The play Hedda Gabler depicts family relations and the role of women in 19th-century society in Norway. The main character, Hedda, is the wife of young academic Tesman. Hedda Gabler, upon the discovery that her imaginary world of free-living and noble dying lies in shivers about her, no longer has the vitality to continue existence in the real world and chooses self-annihilation. Thesis Using the character of Hedda, Ibsen unveils women’s struggle and low social roles, their desire to be happy and accepted by society.
From the very beginning, Hedda Gabler is portrayed as a cold and unsympathetic woman, the daughter of an aristocratic General. She has married Tesman because her life seems boring, and she wants to change it. Thus, Ibsen portrays a honeymoon does not bring happiness or joy because they do not love each other. “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?” (Ibsen). Ibsen portrays that Hedda is unsatisfied with her life. Thus, she cannot change social traditions and morals, which limit her actions and freedom.
Patriarchal society and an important role of a husband and father in the life of Hedda are the main feminist motifs that appear ant in this play. Since childhood, Hedda has been guided and supported by her father, and even marriage does not change her life. Ibsen portrays that her own life has lost its meaning; Hedda Gabler is a play with the lives of men; a diminution of stature in her case is undeniable; mere boredom has in her take the place of Hjordis’s tragic despair. In Hedda, Gabler Ibsen gives Eilert Løvborg the benefit of taking him as a genius, even if he cannot, go so far as to look upon Hedda Gabler herself as a grand creature gone wrong. Lovborg recollects: “When I used to come to your father’s in the afternoon–and the General sat over at the window reading his papers–with his back towards us” (Ibsen). The feminist idea is that Hedda tries to find her unique identity and self, prove her dignity and unique values. All these are, in the highest degree, the willing addicts of romantic dreaming divorced from all practical activity, and Ibsen’s condemnation of them is not only peremptory but also, more often than not, unmitigated by compassion. One finds oneself wondering, for instance, whether Tesman and Thea, with Hedda Gabler out of the way, will succeed in reintegrating Lovborg’s book, whether they will make a match of it, and even whether Tesman will catch a spark or two from the ashes of his dead rival’s fire.
The further argument is the Ibsen idealizes women. True, in making them more purposeful and energetic than the men against whom they are matched, he portrays them as charming and beautiful. It seems that Ibsen approves Hedda’s actions and tries to persuade readers of hardship and psychological problems experienced by the main character, The way she speculates upon her physical attractiveness, her egoism, and her crime. Brack tells Hedda: “With a pistol in his breast-pocket, discharged. The ball had lodged in a vital part”. There is one point more, Mrs. Hedda–another disagreeable feature in the affair” (Ibsen). Hedda Gabler not only lays everything wastes about her but does so of set purpose. Ibsen makes an attempt to throw a veil over her defects, her deceit; Hedda struggles against society and people around her; she tries to prove her self-worth but fails.
Throughout the play, Hedda tries to set up a house, to have a comfortable home and a circle of friends, the wish to be quit of dependent, the instinct to stick to a mate once secured, dictated by physical and economic needs, they are always treated and mentioned by them as things in their nature both holy and beautiful. Ibsen portrays that everything which might indicate that they are not so and anyone who points out, for instance, that to be settled in life is detrimental to the wits, to the charm and to the emotional sensibility of man and woman, is rounded upon for mere indecent blasphemy. Ibsen’s feminism undoubtedly has, in general, a saturnine quality. He uses it to divert himself from the imagined. At the end of the play, Hedda fails to overcome problems and depression in her life and kills herself. It is possible to say that she has no one to talk to or confess her fears and problems. Even the husband is unable to understand and support her in a difficult situation. “Oh, now she is playing with those pistols again. [HEDDA lies stretched on the sofa, lifeless] Shot herself! Shot herself in the temple! Fancy that!” (Ibsen). Death was the only way out for Hedda to stop suffering and become really free.
In sum, Ibsen vividly portrays that women were limited by the domestic environment and could not be equal to men. The problem of Hedda is her limited social role as a daughter of the General and a wife of an academician. Her life is boring and dull, uninterested and depressing. Her actions can be seen as a desire to prove her self and identity she has been deprived of all her life.
Works Cited
Ibsen, H. Hedda Gabler. Web.