Hedda Gabler: Hardly a Victim - Essay Example

The female repressions and oppressions of the era cannot be overlooked. Most women lived in loveless marriages, often arranged, that served as their social duty. It was, likely, not particularly fulfilling and, frequently, unsatisfying. However, in the case of Hedda Gabler, the events in her life were less about societal pressures but one of her own machinations and overpowering envies and jealousies. As stated, it is true that the character, Hedda, only married Tesman primarily out of the desire for the potential lifestyle his new position might provide her.

This loveless marriage of convenience was probably unsatisfying. When her new husband’s promotion fails to happen she is left living a lifestyle that is well beneath the one that she imagined for herself. It is made obvious that her dissatisfaction with her life began in childhood. She had been raised by her father, a military General. No mother figure is ever referenced in the course of the play. Being raised solely by a man she was inspired to be involved with what was perceived as masculine activities, like horseback riding and shooting; she, “…shoved the feminine away.

” (Mangang) She was hardly groomed in the ways of being a wife, not in the ways that other woman of her time would have been. She succumbs to the depression of not living the life that she envisioned. Richard Gilman, in his commentary on Hedda Gabler, said that her “…her humdrum existence, unexpected poverty, releases a devil in her.” (qtd. in Spacks) Her solution to her self-pity and boredom makes it difficult to feel sorry for her plight. Manipulation became a game to her, a way to alleviate the dissatisfaction of her life.

These manipulations are almost cruel in their manifestations. One writer, Richard Hand, in reference to Hedda needing transformation and excitement of her present existence that she chose to,”…seek to animate her existence through manipulations of the lives of others.”(Hand) She saw that Thea had a nurturing, almost maternal, ideally feminine presence in her relationship with Lovborg. She was clearly envious of these qualities in this woman because these were attributes that she, herself, did not possess.

She undermines the relationship between Thea and Lovborg. She encourages Lovborg to go ahead and drink, although he’d given up the habit; which ultimately leads to the break-up of the lovers. She continues her game by burning Lovborg’s manuscript, something she knows is of utmost importance to him. She knows that he and Thea had perceived his written work as a kind of “offspring.” Hedda had made it clear that she had no interest in motherhood, and with the question of her own pregnancy looming, burning Lovborg’s manuscript, was clearly a metaphor for destroying of a “child” and had multiple meanings.

However, this act also makes certain that Lovborg will not find his work, aiding her in encouraging the man to end his own life. Her envies and jealousies, for which she gained entertainment, were hardly forced upon by societal pressures, they were, “…naturally cruel and vicious.”(Hand) Today we would likely define many of her actions as reckless and sadistic. She played her game and took no responsibility for any of the outcomes. To blame societal constraints for her actions would be a poor excuse.

Over the years the play has been brought to the stage and on multiple occasions has been adapted into motion pictures, both for television and the big screen. Since the era of silent films