The Character of Hedda Gabler in Ibsens Hedda Gabler Essay

The Character of Hedda Gabler Hedda Gabler is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in Ibsen. She has been the object of psychological analysis since her creation. She is an interesting case indeed, for to explain Hedda one must rely on the hints Ibsen gives us from her past and the lines of dialogue that reveal the type of person she is. The reader never views Hedda directly. We never get a soliloquy in which she bares her heart and motives to the audience. Hedda is as indifferent to our analysis as she is to Tesmans excitement over his slippers when she says I really dont care about it (Ibsen 8). But a good psychologist knows that even this indifference is telling. Underneath the ennui and indifference†¦show more content†¦Hedda is the product of aristocratic birth. She is, as I mentioned earlier, the daughter of General Gabler, whose portrait hangs over this play not unlike the portrait of the absent father in Williams The Glass Menagerie. And in case we have missed the significance of the portrait in the stage directions or have overlooked it as an audience member, Miss Tesman rivets our attention to it and the reality of Heddas aristocratic life: Well, you cants wonder at that--General Gablers daughter! Think of the sort of life she was accustomed to in her fathers time. Dont you remember how we used to see her riding down the road along with the General? In that long black habit--with feathers in her hat? (Ibsen 2). Her aristocratic birth and her past is contrasted by her choice of a husband who has neither noble blood nor bourgeois money. We are told that this motherless child of an aristocratic general often gave in to fits of cruelty as a child: At the finishing school the presence of a girl with a head of abundant, wavy flaxen hair irritated her and provoked her to outbursts of cruelty which had their source in equal measure, perhaps, in envy and in a deep-seated temperamental antipathy; for dearth of abundance, physically and temperamentally, i s a characteristic of Heddas nature (Weigland 246-247).Show MoreRelatedCharacter Analysis of Hedda in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler Essay1660 Words   |  7 Pages Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler introduces its audience to a paradoxical protagonist, Hedda Tesman. Ibsen’s delineation of Hedda presents her as a petty and frivolous woman whose sole motivation is to seek her own amusement with no regard to those around her. 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