Hedda Gabbler

A Craving For Life In Henrik Isben’s Hedda Gabler, he masterfully portrays the main character, Hedda, as “neither a monster nor a saint…[she] is simply a tragic character who is destroyed by the unharmonious and irreconciliable contrasts in her own character.” Ultimately, this very unique character brings about her own demise. She is truly neither good nor evil, but in the end, this “tragic character” inevitably digs her own grave. Isben first expresses …

…inadequicies. Symbolically denying the life works of others, Hedda affirms her own unsatisfied sense of worth. Not having any positive influence in the world, Hedda Gabler can only define herself negatively: she destroys what she cannot accept. Undermining her husband with her coldness, denying her pregnancy, destroying Thea’s life work, burning Lovborg’s creative product, ruining the child manuscript, and finally, commting suicide, are all preverted attempts to satisfy her tragic “craving for life.”