After emphasizing the importance of individualism in earlier plays such as A Doll's House, Ibsen shifted the balance by writing about the danger of too much self-assertion in Hedda Gabler. In this character study, we meet a woman named Hedda, a ruthless individualist married to a dull scholar, Jorgen Tesman. She is the daughter of General Gabler, a powerful man who always gave her everything she wanted. As the play opens, she and her husband have just returned from their long honeymoon, during which Tesman did nothing but collect material for his studies of medieval craftsmanship. There is a clear temperamental (and probably sexual) incompatibility between husband and wife - is that why Ibsen uses Hedda's maiden name in the title of the play instead of calling her by her married name? She is more her father's daughter than her husband's wife.
[Hedda Gabler (Netherlands, 1959)]
The play is set in Oslo (then Kristiania) at the Tesman mansion. The action takes place over a day and a half.
Hedda, the daughter of General Gabler, and her husband, Jørgen Tesman, have just returned to Kristiania from their honeymoon. Jørgen Tesman is a hard-working, pedantic man who has spent most of the six-month trip working on a book of cultural studies, the publication of which he hopes will earn him a doctorate and a professorship at the university. Hedda does not love Jørgen. She regards him with indifference; he has no sense of Hedda's femininity. She married him only because she hoped the marriage would secure her a respectable social position. Two paraphernalia kept by the couple symbolize their antagonism: a pair of old slippers given to Jørgen Tesman by two old aunts who raised him; and a pistol from General Gabler's estate, a dangerous "toy" of Hedda's.
Hedda realizes the futility of her marriage when she learns that Ejlert Løvborg is back in town. Løvborg and Hedda had an extremely tense and intense love affair several years earlier. Løvborg, a cultural scientist, had retired to the countryside as a tutor after bouts of alcoholism and was working on a successful book that had just been published with the help of the married Thea Elvsted. If the book is a success, Løvborg could become Tesman's professional rival.
Thea has left her much older husband and is pursuing Ejlert Løvborg. She visits Hedda and her husband. Hedda is jealous of Thea's obvious influence over Løvborg and tries to come between them. She cleverly exploits Thea's naivety, having helped Løvborg write his book as a "comrade," and elicits secrets from her about Løvborg's life in the country. Another visitor, Brack, a lawyer, tells Hedda's husband that Løvborg has already finished the manuscript for his second book. He has become a serious scientific rival to Jørgen Tesman.
Now Hedda sees that her hour has come. She is driven by the thought: "For once in my life I want to have power over a man's fate." Exercising this power over her husband does not interest Hedda; he has no value in her eyes. Løvborg, however, does. She persuades him to go to a party with Tesman and Brack. Løvborg, unable to deal with his unprocessed memories of his relationship with Hedda, decides to break his abstinence and get drunk. The celebration turns into a binge. Hedda knew that Løvborg's behavior would end in a social fiasco and the destruction of his career opportunities.
The next morning, a distraught Løvborg tells her that he is socially ruined and has also lost the manuscript of the sequel to his book. He tells his girlfriend Thea that he destroyed the manuscript. Symbolically, he has destroyed any connection to Thea. Hedda does not tell him that her husband found the manuscript and gave it to her for safekeeping. Instead, she encourages Løvborg's sense of hopelessness and hands him her pistol with the request that it be done "in beauty. She then burns the manuscript, referring to the relationship between Thea and Løvborg: "Now I burn your child, Thea! - Your child and Ejlert Løvborg's." She explains to Jørgen that she destroyed the manuscript to secure his and her future.
Ejlert Løvborg does not die a "nice death". He shoots himself in the stomach. The lawyer Brack has recognized the pistol as Hedda's, and with this knowledge he tries to blackmail Hedda. He wants her to become his lover. But Hedda does not want to risk a scandal. Since she is disgusted not only by life, but also by Løvborg's banal death, she decides to commit suicide.
While Hedda plays the piano loudly in the next room and the shot that ends her life is fired, Jørgen and Thea are already reconstructing Ejlert Løvborg's book from his notes.
Hedda Gabler is a play about powerlessness and insignificance. Hedda has no purpose in life; she has doubts about life. She suspects that there are opportunities for happiness on earth, but she cannot see them. "She lacks a purpose in life - and that torments her," was one of Ibsen's notes on the play. He also wrote: "Life is not sad - it is ridiculous - and that is unbearable".
Hedda Gabler is one of Ibsen's best psychological dramas. The play has been performed countless times around the world, and the title role of Hedda is still considered one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress.
The play has been adapted for the screen several times, from the silent film era onward. The BBC screened a television production of the play in 1962, with Ingrid Bergman (who is a bit too soft for the diabolic role), Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, and Trevor Howard, which is probably one of the best adaptations.
I have read Hedda Gabler in the translation by Jens Arup in Oxford World's Classics (Henrik Ibsen, Four Major Plays)
Online translation at Project Gutenberg.
[This post has been partly translated and edited from the relevant articles in the German and Dutch versions of Wikipedia]
Greatest Plays of All Time