Hedda Gabler Dominance

TITLE : People may argue that George, Eilert, and Judge Brack are responsible for Hedda's death, but in reality it is the fault of Hedda's society. I've chosen this statement for several reasons. Ibsen's character, Hedda Gabler, represents the women of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Hedda stands the issues of self-worth and the deflated value that each woman places upon her own importance as a result of male dominance. We can see this in the play, as we read we learn more about the character of Hedda Gabler. She is the daughter of a General who expected a life if glamour and wealth and rebels against the boredom of a dull, narrow existence by vindictively scheming against everyone around her. Hedda also strives to ruin Eilert Lovborg, the intellectual she
Her desire to escape and her yearning for individual and spiritual freedom come to the surface as she discovers her father's pair of pistols. Comparing Hedda with the other women of the play we can see that thea wasn't the woman with the more control. She also had an unhappy marriage because of Eilert's work. Aunt Julia is different; she likes to help people, she raised George and took care Rina. As far as Berda is concerned, there is not much to say because she is the servant of the house and she just takes care of everybody and obeys to orders from her bosses. Hedda is a powerful woman, who on the surface appeared to be confined by a dress, imprisoned in man's house, and smothered by a male-dominated society. Hedda was a calculating "bitch" who dared (quite shrewdly) to cross over her set in stone "boundaries", manipulate others, and stand back and watch others lives be destroyed as a result. But when she is backed into a corner by the "new" creative couple (George and Thea) and Judge Brack, she takes the final power into her own hand. The irony is that the power is her late father's