The sooner the better. With your curly hair! Hedda Gabler. Plot Summary. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts.
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Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our Teacher Edition on Hedda Gabler can help. Themes All Themes. He also says that he no longer has the courage to face life. He leaves, intending to commit suicide, and Hedda makes him promise to do so beautifully, giving him one of her pistols. After he leaves, Hedda is alone in the room. When Hedda murmurs to herself about Ejlert's vine leaves, it is clear that she is disappointed and surprised.
When she kept telling Mrs. Elvsted that Ejlert would return with vine leaves in his hair, she was reassuring not only Mrs. Elvsted but also herself. This is one of the few moments of weakness she shows throughout the play. The speed with which she comes to her senses and changes her tone is evidence of her vigilance in maintaining a calm, controlled exterior, even when she is feeling confused on the inside.
Her exchange with Brack also sheds light upon Hedda's character. She asks Brack why he is so forthcoming with information, as if she does not see friendship alone as grounds for confidences. Also, her earlier comment about not wanting to be controlled makes more sense once she describes Brack as being someone who wants to be the "only cock in the yard": although she makes light of it, she is clearly threatened by Brack.
As Act 3 comes to a close, the audience comes to understand more clearly Hedda's ability to deceive those around her, in complete disregard of their thoughts and feelings. At one moment she seeks to comfort Ejlert. Brack arrives and tells Hedda that Eilert had not only gotten drunk, but made a "bloodthirsty scene" and gotten arrested at Mademoiselle Danielle's disreputable quarters.
Brack tells Hedda he would hate to see her allow Eilert into her home and into his triangle in the future. Eilert arrives and tells Thea "I have no further use for you. Thea accuses him of killing their child and she leaves. Hedda accuses Eilert of being heartless, and he tells her the truth--he didn't destroy the manuscript; he lost it, which he thinks is even more irresponsible. He now wants to die, and Hedda encourages him "Do it--beautifully!
Hedda then burns Eilert and Thea's manuscript, saying "I'm burning your child, Thea! You with your beautiful wavy hair The child Eilert Loevborg gave you I'm burning it! I'm burning your child.! Act IV. Again, the drawing room, the same evening. Aunt Rena has died and Hedda is dressed in black. Aunt Juliana comes with more hints about Hedda's pregnancy.
She leaves and Hedda tells George that she has burned Eilert's manuscript "for your sake, George. Hedda finally lets George know, still roundabout, that she is pregnant. He is thrilled and she is in despair.
Thea enters, looking for news of Eilert. Then Brack enters with the news that Eilert shot himself and is dying. Hedda says "there's beauty in what he has done Eilert Loevborg has settled his account with life.
He's had the courage to do what--what he had to do. Thea suggests that the manuscript may be reconstructed from her notes and George jumps on this as a way to assuage his bad conscience. They go off to work on the notes. Brack tells Hedda the truth about Eilert's death, robbing her of her "charming illusion.
Further, Brack recognized the gun as one of Hedda's revolvers. But he assures her that no one will know "as long as I hold my tongue. Hedda goes into the rear room, plays a wild melody on her piano, and then shoots herself. The last line is Brack's: "But, good God! People don't do such things! However, more recent critics explain her behavior in terms of the restrictive social conditions of nineteenth century Norway. This view is well presented by Caroline Mayerson: " Hedda is a woman, not a monster; neurotic, but not psychotic.
Thus she may be held accountable for her behavior. But she is spiritually sterile. Her yearning for self-realization through exercise of her natural endowments is in conflict with her enslavement to a narrow standard of conduct. Mayerson goes on to explain that Hedda: " The pistols, having descended to a coward and a cheat, bring only death without honor.
Hedda and Thea are presented as not only opponents for the soul and genius of Eilert Lovborg, but as contrasts in sterility and fertility. Although Hedda is pregnant and Thea has no children, Thea is fertile and Hedda is sterile. Hedda rejects even the idea of her own pregnancy, while Thea works with Eilert Lovborg, and later with George Tesman, to bring the book "child" of Eilert and herself to birth. Mayerson points out that: "Ibsen uses Thea Through her ability to extend herself in comradeship with Lovborg, Thea not only brings about the rebirth of his creative powers, but merges her own best self with his to produce a prophecy of the future.
Thea, despite her totally feminine nature, is able to break with the social standards of her culture to leave her husband and follow Eilert Lovborg. Of all the characters in Hedda Gabler , Thea is the most able to act from her own conscience and convictions, despite the disapproval of society. Mayerson points out that three items in the play are especially developed as symbols: Lovborg's manuscript about the future as the "child" of himself and Thea; Thea's hair and the fertility it represents; General Gabler's pistols.
According to the Ibsen's stage directions, Hedda has "not especially abundant" auburn hair, while Thea's "hair is Thea remembers that she was frightened of Hedda in school, because: Whenever you met me on the staircase you used to pull my hair. No, did I? And once you said you'd burn it all off. Hedda is jealous of Thea's hair which represents both her femininity and her fertility.
Consequently, Hedda attacks both Thea's femininity and her fertility, destroying her relationship with Eilert Lovborg and destroying the manuscript, the "child" of Thea and Eilert.
While Thea is able to create and recreate, brilliant Hedda can only destroy. She destroys the manuscript, destroys Eilert Lovborg, and finally, destroys herself. She is, ultimately, an ignorant, highly romantic woman, trapped in the rigid bourgeois society of 19th century Norway.
The other major symbol in the play is the pistols of General Gabler, which, along with his portrait, seem to be all Hedda has inherited from him. Hedda uses the pistols throughout the play to assert her identity as her father's daughter. Mayerson, This role is the most glamorous one available to Hedda in her limited world. Such pistols traditionally belong to an officer who cherishes a code of bravery and honor.
Hedda's trifling use of them mocks this traditional role. She threatened Eilert Lovborg with her pistols before he left town years ago, and she playfully shoots at Judge Brack as he approaches her house through the back door. This is a mockery of protecting her "honor," especially since she is so dishonest in her sexual relationships with the men in her life. She sent away Lovborg, whom she evidently desired, married George Tesman whom she does not like, let alone love, in order to be supported comfortably, and flirts with Brack, despite her marriage.
Modern criticism of Hedda Gabler rests on the idea that a male dominated society repressed and limited Hedda's brilliance. Ibsen studied the repressed conditions of women in many of his plays; however his own view of women was limited by his "celebration of their primary role as the nurturing mothers whose mission is to educate the young.
She clearly would never make a good mother, and there was nothing else for such a woman to do unless she could nurture a man's genius, as Thea did. Nurturing genius, however, was clearly not Hedda's gift. General Gabler's pistols were, finally, the only option for his daughter. Hedda Gabler is set about thirty years earlier than when it was written.
Clurman writes that: "It was a period, Ibsen once remarked, when women were not allowed to play any role apart from marriage and motherhood. The "protection" they enjoyed separated them from the realities of life.
Hedda shuns everything painful and ugly; she cannot tolerate the sight of sickness or death. She is already pregnant when the play opens, but mention of it is abhorrent to her Small wonder then that she admits that all she is good for is boring herself to death. Hedda is a victim, but she is also a coward.
Both George Tesman and Eilert Lovborg develop their identities through their professions. They compete for fame and position through training, effort and intellect.
Hedda, however, has no profession, nor does she care about anything. She has no interest in what Eilert writes, only in his potential fame and glamour, and in his rivalry with her husband. She can only compete with Thea for control of a man, not to develop a personal identity. Worse, Hedda's control is destructive, while Thea's is healing and creative.
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