Feminist's Issue in Hedda Gabler Essay

Ibsen's Hedda Gabler is a story about a lady who deploys others fortunes to accomplish her wishes. The main character is a woman returning from a six-month honeymoon with her husbandTessman, yet she does not love him. She yearns for freedom but feels imprisoned in her marriage. To make use of her time, Hedda manipulates those who live around her. After becoming distended in her ills, she finally kills herself. By employing different settings and themes, the author generates a narrative which uniquely portrays the issue of feminism through this manipulative lady. This essay critically analysis Ibsen's narrative of Hedda Gabler.

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The problems of Hedda Gabler illuminate the global issue of women in a male-dominated society. In the story, Hedda has to make a sole decision on her life. The author portrays how women in almost every society are limited from participating in the outside world since they are not prepared to be independent away from their homes. Hedda was a product of the 19thcentury when women were meant to either become shy housewives or old maids. However, she is different. Hedda has been brought up by a controlling father and goes against his rules but still works under his authority. The unlimited freedom and feminism provided by the play is a cause of devastation for several women depriving them of motherly love and projecting them with annoyance, depression, and frustration. Hedda is a victim of all the undesirable qualities of women that one can imagine.

Since Hedda Gabler's character stands out in a daring release contrasting with other characters, the others should have also been considered to act as a medium in Hedda's progress. Hedda's main counterfoils Brack, Lovberg, and Tessman are all somewhat dormant characters. Even though their traits are portrayed slowly as the play goes on, none of them goes through any final modification. Brack is a devious, calculative character, Lovberg is inoperable unskilled, and Tessman starts off and ends as an abstracted character. While relating with these personalities, Hedda gets to dominate the play as an egocentric being of tolerance and impulse. Hedda is her father's spoilt child, thus the play's title Hedda Gabler instead of Hedda Tessman even though she was married to Tessman. Hedda's disrespect to her husband and the deceitfulness advance in reverse ratio to Tessman'sdecreasing opportunities. Although she is trapped in the matrix of her unwanted pregnancy, Brack's offensive scheme, Tessman's incompetence, and Lovberg'sunsophisticated demise, she decides that suicide is the best way to bring an end to the messy life she created (Ibsen 131). Hedda's experiences in life do not meet her desires of living freely and doing what she pleases but taking away her own life satisfies Hedda's logic of elegance in a manner that could not be accomplished by staying alive.

Conclusion

With a craving and an inability for a productive attempt for self-determination, Hedda becomes a contemporary medium, articulating her anger in damaging efforts at self-realization. Lacking a definite influence from the society, Hedda uses her frustrations in destroying what she dislikes as the only way to define herself. Ruining the child-manuscript, burning Lovborg's art (Ibsen 110), extinguishing Thea's work, refusing to bear a child for her husband, rejecting her husband, and eventually killing herself, are all terrible efforts to satisfy her life desires. Ibsen affirms his firm objection towards a male-dominated society by illustrating the life of an unsatisfied lady in Hedda Gabler.

Work Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. Hedda Gabler. The master builder. Vol. 10. Scribner, 1917.