her an interesting female lead to have in a play.
She likes to think of herself as a stable woman with control over her, her own fate, and the fates of others, but we see otherwise when she displays flaws in her 'control', letting slip from time to time, her true persona. It's also good to have Thea as a comparison in the play next to Hedda, with Thea, we see what kind of woman Hedda isn't, what kinds of qualities each of them lack. (Thea's will to break conventions and leave her husband for another man or Hedda's sharp observations)
Hedda is indeed a mysterious and almost villainous character, but these are the qualities that keep the audience's attention on her as they ponder on her next actions and her sanity.
I have read many books in my time and seen even more movies, but Hedda is easily one of the most disturbingly psychotic characters I have come across. Hedda is by no means a stereotypical picture of how women were in her time. She is astute in her actions and selfish to say the least. What she represents varies depending on who you ask but personally I see her as manipulative and evil. Her unsettling desire to play a part in a human being’s fate leads her to be constantly scheming, this is done mostly in relation to Thea and Lovborg. As her scheming evolves it in turn has more destructive consequences. Undeniably Hedda has psychopathic tendencies, whether it be her brandishing of General Gabler’s pistols or her burning of Lovborg’s manuscript. Hedda is by no means a victim, rather she prefers the power associated with controlling others, she is the predator not the victim.
Hedda is a representation of the frustrations and want of change felt by her entire gender. Through her manipulations and schemes she is able to express herself far beyond that which is deemed socially acceptable. Her desire to control the fate of a human being is in itself a reflection of her own subjugation to societies expectations of her.
SHE CRAZY!
Hedda Gabler is a curious character. Her snobbery and disregard for other people is obvious from the very first words she utters in the play. She takes pleasure in involving herself in others people's lives as she feels bored and constrained by her own circumstances. Society dictates what she can and can not do so Hedda revels in other people's escapades.
Hedda's relationship with Ejlert is one that is difficult to understand and is ill-fated due to the personality types of the two. Hedda appears incapable of truly expressing feelings of affection, and, in the case of her husband, actually mocks sentimentality. She doesn't relate to people well because they expect her to act as a "lady" should, Hedda only speaks freely to Brack as he treats her in a masculine manner. She believes that she and Brack are equals, allowing for some form of intimacy.
Hedda feels that her life is insignificant so she seeks importance by attempting to play a part in another human being's fate. She does this with total disregard for how the person feels about her interference. It's shocking to see how callous she is with Ejlert's life, and difficult to understand. Her actions appear evil but stem from a thorough knowledge of Ejlert's personality, and her own.
Depsite Hedda's obvious shortcomings, she is an enchanting charater who captures an audience with her eccentric behaviour.
Well I love Hedda Gabler. She is such a fascinating character. From all the books I’ve read in Literature, I’ve never come across such a woman like Hedda. She is a psychotic woman, but the way she goes about controlling everyone and everything around her is amazing. Hedda is a complex character torn by opposing desires that make her both the victim and victimizer. Her willfulness completely dominates the play, so much so that the other characters, even the more intriguing ones like Ejlert Lovborg and Judge Brack seem to exist primarily to help sculpt her character in high relief.
Hedda Gabler can certainly be described, or perceived as a woman of many faces. She can be seen as a vengeful, psychopathic woman, or a wife unwillingly and unknowingly oppressed by society.
Many of her actions lead us to believe that they can both be true, as her actions seem to become more desperate as time goes on. her actions also become less rational, and less well planned. They have dire consequences, and as everything unravels for Hedda, she eventually comes to a point where she herself, commits suicide, after coaxing her old friend to do so.
Her attitude can be attributed to frustration, as she is practically leashed onto a lower class family. She is rude and disrespectful of Aunt Julles, even though said Aunt tries her best to support Hedda.
This stems from feeling like her life has tunneled into a prison of sorts. Her efforts become more frenzied later throughout the story as she tries to indulge in that lascivious lifestyle once more, and she can literally feel it getting closer and closer.
This suffocative environment can have a devastating effect of a person's mind. While she thinks that what she's doing will end up in a triumphant success, her actions can be seen as malevolent, while laced with malice and a lust for vengeance.
tl;dr, Her claustrophobic sense of being trapped influences her to make rash decisions. Decisions which lead to the progressively momentous chain of events, ending with her dramatic departure.
After going trough the first three acts of the play, I haven't been able to take a liking to Hedda at all, and I doubt that my opinion will change after reading the remainder of the play.
When looking at the way she acts from time to time (staring out the window, complaining about her lackluster marriage, etc.), it is almost as if she is begging the reader to sypathise with her. However, I always get the feeling that this is exactly how she would want us - if she knew who we were - to feel, and that this behaviour is just a way to bring anyone who listens down to a lower level, as a way to feed her hunger for dominance over others.
While her need for power and control is one of her more prominent personality traits, another that I find quite distasteful is her complete disregard for other people's fortunes, caring only that she is the one who decides their fate. A good example of this is when she is in possession of Ejlert Lövborg's manuscript, but does not return it to him or even mention that she has it, and then on top of that gives him one of General Gabler's pistols with which to kill himself. Personally, this unjustifiable urge in Hedda to play god and control the fate of those around her sickens me.
Although I don't believe her to be a psychopath, I do wholeheartedly believe that something is wrong with her.
Ibsen's protagonist is an intelligent, calculating, solitary and vain creature; her astuteness regarding her surroundings leads to a callous manipulation of those under her influence, often for no other reason than her bored state. Hedda is a masculine character, desiring a stronger role in the social happenings of the men in her community, and the suppression of these desires and entrapment of society as symbolised by the house of Tesman leads to an unhealthy expression of frustration on part of the naturally cruel Hedda.
