Hedda Gabler

Week7段馨君 副教授國立交通大學人文社會學系

Understanding Modernism Joseph Wood Krutch defined

modernism as the self-conscious belief that beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, artists, scholars, scientists, sociologists and philosophers believed that they had made a radical break with the past and looked forward to a future discontinuous with it.

Understanding ModernismThe dramatic revolt against

romanticism’s unreal or distorted picture of ordinary human striving emerged full-blown in the 1860s as realism.

Fragmentation

Modernism engaged the belief that modern ideas, doubts, and attitudes were somehow radically different and discontinuous with those held in the past.

Modernist methods and ideas evolved from the playwrights’ self-conscious break with the past.

For two decades, Henrik Ibsen’s play were the key to modernism in drama.

Modernist Theory

Of crurcial importance was the sense of discontinuity between the old and the new worlds and the impossibility of communication across the chasm that separated one from the other.

Hedda Gabler

Background Original language：

Norwegian Subject： a newlywed

struggles with an existence she finds devoid of excitement and enchantment

Genre： Drama Setting： Jørgen

Tesman's villa, Kristiania,Norway; 1890s

title page of the 1890 text

About the play• Hedda Gabler is a play first

published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama. A 1902 production was a major sensation on Broadway starring Minnie Maddern Fiske and following its initial limited run was revived with the actress the following year.

About the play• The character of Hedda is

considered by some critics as one of the great dramatic roles in theatre, the "female Hamlet," and some portrayals have been very controversial. Depending on the interpretation, Hedda may be portrayed as an idealistic heroine fighting society, a victim of circumstance, a prototypical feminist, or a manipulative villain.

The Basic Set

With Window Shutters Closed

About the play• Hedda's married name

is Hedda Tesman; Gabler is her maiden name. On the subject of the title, Ibsen wrote:"My intention in giving it this name was to indicate that Hedda as a personality is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than her husband's wife."

Characters• George Tesman - The husband

of Hedda, an academic• Hedda Gabler - The heroine• Miss Juliane Tesman (Aunty

Juju) - Aunt of George• Mrs. Thea Elvsted - Friend of

Hedda and George, confidant of Ejlert

• Judge Brack - Friend of the Tesmans

• Ejlert Løvborg - George's academic rival whom Hedda previously loved

• Bertha - Servant to the Tesmans and to George as a child.

Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler.

Characters• Hedda Gabler  -  Hedda is the

daughter of the famous General Gabler; as a child she was used to luxury and high-class living. As the play begins, she is returning from her honeymoon with Jürgen Tesman, a scholar with good prospects but not as much money as Hedda is accustomed to. Her married name is Hedda Tesman. Hedda is an intelligent, unpredictable, and somewhat dishonest young woman who is not afraid to manipulate her husband and friends.

Pressure … Cate Blanchett as Hedda Gabler.

Characters• Jürgen Tesman  -  Tesman is

an amiable, intelligent young scholar. He tries very hard to please his young wife, Hedda, and often does not realize that she is manipulating him. In fact, he often seems foolish for his age, and when he annoys Hedda, the audience has reason to sympathize with her. Tesman is hoping for a professorship in history, and at the beginning of the play it seems that his one great rival, Ejlert Lövborg, a notorious alcoholic, no longer stands in Tesman's way. Tesman was raised by his Aunt Julle.

Characters• Juliane Tesman  -  Juliane

Tesman, or Aunt Julle, is the aunt of Jürgen Tesman. After Tesman's parents died, Aunt Julle raised him. She is well-meaning, and she is constantly hinting that Tesman and Hedda should have a baby. Aunt Julle tries to get along with Hedda, but the difference in their class backgrounds is painfully apparent. Aunt Julle lives with the ailing Aunt Rina, another aunt of Tesman's.

Characters• Judge Brack  -  Brack is a

judge of relatively inferior rank. He is a friend of both Tesman and Hedda, and he visits their house regularly. He has connections around the city, and is often the first to give Tesman information about alterations in the possibility of his professorship. He seems to enjoy meddling in other people's affairs. He is a worldly and cynical man.

Kate Burton and Harris Yulin in Hedda Gabler

Characters• Ejlert Lövborg -  A genius,

Ejlert Lövoborg is Tesman* biggest competitor in the academic world. After a series of scandals related to drinking, he was once a public outcast but has now returned to the city and has published a book to rave reviews. He also has another manuscript that is even more promising. Mrs. Elvsted helped him with both manuscripts. He once shared a close relationship with Hedda.

