[Music] Hedda Gabler is a powerful tragic for act play written by henrik ibsen and first performed in 1891 in act 1 george Tessman and his wife Hedda maiden name gobbler have just come back to Norway after a six-month vacation there visited by George's elderly aunt miss Juliana Tessman who has raised George has her own child had a generals daughter in a socialite is uncomfortable around the bourgeois Miss Tessman and has difficulty treating her like family the next visitor is mrs. elf stead a former classmate of heda's who's fled her husband in order to be close to her lover and her children's tutor Eilert love borg Eilert is a historian like George and his George's May and professional rival judge Brack drops by to see how the young couple is settling in he brings further news about alerts who has surprised everyone by getting sober and publishing a successful new book for George this is bad news because it makes Eilert a serious contender for the professorship George was counting on judge Brack confirms George's worst suspicions by stating that the professorship will now be subject to an open competition among the candidates struggling to suppress his career and financial worries George agrees to join judge Brack at a party that evening in act 2 that afternoon judge Brack returns to collect George for the party George isn't home so he sits down and chats with Hedda who's disillusioned with her marriage and faces her future with foreboding George returns changes into evening clothes and tells judge Brack he is expecting a visit from Eilert loved Borg and Eilert shows up and somewhat sheepishly announces he's completed yet another book which is even better than the recently published one he has the manuscript with him and offers to read some to George learning that George and the judge are headed out for the evening I learnt the Kline's an invitation to join them and sits down with Hedda to look through some photos meanwhile George and judge Brack enjoy a glass of punch in an adjoining room in the previous act it was hinted that i lured was an old flame of heda's well this seems his ongoing feelings for her when mrs. elf stead arrives hejdå sets about driving a wedge between her and I learned in what she pretends as a moment of careless honesty had a let slip that mrs. elf stead is worried Eilert will start drinking again a revelation that offends I learnt vindictively he pours himself two glasses of punch and downs them quickly then announces he would like to go along to the party after all and the three men leave mrs. elf sets trust in heta appears shaken in Act three the next morning finds Hedda asleep on the couch and mrs. elf stead sitting up in an armchair when a head awakens she sends mrs. elves dead to bed promising to let her know if she hears anything about Eilert George comes in carrying a Lord's manuscript it was misplaced during the night and he intends to return it discreetly to avoid further embarrassment leaving the manuscript and had his care he then rushes off to attend to his aunt Rena who's ill and likely will pass away soon judge Brack pays a brief visit and tells heta all about alerts drunken escapades which ended with a trip to the police station Eilert still reeling from his wild night out arrives and mrs. elf said quickly joins him on stage he announces that mrs. elf stead must leave him before she becomes further entangled in scandal when she resists he adds that he has destroyed his manuscript on which they had worked so diligently together notably the symbol of vine leaves appears in this act repeatedly mentioned in the dialogue the image of vine leaves captures the romance and idealism with which had a gambler still views Eilert love Bourg her former sweetheart the symbol is a kind of highbrow inside joke between the two of them since I Alert mentions that Hedda used to refer to vine leaves in his hair back when they were together in those days Eilert was a hard-drinking bohemian with a reputation for trouble but header remembers and reimagines him in mythological terms the vine leaves are an illusion to Dionysus Greek god of wine or his Roman equivalents Bacchus both of whom were frequently depicted wearing crowns or wreaths of grapevines heta doesn't glorify eyelids drunkenness per se but merely romanticizes its good qualities while overlooking its destructive potential for heta the sober version of Eilert is too timid awkward and tame once against a few drinks in him she hopes he will turn back into the flushed and fearless Eilert she knew before as it happens he does not return to the testament house with vine leaves in his hair but ends his night of carousing in a police station here in the night's fallouts mrs. elf stead is crushed by this revelation and leaves the house in a daze I alert then confesses he's lost the manuscript and now with his career reputation and romantic prospects in ruins he sees no option but to kill himself heta encourages him to make a brave end of it even lending him one of her two pistols after Eilert is gone heta takes out his manuscript and throws it into the fire in act 4 aunt Rina has died George returns from the wake still worried about Eilert and unsure of his whereabouts heta privately reveals to George that she's burnt alerts manuscript an act that fills him with a mixture of dread and gratitude mrs. elf stead rushes into the house concerned for Eilert who is rumored to have been hospitalized judge Brack shows up and confirms the rumor Kyler's has shot himself and will die shortly as a memorial to I alert mrs. Elstad decides to try to reconstruct his book from loose notes she kept and George agrees to help readers will consider the journey of the main symbol of alerts manuscript a critical symbol in the play that has different meanings for different characters at different times for alerts the manuscript represents a triumphant return to society and