Hedda Gabler Essay, Research Paper

TITLE : People may argue that George, Eilert, and Judge Brack are responsible for Hedda s death, but in reality it is the fault of Hedda s society.

I ve chosen this statement for several reasons. Ibsen s character, Hedda Gabler, represents the women of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Hedda stands the issues of self-worth and the deflated value that each woman places upon her own importance as a result of male dominance.

We can see this in the play, as we read we learn more about the character of Hedda Gabler. She is the daughter of a General who expected a life if glamour and wealth and rebels against the boredom of a dull, narrow existence by vindictively scheming against everyone around her. Hedda also strives to ruin Eilert Lovborg, the intellectual she once rejected as a suitor. She is meddling in Eilert s life for her own amusement and control.

She lives in a male dominance society and environment which caged her and made her lose her freedom. Her desire to escape and her yearning for individual and spiritual freedom come to the surface as she discovers her father s pair of pistols. Comparing Hedda with the other women of the play we can see that thea wasn t the woman with the more control. She also had an unhappy marriage because of Eilert s work. Aunt Julia is different; she likes to help people, she raised George and took care Rina. As far as Berda is concerned, there is not much to say because she is the servant of the house and she just takes care of everybody and obeys to orders from her bosses. Hedda is a powerful woman, who on the surface appeared to be confined by a dress, imprisoned in man s house, and smothered by a male-dominated society. Hedda was a calculating bitch who dared (quite shrewdly) to cross over her set in stone boundaries , manipulate others, and stand back and watch others lives be destroyed as a result. But when she is backed into a corner by the new creative couple (George and Thea) and Judge Brack, she takes the final power into her own hand. The irony is that the power is her late father s pistol.

In the play, we can also sense how woman felt during the times of patriarchy. Hedda is an extraordinary and very complex character but at the same time is fairly simple to understand. Her evil doings are somewhat erased from our minds as we justify them, we feel pity towards Hedda because of the pitiful life she is trapped in, the distorted views on life that Hedda possesses come to a climax toward the end and we understand a bit more about her character. However, just as we begin to understand her actions and feel pity towards her instead of hate we sadly discover her death at the end. How tragic is her death when it was the ultimate control of a destiny that she so strongly desired?

The issues of greed have a stronghold in myriad literary pieces, effectively demonstrating the value humanity places upon materialistic commodities. Money is , indeed, one of the most significant of all desires in a greedy person; however, there are also other entities that represent the concept of greed that have little to do with financial gain. In this play lies humanity s quest for more, a concept that appears to be both inherent and learned depending upon one s moral education. Hedda is both manipulated and manipulates by her vie for social power. The internal conflicts and the reasons behind them, like her fear for a scandal, her anger and disappointment and her lack of freedom to act autonomously in society caused her to delude herself into believing that she would find an answer in the case where she kept her father s pistols.