Hedda Gabler

The Constraints of Social Convention limit the characters’ abilities to speak to each other directly and to take meaningful action. As a woman, Mrs. Elvsted cannot walk home at night without a male escort. Her life, like Hedda’s, is painfully constricted. On the other hand, men are free to have raucous parties well into the night. Brack says that they visited Mamzelle Diana at her boardinghouse. In fact, Mamzelle Diana is a sex worker, and her “boardinghouse” is a brothel. None of the characters in the play raise any objection to Tesman, a married man, visiting a brothel with his friends. However, Tesman does neglect to tell Hedda about his actions, suggesting that he is aware that he has not behaved as he should.

In this act, The Challenges of Genuine Connection center on the relationships between Hedda, Ejlert, and Mrs. Elvsted. Mrs. Elvsted has long worried that Ejlert is still in love with someone else. The audience learns that Mamzelle Diana is the singer with red hair that Mrs. Elvsted worries is Ejlert’s old flame. Ejlert also talks about his “Muse.” Tesman assumes he is talking about Mrs. Elvsted, but he is actually talking about Hedda. The concept of a Muse is another link to ancient Greek theater. Hedda Gabler often returns to Greek dramatic form and subject matter. This choice on Ibsen’s part links Hedda Gabler to a very old theatrical tradition. It also foreshadows the play’s tragic ending.

In the second act, Ejlert’s love for Mrs. Elvsted seemed more genuine. In this act, he ends their relationship now that he no longer needs her to help him write. Their relationship is not really based on an abiding love, but rather on their shared investment in their “child,” the manuscript. The repeated references to the manuscript as though it is a baby or a child contribute to the motif of pregnancy in Hedda Gabler. Ejlert feels as though he has lost his child through carelessness, where it would have been better to kill it outright. Murdering one’s children is a common theme in Greek tragedy—most famously, it happens in Medea. Ejlert and Hedda share a belief that deliberate action is more honorable than passivity. This is part of why they both regret that Hedda did not shoot Ejlert: She was not able to act decisively. Of all the characters in the play, Hedda and Ejlert are the most closely aligned in their outlook. That similarity brought them together initially, but it is not enough to allow them to transcend the limitations of their lives.

Hedda sees an opportunity for Gaining Power and Influence when she receives the manuscript from Tesman. She recognizes that she can control Ejlert’s destiny so long as she has control of the manuscript. When she chooses to burn it, her motivations are complex. She is jealous of Ejlert and Mrs. Elvsted and wants to burn their “baby” to prevent them from having a life she cannot have. Her first attempt to control Ejlert’s life, sending him to a party so he could have a bacchanalian experience, failed when he got arrested. By destroying his manuscript, Hedda has the opportunity to try to control his destiny again. When Ejlert says that he will “finish it, somehow” (110), he is referring to his life. Hedda recognizes that without the manuscript, Ejlert has no will to continue living. Since she knows she has power over his destiny, she chooses to try and give him a beautiful death. By telling him to shoot himself, she is revisiting the moment at the end of their relationship when she threatened to shoot him, and “correcting” her failure to follow through.

Hedda is not the only character trying to gain more control: Brack is also power-hungry. He threatens Hedda, making it clear that if he did have power over her, her freedom would be even more constrained. Hedda recognizes the danger that Brack poses. Though she is not really free to live her life as she wishes to, the freedoms she does possess are precious to her, and losing more of her freedom to Brack would be unbearable. This brief conversation between the two of them foreshadows her suicide in the next act. Hedda would rather die than let another person decide her destiny.