serves as a promissory note for a brighter future his previous book though critically successful is uncontroversial bland and concerned with the past while this new manuscript deals with the future of civilization this manuscript also represents my alerts attachment to mrs. elves dead who has spent months helping them assemble it mrs. elf said calls the manuscript their child headed gamblers decision to destroy the manuscript stems from her understanding that it's a symbol of Eilert and mrs. elves Ted's Union and thus of the distance that separates header from alert in the lack of the play George has a new chance of advancing his career as the editor of alerts writings Hedda burning his book has not truly banished his ghost which now threatens to haunt her own marriage as well in a sense George is becoming the foster parents to Eilert and mrs. Ellis Dead's child another of heda's plans that backfires while George and mrs. elf stead said about their work judge Brack reveals the truth of alerts condition to Hedda he's already dead and his death was evidently not a suicide he says the gun which he had seen before in heda's possession must have been stolen but as long as he keeps quiet the police will not be able to trace the pistol back to Hedda realizing she now is at judge Brax mercy Hedda quickly makes up her mind to end her own life rather than live in fear of blackmail she gets up goes quietly to an inner room and shoots herself in the temple rushing into the room George and the rest are astonished to find Hedda dead pistols are clearly another main symbol in the play and Tom checkoff once remarked that one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it although she never physically threatens her husband with the guns Hedda uses them to create psychological distance and perhaps to stir up some guilt over her husband's inability to provide her with the life she wants hennas pistols are a constant presence in the play whether brandished openly or merely mentioned in conversation before the play even begins she has frightened alert love Borg away by threatening to shoot him a threat that the desperate Eilert now wishes she had carried out the gun functions both as a deadly weapon and as a reminder of their tense but inspired past relationship in the final moments of the play by taking her own life she spares herself from the inevitable fear and shame of being implicated in eyelets death readers have likely picked up on the key themes of the play still resident over a century after its first performance first is the boredom of the idle rich one of the most startling things about hedig a blurs actions is that her manipulations are motivated largely by boredom heda's world-weary attitude drives her to treat others with careless contempt in fact Hedda is unique among the plays major characters in her inability to derive any kind of real enjoyment from life this could be a consequence of her role as a high society woman who lacks a vocation or rather a woman who has rejected her assigned vocation as a wife and potential mother ultimately hennas profound boredom leads to lazy thinking on her parts and other characters actions predictable enough to the audience begin to catch her off guard for example judge Brack is a source of cynical amusement to Hedda maybe even a potential lover but she's too diverted by his company to truly recognize the threat he possesses fixated on the chance for some excitement from her wealthy detached life Hedda discounts the very real possibility that Eilert will drink his way into a tawdry mess power and powerlessness is another main theme in fact another reason for Hedda gobblers destructive and seemingly random behavior is her oppressive feeling of powerlessness throughout the play head and grasps for power over others not just on the grand scale of molding destinies but on the more modest level of the individual conversations she has her cruel joke on Miss Giuliana Tessman in act 1 is a small but significant example she has nothing to gain from making miss Tessman self-conscious about her bonnet for Hedda miss testaments feelings count for less than the feeling of being in control hedid derives a similar amusement from having mrs. elves dead at her mercy and in her interactions with judge Brack Hedda seizes every opportunity to control the dynamic even if it means firing a pistol in his direction or her own in getting Eilert drunk after mrs. elves ted has spent years helping him get sober Hedda asserts a crude and short-lived form of power over her former beau finally sexism and liberation is a key theme Hedda Gabler his feelings of boredom and powerless in this stem from the repressive social structures within which she's forced to live lacking the freedom to pursue a career or choose her own diversions Hedda has little to look forward to in married life and feel suffocated the women in Hedda Gabler respond to these societal constraints in various ways miss Juliana testman seems to a fully embrace the traditional feminine role of caregiver mrs. L stead courageously flees from her failing marriage however Hedda is still at the mercy of a culture in which men have much greater freedom than women and in which some men like judge Brack are entirely too glad to abuse this freedom Hedda Gabler was not the only play in which absent dramatized the plight of women in a sexist society a doll's house and ghosts feature similar themes from its debut audiences were polarized by this controversial play one 1891 critic said Hedda was an enigmatic even fascinating character full of seemingly contradictory traits she obsessed over a triviality z-- while smiling at tragedies and she thirsted for life but was undone by her own cowardice the play was similarly controversial when it arrived in England in the United States but Hedda continues to fascinate audiences and directors alike to this very day you