44 pages • 1 hour read
Henrik IbsenHedda Gabler
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1890A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Constraints of Social Convention
Content Warning: This section discusses suicide and substance abuse.
Hedda Gabler is a tragedy that unfolds in part because the characters are forced to behave according to rigid social expectations. As a married woman in 19th-century Norway, Hedda has very little access to personal freedom. She (and other women like her, including Mrs. Elvsted) cannot walk alone at night. She cannot easily spend time alone with a man who is not her husband. She cannot choose whether to become a mother. Academic success does not interest her, and it is not accessible to her in any case. Now that she is married, she does not get to keep her name; Ejlert likens this name change to a loss of self, and Hedda does not contradict him. She has married Tesman out of a sense of obligation, not out of love.
The gender dynamics of her world keep Hedda feeling like a prisoner. Her only escape is shooting her father’s pistols, which is a distinctly masculine activity usually associated with soldiers. She is profoundly disinterested in motherhood, and she is similarly uninterested in bonding with other women. Her interactions with Juliane and with Mrs. Elvsted are characterized by casual cruelty rather than friendship or solidarity. For women, all actions are heavily restricted and circumscribed. For men, on the other hand, it is permissible to do all sorts of things, provided nobody names them directly. The men in the play take mistresses (or aim to, as is the case with Brack). They visit brothels even when they are married (like Tesman). Men’s behavior is excused through lies of omission, while women are granted no such leeway.
Although Hedda is a fiercely independent character, she has let herself surrender to social convention by marrying a respectable man and remaining faithful to her. Mrs. Elvsted, on the other hand, is a married woman having an affair. Hedda cautions Mrs. Elvsted that people might talk about her behavior. Mrs. Elvsted responds, “Good heavens, let them say what they like” (46). Though Mrs. Elvsted is not as obviously confident or as intimidating as Hedda, she has chosen to live life the way she wants, and Hedda is jealous of her courage. This jealousy is part of the reason why she deliberately destroys all of Mrs. Elvsted’s opportunities for a happy life with Ejlert. If Hedda cannot have a free life or a connection based on true understanding, then Mrs. Elvsted cannot have one either. Hedda punishes Mrs. Elvsted for daring to break the social conventions she herself upholds.
Gaining Power and Influence
Several characters in Hedda Gabler want to have power over others. Tesman wants to be an influential scholar like Ejlert, not just to secure his financial future, but also to make his mark on the world of academia. He is in awe of and envious of Ejlert’s writing, even when he knows that Ejlert is not a direct threat to his professorship. He also wants to control Hedda, though he is not at all able to. He wants her to integrate into his family, have his children, and essentially fill the role he expects a wife to fill. The fact that Hedda was known for being so headstrong and independent prior to their marriage only heightens his desire to control her. This desire comes through in his conversations with Juliane, who is as surprised as anybody that Hedda has decided to settle down and marry Tesman.
Brack also wants to control Hedda. He thinks he can get that control by finding something to hold over her so that she is essentially forced to become his mistress. There is a somewhat playful and even affectionate relationship between the two of them, but Hedda refuses to be unfaithful to Tesman, so a sexual relationship with Brack is off the table. At the end of the play, Brack gleefully promises to keep the truth of Ejlert’s death a secret, but the unspoken caveat to his promise is that Hedda will become his mistress. Even when Hedda threatens to kill herself rather than submit to him, Brack is confident that Hedda won’t go through with it, because “[n]o one does that” (131). Though Brack desires Hedda, he does not really understand her.
Trapped in her small life, Hedda longs for power. Her only hobby is firing guns, and from the beginning of the play she attempts to bend others to her will, intimidating Mrs. Elvsted into talking about her relationship with Ejlert. She also attempts to undo Mrs. Elvsted’s work. Mrs. Elvsted has influenced Ejlert to stop drinking and remain faithful to her, but Hedda wants Ejlert to be wild, free, and beautiful in all the ways she cannot be. First she pushes Ejlert to get drunk and go to the party. Then, when that fails, she pushes him toward what she hopes will at least be a beautiful and courageous death. That attempt fails too, leaving Hedda with power only over herself, which she exercises by dying by suicide.
The Challenges of Genuine Connection
Like many domestic tragedies, Hedda Gabler features many characters who try and fail to fully understand each other. Tesman believes that he and Hedda have a genuine bond, or at least he wants to believe it. From Tesman’s point of view, the two of them have just returned from a wonderful honeymoon to live in their dream house. He has gone deep into debt to create the life he believes Hedda wants, and he feels like the lucky man that the independent Hedda chose to marry. For her part, Hedda is extremely aware that she and Tesman do not have a real connection. She does not love him and never did. She doesn’t even like the Falk house, which Tesman believes to be the foundation of their relationship. Hedda feels that Tesman knows nothing about her and has failed in the only thing he was good for: providing her with the lifestyle she is accustomed to. Despite these disappointments, she is resigned to her life as Tesman’s wife and will not consider having an affair.
Mrs. Elvsted has a connection with Ejlert that is more genuine than the relationship between Hedda and Tesman. She loves Ejlert, and the two of them have created a groundbreaking manuscript together that they think of as their child. Despite their obvious happiness together, she still worries that their connection is not wholly solid, suspicious that Ejlert still loves a woman from his past. Seeing Mrs. Elvsted and Ejlert together is deeply painful for Hedda. Unbeknownst to Mrs. Elvsted, Hedda is the woman Ejlert loves, and the two of them once had a connection that was truer than anything other characters in the play have experienced. Of all the characters in the story, Ejlert and Hedda have the most similar outlook and the clearest understanding of each other as individuals. Ejlert is the only one who sees the full tragedy of Hedda choosing to marry Tesman, and Hedda is the only one who realizes that Mrs. Elvsted has caused Ejlert to lose his spark.
When Hedda tries to arrange a beautiful death for Ejlert, she is not just trying to control him; she is also trying to solidify the mutual understanding between them. Ejlert, who equates failing to act with cowardice, regrets that Hedda did not shoot him when they parted. Hedda gives Ejlert the opportunity to avoid cowardice and right her wrong by shooting himself. Their reasoning is perverse, but they both understand and accept it. When Ejlert fails to do as Hedda asked, dying under unclear circumstances, the connection between them is finally broken. There is nobody alive who understands Hedda. The only person who once understood her failed to ratify their connection through his death, leaving her fundamentally alone.
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