Both Archer in Hedda's Modern Woman and Nazimova with her Ibsen's Women have their own interpretation of Hedda Gabler, the play and the character (the two are entwined, of course).
Archer describes the scene and characters that surround Hedda by saying how they create Hedda's character: "the environment and the subsidiary personages are all thoroughly national, but Hedda herself is an 'international' type, a product of civilization by no means peculiar to Norway." From the beginning of the play Hedda is shown to be something more than everyone else- as we talked about in class, everyone tries to please her and talk about her having a higher class. When she walks in, she is automatically distant from the other characters- she knows it, and they know it. She doesn't care about Tesman's work, or money. Her whole life, in fact, is a bit of a lie, as she doesn't love her husband and she doesn't even like the house he thought she wanted. It is clear she has distaste for the life she leads, the one society says that she should have.
I think this is where the "vine leaves in his hair" comes in, a "symbol of the beautiful, the ideal, aspect of bacchic elation and jewelry", of "antique art" from Rome. This is what she imagines Lovborg to have. He is the person who is her opportunity to get away from her boring life where she doesn't fit in.
The play, as Archer puts it, is a "character study": "the poet does not even pass judgment on his heroine: he simply paints her full-length portrait with scientific impassivity" The reader is not told whether she is good or bad- perhaps she is not either, she is merely human. Nazimova brings up a good point in respect to this: "Ibsen has no heroines", because unlike Shakespeare each character is easily accessible. Hedda contains so many elements that everyone has- she is "the modern woman:", who knows of more and wants more than traditional women- "complex instead of primitive". "[The women] are difficult to understand, it is true, not because they are artfully mysterious, but because they are real and therefore like all real people not to be classified by a simple formula". She is bored with a life where everyone is quite bland compared to her: "she had nothing to take her out of herself- not a single intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm". And when someone has what she does not, "another woman [Thea, who] has had the courage to love and venture all, where she, in her cowardice, only hankered and refrained", she acts in revenge.
Unlike all the other characters, Tesman, Ms. Tesman, Berte, even Mrs. Elvsted, who all try and fit in and follow society's general patterns (Tesman- getting his job, to be known in society. Ms. Tesman- needs to care for others. Berte- serves as a maid and worries about making people happy. Mrs. Elvsted- marries just because, always cares for others because she is expected to.), Hedda Gabler wants more. Even Lovborg, when he writes his book that says nothing so no one criticizes it, submits to society at this point. His book, however, his "child", is I think what Hedda envies- Lovborg creates something entirely his (and Thea's), something that he is passionate about (unlike Tesman's "academic" research on other people's lives), that is not what society expected. Perhaps there is some parallelism, that when Hedda burns his book, she later also kills her own child.
This leads me to the ending of the play, Hedda's suicide. I have to say that I disagree with Archer's interpretation of the ending. When he states that "life has no charm for her that she cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation and self-contempt", I'm not sure I follow. I think Hedda went out with what she thought was grace: she had courage. If she had stayed alive, not doing anything to create a "scandal", submissive under society's whims (Tesman working with Thea, ignoring her, and her under Brack's control), I think that was her act of courage. In respect to her unborn child, Lovborg says something about how it is horrible to know that someone else may have his child, to change the child and have it under someone else's control- I think Hedda may fear this too, in that she doesn't want to be under someone else's control. It could be that Hedda didn't want the child to live in her false and boring life as she had or that the child was a symbol of society's plan (where traditional women grew up, got married, had a baby, then cared for the household) and if she had the child then that too was an act of submission, something that she wouldn't hold for. When Lovborg sees her, he tells her once that she is a coward- I think she married Tesman because she was tired of fighting, and this portrays her cowardice more than anything else. So the Hedda who "struggles on till she is too weary to struggle anymore" is not the one I thought of- I thought her suicide was her final act of independence and an act of war.
In a critic review of one of the play's of Hedda Gabler, Jess Righthand states "What it's saying about someone being caught in a world where they can't fit in, being choked off, slowly strangulated as it were, is very powerful." I think this touches a central theme of the play: from the very beginning Hedda doesn't belong. She also says something of how Hedda goes from a military-like home with a General for a father, to a home where Tesman is very much mothered. His aunt is most likely the exact opposite of the General (I say most likely because we never actually meet him, but he is characterized as being strict and general-like).
In Norseng's Suicide and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, she mentions Egan's production and the question "What if we saw what Hedda saw when she killed herself?".
Here is a summary of what happened in the play:
"At its base lay a woman dressed in black, outstretched center stage to right on the sofa, her whole body like an elegant, long black feather blown beautifully backward by the wind. A young tree in fall stood at the lower end of the sofa, at Hedda's feet, stripped of all its leaves but a few, that hung like dark jewels from its bare branches. The audience fell into momentary shock. All was silent. Front stage, Brack sat staring out at us and, Thea, never looking back, slowly spread her hands over the writing desk, taking full possession of it like an engulfing, beige amoeba."