I believe Hedda is, to a degree, a victim of chance: her nature (masculinity) happens to be opposed to the convention of the society in which she lives (sexist/conventional). Because of her unwillingness to trust Ejlert Lövborg in their early mutual experience, and her cowardice, she does not marry a man that she adores, but instead 'settles' for a man of lower rank after 'dancing herself out', which suggests that men find her fascinating and beautiful but not very companionable. This inability to attract genuine love from anybody establishes in Hedda an intense dissatisfaction with life and leads to a will to combat this situation: to have ultimate control over another human being's fate.
I believe that in Hedda's natural cowardice and fear of scandal, her masculinity, her intelligence, and her abrupt frankness lies an inevitable consequence: a life of barrenness, dominant callousness and boredom.
Ibsen, in creating a character of Hedda's temperament and quality, has invoked questions in the reader of the societal paradigm in which the action takes place: one of constraint and sensitivity to scandal. Hedda's independence is restrained by this environment and hence her spirit manifests itself in distorted, unhealthy ways.
By the way:
I've noticed over the past week or so that nobody has mentioned General Gabler's death, at all really. I believe that the loss of a father left Hedda spiralling and seeking retribution to the world that robbed her of such a central figure on her life.
To me, Hedda Gabler is a woman who is dissatisfied with the world and her life. The introduction to her character is immediately found to be intimidating and threatening together with her cold eyes. Her arrogance is revealed when she subtly insults Aunt Julle and constantly uses sarcasm in her tone whenever speaking to Jorgen Tesman.
In Hedda Gabler, I see a woman who despises society’s expectations of women being a domestic partner to the husband. Hedda seems to be trapped and victimised by the Norwegian society. There is evidently a large amount of testosterones or masculinity in Hedda, desperate to be independent and never reliant on her husband. In anger towards society, she manipulates and schemes, meddling with her ‘inner circle’s lives for her own entertainment.
Her remarks on occasions when she is ‘uncontrolled’ or unwatched are quite daunting and cruel. Such examples would be when she makes a passing comment of having to burn Thea Elvsted’s hair and when she burnt Ejlert Lovborg’s manuscript, she claimed, “You and your curly hair. I am burning your child!” When I read that dialogue in the play, I couldn’t help but compare her to a wicked witch in a fantasy story sabotaging the good.
Finally, after four acts of this creepy but interesting woman, Hedda Gabler leaves me with best with one sentence; that “one does not do that sort of thing”!
Paul's comment:
Hedda is a character of arguably admirable characteristics. I believe these are arguable because the admirable elements of Hedda coincide with the hateable aspects of her. Her cunning strong mindedness, willpower and passion are as pure as gold but the direction in which she uses these, that is, manipulating and using people who she believes to be underneath her in societal standing is something looked down upon by most. This strength she possesses has been borne inside her with her barrier breaking attitude towards her gender. She acts as a woman would not in the Norwegian Society of the time, and in order to achieve this she needed to have a strong will and she required cunning in order to maintain a layer of normality on top of the real her so people would not look through her every move and basically nullify her opportunities to manipulate them.
Hedda is a complex character torn by opposing desires that make her both victim and victimiser. Her willfulness completely dominates the play, so much so that the other characters, even the more intriguing ones—Eilert Lovborg and Judge Brack seem to exist primarily to help sculpt her character in high relief.
Hedda is selfish, proud, and cold, cruelly heedless of the pain she inflicts on others in her efforts to satisfy the inner desires that she is unwilling to deal with honestly or directly. Inhibited by her upbringing, she is unwilling to sacrifice her own comfort for the sake of her loved ones; to the extent that causes Lovborg to perish.
Hedda is little, if anything, but a petulant child of an aristocratic upbringing. In short, the sort of girl who finds the idea of going without to be an utter abberance, against the principles of her very being.
This, amazingly enough, allows one to take her in the most negative of lights within only moments of her first entrance... Boredom, or perhaps even true ignorance being her only reason to disparage her new aunt's choice of headwear, and yet it's done all the same to assert her own power.
She continues like this for the play, only coming to an immediate halt when faced with the concept of due consequences for her 'tantrum' of a performance... The suicide just a further example of that 'snobbish' petulance.
Eleanor's comment:
Hedda is initially presented as a domineering and formidable woman. As the play progresses another side to the story is revealed. Hedda is clearly an intelligent woman and Ibsen seems to be suggesting that her life in a very patriarchal society has limited her potential for constructively actions to very negative outcomes. This is a social commentary concerning his own Norwegian home. She takes to meddling in others lives forever as a spectator, however when things become too real and her plans do not go in her favour Hedda removes herself from them. she is confronted by the inevitability of her pregnancy and her everlasting marriage to Tesman but most of all the power Brack obtains over her. So in an act of desperation she takes her own life by shooting herself with her father's pistol: a beautiful, courageous death in her eyes.
Rosie's comment:
I think Hedda is a crazy woman, but I can sympathise with her situation. Being under so much pressure to be perfect as everythign she does is judged, she does seem like a trapped woman looking for a way to make the most of the life she is now stuck with, and her way of regaining control is to control everyone else around her. The way she deals with her life is what makes her crazy, with her obsession with her fathers guns and making death ‘beautiful’. I think the reason why I like Hedda so much is because she IS mad and is not like Thea, the innocent character, the typical protagonist. She is different, even if not in a positive way.
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