My Hedda Gabler Response

Hedda Gabler Response

‘Hedda Gabler’, a play about a newly married woman in the late nineteenth century, held back by the social expectations of woman in that society, an already intriguing setting for a play and its characters. For a woman to be manipulative in this setting, led me to only imagine the depth of 

Hedda’s character; and my expectations were definitely met.

Split into four acts, the structure of the text supports the development of the characters, especially Hedda. Introduced to us in the first act, we as the audience cannot yet understand the nature of Hedda. We can see she is unconventional and harsh, but these personality traits do not hint to the character development seen throughout the rest of the text.

Throughout the text, the actions on stage are supported by stage directions. In many plays the writer’s direction can either be too vague, not giving the actor any insight at all to the character and therefore giving them no support on or off stage, or too detailed, leaving no room for interpretation or artistic choice on the actors and directors behalf. However, the stage directions given by Richard Eyre, allow the actor to find a balance between the two. When describing how or what the character is doing, he lays solid foundations for the actor, which they can then go on to develop further. I believe this form of direction to be very beneficial and I can see how they will help me when I work with the text actively.

Only having a cast of seven characters allows for a more intimate setting. Being able to understand such complex characters and their relationships with each other, requires the audience to be able to focus on them all, both individually and as a whole, something only a small cast can provide. A play with a large cast has the capability to create a heightened atmosphere, but it can also be too much for an audience to process. The details in the text can sometimes be lost when transferred to the stage. The cast of ‘Hedda Gabler’ allows the details of every character to be explored by both the actors and audience.

A text is only as good as the characters it presents. I believe that without richly detailed characters, a play becomes two dimensional and the action on stage becomes meaningless. The characters in ‘Hedda Gabler’ are captivating because some of them are so diverse, yet they are forced by circumstance to act differently. Some characters are aware of this façade, yet some are not. This scenario makes for an interesting watch for all audience members.

Hedda Gabler is a central figure of the text and its plot, yet far from its heroine. The story is her story, not just because the play is about her life, but because she controls the play in the same way she controls people. Throughout the play, I believed that the next scene would suddenly reveal to me the truth beneath Hedda’s scheming and manipulation. However by the end of the text, even after its surprise ending, I felt parts of Hedda’s identity still seemed secret to me. As an audience member you have a privileged insight to seeing a situation from every angle, being let in on characters secret thoughts and wishes; and I have never wanted to know someone’s thoughts and wishes in the way I wanted to know Hedda’s. After the confusion of still being in the dark, I was finally able to conclude the full extent of Hedda’s manipulation. Even I, as an audience member, had been manipulated by Hedda. I believed that I would be allowed to dissect Hedda’s character as a plays plot normally allows me to do, yet it never happened. I had been given a false sense of security that was only revealed to me long after I had finished reading.  So Hedda’s manipulation is probably the strongest there is; it extended off the page, affecting the only people who thought they were untouchable- the audience.

Hedda surprised me. Such a complex character normally leads you to either form a strong opinion, whether that opinion is positive or negative. However, perhaps because of how bemused I felt after exploring her character, I neither liked nor disliked Hedda. Yet again she surprised me, by not allowing me to form an opinion and in a way guarding herself from judgment. The only conclusion I can draw from Hedda is one that is very obvious, yet probably one that not many would associate with Hedda; she is human. Prone to changing emotions and intricate thoughts and desires, she is unmistakably and completely human.

George Tesman is a strange man. I struggled to grasp Hedda’s character because of how complex it was, yet I struggled to grasp George’s character because of how plain it was. Like Hedda I was waiting for a situation that would reveal George in his true light, but it never came. He is the opposite of Hedda: plain, boring and dull. He is not a cruel man, he may even be described as a nice man. However ‘nice’ is as descriptive it gets with George Tesman. I believe his soul purpose in the text is to represent the life that Hedda loathes and the people she is willing to manipulate to escape her dull surroundings. George Tesman is the accumulation of everything Hedda detests about her life, and as harsh as it seems, I understand why.

I believe Thea Elvsted to be one of the most underestimated characters in the play. Hedda is strong minded and to an extent strong willed, yet I would argue that Thea is more so. In 1890, for a woman to leave her husband takes strength and courage beyond anything I saw demonstrated by Hedda. Hedda is a strong woman, that much is true, but Thea had the courage of her convictions to defy all social expectations of her and leave her husband for the pure reason that she believed it to be the right thing to do.  To an extent it explains Hedda’s strange mix of interest and hatred for Thea because she is intrigued at how Thea can have the courage to do what she does, yet hates her because she realises that the strength Thea has to follow through, is something she herself doesn’t possess.  

Judge Brack is also a surprising character. Introduced to us as a gentlemen, it is soon revealed that Judge Brack has a lot of power. I knew he was a powerful man, with friends with high statuses, yet the true power he has is the same as Hedda; manipulation. If there was one character I believed to have constant power over all the others, it was Hedda, yet it seems that Brack has power over even her, and by the end of the play he is blackmailing her. However his power battle with Hedda is lost when she kills herself. He can no longer ‘own’ her or manipulate her- she makes the ultimate sacrifice to be free of his manipulation. He surprised me because, until the end of the text, similarly to Hedda, he did not reveal his true intentions.

Eilert Loveborg is the odd one out. His life has been filled with scandal and outrage; a life not deemed proper by the rest of society. However, he represents something in a similar way Thea does; he has a life of freedom that Hedda craves. When Hedda kills herself it is similar to the circumstance in which everyone believes Eilert died. When Hedda’s ‘fairytale’ is revealed to be false, it seems that she lives out her fantasy by taking Eilert’s place; like she is fulfilling the role she always wanted to play. As George represents everything Hedda loathes, Eilert represents everything Hedda admires.

Miss Tesman represents the type of woman that Hedda and Thea defy; the woman that nineteenth century society pressured them to be. She looks after Aunt Rina and occasionally visits the Tesman household. She represents the life Hedda would have led if she conformed to societies expectations. She is constantly hinting at Hedda and George having a child, representing yet another expectation as a woman. She maps a timeline of Hedda’s would-be life: get married, have children, look after your family. It explains Hedda’s dislike towards Miss Tesman; she may not dislike her, but what she represents, with that being everything Hedda does not want.

The story and plot line is unusual. Its feminist take on Victorian society is both unusual and refreshing. It could be argued that the story starts with the title ‘Hedda Gabler’. As she is married to George Tesman, it would make sense that the title would therefore be ‘Hedda Tesman’. I think the choice of calling the play ‘Hedda Gabler’ makes a clear statement- Hedda would not be changed by marriage. It was often thought that marriage marked a significant change in a woman’s life, and sometimes, this was true. The change of surname on the woman’s part made this official. The fact that the title of the play does not support this, shows Hedda’s determination not to conform to the life of a married woman- she would not be owned by any man.

I believe the story to be about defiance. Hedda knew that if she carried on with the life she was leading, she would never win. The game she was playing was useless, because it was a game that only men could win. No matter how many people she manipulated, no matter how many secrets she knew, she would not be heard in a world where nobody wanted to listen. Hedda is a dramatic being and her final act on earth lived up to that- her final curtain call as it were. I love how the audience were given all the clues about the ending, yet still I didn’t expect it. Hedda held every character and audience member in the palm of her hand.

In conclusion I feel that the play immerses the audience in a way that I never knew possible. Hedda controls people by allowing them to think she is doing the complete opposite. She is emotional, yet cold, she is desired, yet despised, she is secretive, yet speaks her mind; she is a contradiction in herself. Yet one thing she definitely is- an extraordinary woman.