FREE ESSAY ON HEDDA GABBLER

HEDDA GABBLER

A Craving For Life
In Henrik Isben's Hedda Gabler, he masterfully portrays the main character, Hedda, as
"neither a monster nor a saint...[she] is simply a tragic character who is destroyed by
the unharmonious and irreconciliable contrasts in her own character." Ultimately, this
very unique character brings about her own demise. She is truly neither good nor evil,
but in the end, this "tragic character" inevitably digs her own grave.
Isben first expresses Hedda's emotional sterility by showing how she is unable to
reciprocate in a relationship. Like a young child, she can only receive without knowing
how to give in return. Without reciprocating she accepts George's love and support. Later
on, when Lovberg recalls his previous relationship with Hedda, he describes how she
extracted detailed confessions from him yet witheld her own inner emotions and
revelations. This highly intense intrest with the lives of others is another aspect of
her empty emotional life. While at the same time of investigating and analyzing other
people's lives is one way for Hedda to gain some understanding of her own unsatisfied
self, she ultimately reveals that she herself is very frail, fragile, and self-centered.
It is this indeed that puts Hedda on her path to a tragic destruction, a path that is
being taken rather quickly.
Another way in which Isben portrays Hedda's contrast in her own character is through
Hedda's destroying the manuscript in Act III. In destroying the manuscript, she
inevitably kills the child she was unable to bear for Lovborg. By destroying that work of
others that she should have accomplished herself, Hedda also destroys those consatant
reminders of her own inadequicies. Symbolically denying the life works of others, Hedda
affirms her own unsatisfied sense of worth.
Not having any positive influence in the world, Hedda Gabler can only define herself
negatively: she destroys what she cannot accept. Undermining her husband with her
coldness, denying her pregnancy, destroying Thea's life work, burning Lovborg's creative
product, ruining the child manuscript, and finally, commting suicide, are all preverted
attempts to satisfy her tragic "craving for life."