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Characters
SynopsisSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The action takes place in a villa in Kristiania (now Oslo). Hedda Gabler, daughter of an impoverished General, has just returned from her honeymoon with George Tesman, an aspiring young academic — reliable, but not brilliant, who has combined research with their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him, that she married him for economic security, and she fears she may be pregnant. The reappearance of her former lover, Eilert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Løvborg, a writer, is also an alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), he shows signs of rehabilitation, and has just completed what he considers to be his masterpiece. This means he now poses a threat to Tesman, as a competitor for the university professorship which Tesman had believed would be his. It became clear earlier that the couple are financially overstretched and Tesman now tells Hedda that he will not be able to afford to have her do a great deal of entertaining or to support her in a lavish lifestyle. Hedda, apparently jealous of Mrs. Elvsted's influence over Eilert, hopes to come between them. Tesman, returning home from a party, finds the manuscript of Eilert Løvborg's great work, which the latter has lost while drunk. When Hedda next sees Løvborg, he confesses to her, despairingly, that he has lost the manuscript. Instead of telling him that the manuscript has been found, Hedda encourages him to commit suicide, giving him a pistol. She then burns the manuscript. She tells her husband she has destroyed it to secure their future, so that he, not Løvborg, will become a professor. When the news comes that Løvborg has indeed killed himself, Tesman and Mrs. Elvsted are determined to try to reconstruct his book from what they already know. Hedda is shocked to discover, from the sinister Judge Brack, that Eilert's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental (this is in huge contrast to the "beautiful" death that Hedda had imagined for him). Worse, Brack knows where the pistol came from. This means that he has power over her, which he will use to insinuate himself into the household (there is a strong implication that he will try to seduce Hedda). Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and shoots herself.
Critical interpretationJoseph Wood Krutch makes a connection between Hedda Gabler and Freud whose first work on psychoanalysis was published almost a decade later. Hedda is one of the first fully developed neurotic heroines of literature.[2] By that Krutch means that Hedda is neither logical nor insane in the old sense of being random and unaccountable. Her aims and her motives have a secret personal logic of their own. She gets what she wants, but what she wants is not anything that the normal usually admit, publicly at least, to be desirable. One of the significant things that such a character implies is the premise that there is a secret, sometimes unconscious, world of aims and methods—one might almost say a secret system of values—that is often much more important than the rational one. Joan Templeton makes a connection between Hedda Gabler and Hjördis from The Vikings at Helgeland, since the arms-bearing, horse-riding Hedda, married to a passive man she despises, indeed resembles the "eagle in a cage" that Hjördis terms herself.[3] Analysis of TextThe text Hedda Gabler by Ibsen, who intended his work to be read as much as performed, was shunned in its time over the character Hedda Gabler as she did not fit into the basic ideological places of society and was denoted by many critics as a demon in a human form or inhuman, as nobody could ever imagine a woman that would be in a relationship without love and also a love triangle (train metaphor) which would be betraying her husband. The gun in the text is symbolic that Hedda Gabler does not fit into the class as she plays with toys that are highly unnacceptable in society. It also plays a role in showing the binary opposition status between herself and Tesman as she is displayed with masculinity as Tesman serves her drinks. ProductionsThe play was first performed in Munich, Germany, at the Königliches ResidenzTheater on 31 January 1891, with Clara Heese as Hedda. The first British performance was at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, on April 20 the same year, starring Elizabeth Robins, who directed it with Marion Lea, who played Thea. Robins also played Hedda in the first US production, which opened on March 30 1898 at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York. Many popular actresses have played the role of Hedda: they include Eleanora Duse, Alla Nazimova, Asta Nielsen, Eva Le Gallienne, Anne Meacham, Ingrid Bergman, Jill Bennett, Janet Suzman, Diana Rigg, Isabelle Huppert, Kate Burton, Kelly McGillis, Fiona Shaw,Maggie Smith, Annette Bening, Judy Davis, and Cate Blanchett for which she won the 2005 Helpmann Award (Australia) for Best Female Actor in a Play. In 2005, a production by Richard Eyre, starring Eve Best, at the Almeida Theatre in London has been well-received, and later transferred for an 11½ week run at the Playhouse Theatre on Northumberland Avenue. The play was staged at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theater starring actress Martha Plimpton, who is credited with bringing renewed modern interest to the play. British playwright John Osborne wrote an adaptation in 1972, and in 1991 famed playwright Judith Thompson presented an inspired adaptation of the play at the Shaw Festival. Thompson adapted the play a second time in 2005 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto, Canada, setting the first half of the play in the nineteenth century, and the second half during the present day. Early in 2006, the play gained critical success at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds and at the Liverpool Playhouse, directed by Matthew Lloyd with Gillian Kearney in the lead role. The play has been filmed a number of times, from silent movies onwards, and in many languages. In 1975, Glenda Jackson was nominated for an Academy Award as leading actress for her role in a British film adaptation, simply titled Hedda. A more recent American film version (2004) relocated the story to a community of young academics in Washington State. Film adaptations
References in popular culture
The band Hedda Gabler received critical acclaim, notably the Dutch music journalist Swie Tio rated the band's output highly in his annual Top Ten lists, and the BBC DJ John Peel frequently featured the earlier Hedda Gabler tracks on his radio shows. Despite of this, the self-released albums were only sold in minor quantities, and have become collectors items. From the latter album House of Mourning the song 'Eating the Lion' (as a non-distributed single and a videoclip played on MTV) became a minor cult hit. In 2001 the band released their first CD compilation, entitled Layers (xtinct-001) Details of the bands history and complete discography can be found on the Hedda Gabler website www.hedda-gabler.nl
See alsoNotes
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