Hedda Gabler Foreword

The Play A violent attack on social convention and conformist respectability. The play is a fusion of character portrayal and social comment; the social comment is Hedda Gabler

Hedda Emotionally and sexually frigid. She is incapable of expressing her feelings. She is afraid of sex when it involves emotion and disgusted with it when it does not. Neurotic Jealous Contemptuous Abusive Self-destructive Perverse Cold-hearted Spiritually empty Compelling Charismatic

Triangles Think about the significance of triangular relationships in the play. Draw a series of triangles that display the sexual and the parental relationships involved. Note: “So central is the motif of the child-book and how it might survive, that more than meaning the relationships involved, it is the play.”

Foils Tesman [pedantic, uncreative] Judge Brack [cynical epicurean] Aunt Juliana [life of selflessness] Hedda [superior, aristocratic woman who is a slave to her caste] Lovborg [unruly, creative] Tesman [homespun goodness] Lovborg [ lack of cynicism] Hedda [destructive self-expression] Thea [ socially, intellectually, physically inferior to Hedda]