Hedda Gabler Play Analysis

The Victorians adhere to the rules so when Hedda Gabler, cunning and cold, appeared on stage for the first time, the play was not well received amongst male viewers. For the female audiences, however, they related to Hedda and her predicament. They too felt claustrophobic in their own home, they too had husbands who ignored them, and they too wanted to break the tradition one way or another. Through Hedda’s manipulation of others and her eventual death, Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen centers around a woman, like all the women watching her, who not only rebels against the society she is stuck in but also becomes a hero in doing so.

The play was first shown in Germany in 1891 during the tail end of the Victorian era, which lasted from 1837 to 1901. Although Henrik Ibsen is Norwegian, his female-centric plays had caught the admiration of women everywhere, especially in Victorian England where women and men were divided by strict gender roles.

At the time, women were expected to be good wives and mothers. We may situate Hedda within this cultural environment – she is, like most Victorian women, expected to be a “angel in the house”: she is married, may be with child, and is not the money-maker in the family. Ibsen’s portrayal of her, however, is markedly different from those of contemporary writers. Unlike other Victorian women, Hedda does not allow herself to be complacent with her situation, and therefore, undergoes a transformation that is unheard of for women during this time but also becomes more extreme the further on we read.

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Initially, we see her more innocent ways of manipulating others. In act one, she is seen multiple times being purposefully rude to her husband’s fawning aunts, making fun of their ugly bonnets. In act two, she outright admits that she does not love her own husband, George, because he bores her to death; Ibsen implies that George takes Hedda for granted especially when all they did on their honeymoon was his research. Therefore, surrounded by people she doesn’t seem to particularly care for and vice-versa, Hedda is stuck. When Thea, weak and fair, comes along, Hedda uses her as not only a source of gossip but as a safe and quick way to exercise control. She tells Thea “[N]ow we are going to renew our old friendship” to which Thea replies that they were never friends (I, 17). The fact that Hedda is manipulating a despised classmate just shows how desperate she is for a change in her scenery. She has never even liked Thea but so far, she is the only person that Hedda can allow herself to manipulate without any dire consequences. Not only that but simply put, successfully using Thea is a small but effective victory.

As such, Hedda’s manipulation grows as she becomes even more restless and thus, continues to rebel. Her husband is still boring and neglectful, and she has yet to care about his aunts. In act three, we see a notable change in not only her personality but also her way of controlling her peers. Hedda convinces Eilert – with whom she has history – to kill himself with her own gun. It doesn’t too much effort to break Eilert as it did Thea; rather, Hedda is almost frantic as she urges her old lover to commit suicide “And beautifully, Eilert Lovborg.” (III, 72). To Hedda, suicide is compared to something poetic because death is the one thing that someone has complete control over and thus, it is beautiful. For Hedda to be part of this “beautiful death” is to be part of something that is bigger than herself; it’s a feat that she has never been able to partake in. At this point, Hedda has become daring; to stay sane, she needs to make a change in the static environment that she finds herself in, and the only way to stop that is to hold the fate of another person in her hands or else she risks losing herself out of her own terms.

Unfortunately for Hedda, her manipulation has been spotted by Judge Brack, who seems to notice anything and everything. From the beginning, Hedda’s relationship with Judge Brack is very revealing and suggests that she may be able to reframe her fate in the Victorian patriarchy that she lives in. After news of Eilert’s death, the judge tells Hedda that “[he] saw the pistol found in Lovborg’s pocket, and [he] knew it at once as the one [he] had seen yesterday” (IV, 86). Hedda is horrified and proclaims that if he were to tell the police, she would be “A slave, a slave then! No, I cannot endure the thought of that!” (IV, 87). This use of word, “slave” shows a juxtaposition in Hedda’s character: with her control and ability to control, she was of royalty, but without this said control, she is reduced to someone who panders to the royalty who, in this case, is Judge Brack. With this revelation, Hedda is in the danger of surely becoming a true Victorian woman: the “angel in the house”.

In fact, through Judge Brack, the gender roles are reversed back to “normal”. The judge represents the Victorian society, watching and waiting to pounce on those who defy it. Hedda has ignored society by being a woman and having/wanting more control than her peers, and for this, she is getting punished. Judge Brack as Society asserts power over Hedda and continues the Victorian patriarchy. By killing herself, Hedda breaks the Victorian norm for good. Her suicide makes sure that nobody else can control her ever again and ensures that she is her own. Her death may be viewed as all for naught but for the first time in the play, she claims all of herself and becomes the smartest and bravest person in the whole play because she is willing to do things on her own terms by her own hands. Even the title of the play is significant in that Hedda does not belong to anyone else; she belongs to herself and is thus, Hedda Gabler.