I think this helps us understand why Hedda killed herself. Of course, this is all speculation (what was going on in the backroom), but the characterization of Thea, who was taking "full possession" is what I think Hedda felt.
I think this is where the "vine leaves in his hair" comes in, a "symbol of the beautiful, the ideal, aspect of bacchic elation and jewelry", of "antique art" from Rome. This is what she imagines Lovborg to have. He is the person who is her opportunity to get away from her boring life where she doesn't fit in.
The play, as Archer puts it, is a "character study": "the poet does not even pass judgment on his heroine: he simply paints her full-length portrait with scientific impassivity" The reader is not told whether she is good or bad- perhaps she is not either, she is merely human. Nazimova brings up a good point in respect to this: "Ibsen has no heroines", because unlike Shakespeare each character is easily accessible. Hedda contains so many elements that everyone has- she is "the modern woman:", who knows of more and wants more than traditional women- "complex instead of primitive". "[The women] are difficult to understand, it is true, not because they are artfully mysterious, but because they are real and therefore like all real people not to be classified by a simple formula". She is bored with a life where everyone is quite bland compared to her: "she had nothing to take her out of herself- not a single intellectual interest or moral enthusiasm". And when someone has what she does not, "another woman [Thea, who] has had the courage to love and venture all, where she, in her cowardice, only hankered and refrained", she acts in revenge.
Unlike all the other characters, Tesman, Ms. Tesman, Berte, even Mrs. Elvsted, who all try and fit in and follow society's general patterns (Tesman- getting his job, to be known in society. Ms. Tesman- needs to care for others. Berte- serves as a maid and worries about making people happy. Mrs. Elvsted- marries just because, always cares for others because she is expected to.), Hedda Gabler wants more. Even Lovborg, when he writes his book that says nothing so no one criticizes it, submits to society at this point. His book, however, his "child", is I think what Hedda envies- Lovborg creates something entirely his (and Thea's), something that he is passionate about (unlike Tesman's "academic" research on other people's lives), that is not what society expected. Perhaps there is some parallelism, that when Hedda burns his book, she later also kills her own child.
This leads me to the ending of the play, Hedda's suicide. I have to say that I disagree with Archer's interpretation of the ending. When he states that "life has no charm for her that she cares to purchase it at the cost of squalid humiliation and self-contempt", I'm not sure I follow. I think Hedda went out with what she thought was grace: she had courage. If she had stayed alive, not doing anything to create a "scandal", submissive under society's whims (Tesman working with Thea, ignoring her, and her under Brack's control), I think that was her act of courage. In respect to her unborn child, Lovborg says something about how it is horrible to know that someone else may have his child, to change the child and have it under someone else's control- I think Hedda may fear this too, in that she doesn't want to be under someone else's control. It could be that Hedda didn't want the child to live in her false and boring life as she had or that the child was a symbol of society's plan (where traditional women grew up, got married, had a baby, then cared for the household) and if she had the child then that too was an act of submission, something that she wouldn't hold for. When Lovborg sees her, he tells her once that she is a coward- I think she married Tesman because she was tired of fighting, and this portrays her cowardice more than anything else. So the Hedda who "struggles on till she is too weary to struggle anymore" is not the one I thought of- I thought her suicide was her final act of independence and an act of war.
In a critic review of one of the play's of Hedda Gabler, Jess Righthand states "What it's saying about someone being caught in a world where they can't fit in, being choked off, slowly strangulated as it were, is very powerful." I think this touches a central theme of the play: from the very beginning Hedda doesn't belong. She also says something of how Hedda goes from a military-like home with a General for a father, to a home where Tesman is very much mothered. His aunt is most likely the exact opposite of the General (I say most likely because we never actually meet him, but he is characterized as being strict and general-like).
In Norseng's Suicide and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, she mentions Egan's production and the question "What if we saw what Hedda saw when she killed herself?".
Here is a summary of what happened in the play:
"At its base lay a woman dressed in black, outstretched center stage to right on the sofa, her whole body like an elegant, long black feather blown beautifully backward by the wind. A young tree in fall stood at the lower end of the sofa, at Hedda's feet, stripped of all its leaves but a few, that hung like dark jewels from its bare branches. The audience fell into momentary shock. All was silent. Front stage, Brack sat staring out at us and, Thea, never looking back, slowly spread her hands over the writing desk, taking full possession of it like an engulfing, beige amoeba."
I think this helps us understand why Hedda killed herself. Of course, this is all speculation (what was going on in the backroom), but the characterization of Thea, who was taking "full possession" is what I think Hedda felt.
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