Kate Burton and David Lansbury in Hedda Gabler

Characters

• Mrs. Elvsted -  Mrs. Elvsted is a meek but passionate woman. She and her husband hired Ejlert Lövborg as a tutor to their children, and Mrs. Elvsted grew attached to Ejlert, acting as his personal secretary and aiding him in his research and writing. When Ejlert leaves her estate to return to the city, Mrs. Elvsted comes to town and goes to Tesman for help, fearing Ejlert will revert to his alcoholism. Mrs. Elvsted went to school with Hedda and remembers being tormented by her.

Characters

Berte -  Berte is George and Hedda Tesman's servant. Formerly, she was the servant in Juliane Tesman's household. She tries very hard to please Hedda, her new mistress, but Hedda is quite dissatisfied with her.

Aunt Rina -  Aunt Rina is dying at the start of the play. She never appears onstage. She helped Aunt Julle raise Tesman*

The action takes place in a villa in Kristiania (now Oslo). Hedda Gabler, daughter of an aristocratic General, has just returned from her honeymoon with Jørgen 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 but has married him for reasons pertaining to the boring nature of her life, and it is suggested that she may be pregnant. The reappearance of Tesman's academic rival, Ejlert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray.

Løvborg, a writer, is also a recovered alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, The Elvsted (who has left her husband for him), he shows signs of rehabilitation and has just completed a bestseller in the same field as Tesman. The critical success of his recently published work transforms Løvborg into a threat to Tesman, as Løvborg becomes a competitor for the university professorship Tesman had been counting on. The couple are financially overstretched and Tesman now tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that Hedda had been looking forward to. 

Plot

Plot• Upon meeting Løvborg however, the couple discover that he has

no intention of competing for the professorship, but rather has spent the last few years labouring with Mrs. Elvsted over what he considers to be his masterpiece, the "sequel" to his recently published work. Hedda, apparently jealous of Mrs. Elvsted's influence over Løvborg, hopes to come between them, and provokes Løvborg to get drunk and go to a party.

• Tesman returns home from the party and reveals that he found the manuscript of 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.

Plot• 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 Løvborg's death, in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental (this "ridiculous and vile" death contrasts the "beautiful and free" one 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 force Hedda into a sexual affair). Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and ends the play by shooting herself in the temple.

• Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1963 TV - Ingrid Bergman) 

Film-clip• Director: Alex Segal • Leading actor: Ingrid Bergman • Year: 2007• Showing Part: The Tesmans have just

returned from their six-month honeymoon• From 00:52 to 10:57• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=qKgcjssJgvY

Film-clip• Director: Alex Segal • Leading actor: Ingrid Bergman • Year: 2007• Showing Part : Hedda's Brack

complained to Brack about her marriage• From 05:00 to 10:00• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Tfn7MLoy8Yc&feature=related

Film-clip• Director: Henrik Ibsen• Leading actor: Diana Rigg• Year: 2009• Showing Part: Hedda leaves the room

and, after playing the piano for some moments, shoots herself

• From 03:35 to 07:02• http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=wTdMLnLTzpM&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Martha Plimpton as Hedda Gabler, Steppenwolf Theater 2001

Cate Blanchett as Hedda Gabler, Sydney Theater 2004

Critical interpretation• Joseph 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. 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 Hjørdis 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 Hjørdis terms herself.

Analysis It is fitting that the title of the play is Hedda's maiden name, Hedda

Gabler, for the play is to a large extent about the formerly aristocratic Hedda's inability to adjust to the bourgeois life into which she has married. Her tragedy lies not only in her own suicide but in her desire that Ejlert should have a "beautiful" suicide: she hopes that life can be beautiful, can measure up to a certain standard, regardless of practicalities like professional success or failure. She is amused by how much Tesman worries about making a living.

This aristocratic privileging of "aesthetic" matters causes Hedda to feel very unsympathetic to Tesman. She doesn't allow him to use the word "we" to describe the two of them. It also allows her to feel little guilt when "cheating on" him, if only on an emotional level, with Ejlert and Judge Brack. Her values, based on an aesthetic standard rather than the moral standard to which her husband conforms, are beyond Tesman's control or even his understanding; as a result, he cannot predict her actions. At the same time, however, Hedda's apparent pregnancy draws attention to the tragic nature of her quest. She continually denies the inevitable.

Analysis The rest of the male characters are more or less in love

with Hedda, perhaps because of her almost decadent sense of beauty. Brack wants to establish a private relationship with her, parallel to her relationship with Tesman, and Ejlert dearly hopes that she shares his "passion for life." She finds both of these ideas silly, openly rejecting Ejlert's notion and teasing Brack by saying that he wants to be "the cock of the walk." Even Mrs. Elvsted feels intimidated by Hedda. Because of this popularity, she is the most powerful character. She toys with others because she can find no solace or entertainment in life. Indeed, Hedda's power is so far-reaching that her own self-destruction leads almost inevitably to the destruction of the other characters' lives.

• It is fitting that the title of the play is Hedda's maiden name, Hedda Gabler, for the play is to a large extent about the formerly aristocratic Hedda's inability to adjust to the bourgeois life into which she has married. Her tragedy lies not only in her own suicide but in her desire that Ejlert should have a "beautiful" suicide: she hopes that life can be beautiful, can measure up to a certain standard, regardless of practicalities like professional success or failure. She is amused by how much Tesman worries about making a living.

Analysis

Analysis• This aristocratic privileging of "aesthetic" matters

causes Hedda to feel very unsympathetic to Tesman. She doesn't allow him to use the word "we" to describe the two of them. It also allows her to feel little guilt when "cheating on" him, if only on an emotional level, with Ejlert and Judge Brack. Her values, based on an aesthetic standard rather than the moral standard to which her husband conforms, are beyond Tesman's control or even his understanding; as a result, he cannot predict her actions. At the same time, however, Hedda's apparent pregnancy draws attention to the tragic nature of her quest. She continually denies the inevitable.

Analysis• The rest of the male characters are more or less in love

with Hedda, perhaps because of her almost decadent sense of beauty. Brack wants to establish a private relationship with her, parallel to her relationship with Tesman, and Ejlert dearly hopes that she shares his "passion for life." She finds both of these ideas silly, openly rejecting Ejlert's notion and teasing Brack by saying that he wants to be "the cock of the walk." Even Mrs. Elvsted feels intimidated by Hedda. Because of this popularity, she is the most powerful character. She toys with others because she can find no solace or entertainment in life. Indeed, Hedda's power is so far-reaching that her own self-destruction leads almost inevitably to the destruction of the other characters' lives.

Awards and nominations

Awards 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival

2006 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival

Nominations 2005 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival

Alternate Productions, Tribute and Parody• An operatic adaptation of the play has been produced by

Shanghai's Hangzhou Xiao Bai Hua Yue Opera House. A turkey living in Morningside Park, New York City, was named, "Hedda Gobbler."

• The Scottish folk indie-rock band Broken Records have recorded a track, due to appear on their debut album later in 2009, entitled "If Eilert Løvborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This".

• Welsh musician John Cale recorded a song entitled "Hedda Gabler," which he recently performed live in London (5 March 2010) with a band and a 19 piece orchestra in his Paris 1919 tour, attended by such celebrities as Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall, Samson and Delilah's Peter Hennessy, Irish Actor Cillian Murphy and award-winning viola player Jessica Lavery.

References• Chekhov's gun• ^ Billington, Michael (17 March 2005). "Hedda Gabler, Almeida,

London". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-10-05.• ^ Tracy Sanders (2006). "Lecture Notes: Hedda Gabler - Fiend or Heroine".

Australian Catholic University. Retrieved 2008-10-05.• ^ Krutch, Joseph Wood (1953). Modernism in Modern Drama: A Definition

and an Estimate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 11. OCLC 255757831.• ^ Templeton, Joan (2000). Ibsen's Women. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press. pp. 229. ISBN 0521590396.• ^ "Hedda Gabler: Play, Drama". The Internet Broadway Database. 2008.

Retrieved 2008-10-08.• ^ "Title Search: Hedda Gabler". The Internet Movie Database. 2008.

Retrieved 2008-09-18.• Hedda Gabler at the Internet Broadway Database• Hedda Gabler at the Internet off-Broadway Database• "A Lesbian Interpretation of Hedda Gabler" review by Toby Zinman for

the Philadelphia Inquirer of an alternative production of the play by Mauckingbird Theatre Company