Product Description

Ibsen wrote Hedda Gabler in Munich in 1890, shortly before his return to Norway after twenty-seven years of self-imposed exile. The play was intended as a tragedy on the purposelessness of life and, in particular, that which was imposed on the women of his time, both by their upbringing and by the social conventions which limited their activities. When it was first produced, it met with misunderstanding and abuse. It has nevertheless become one of the most popular of Ibsen's plays.

"Meyer's translations of Ibsen are a major fact in one's general sense of post-war drama. Their vital pace, their unforced insistence in the poetic center of Ibsen's genius, have beaten academic versions from the field."-George Steiner, New Statesman

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is generally regarded as the father of modern theatre: "His influence on contemporaries and following generations, whether directly or indirectly ... can hardly be overestimated."-John Russell Taylor

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3797797 in Books
• Published on: 1976-01-21
• Original language: Norwegian
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-Ibsen's classic is well served by the talents of Juliet Stevenson and seven other British actors, all veterans of the Royal Shakespeare Company, stage, and film. With excellent diction and generally convincing emotion, the polished cast conveys the dark despair that touches everyone in the play, and eventually overwhelms Hedda. Brief, but pleasant music gently marks the end of each act, and sound quality is good throughout. Exceptionally complete liner notes make it easy to find a specific track, and there's plenty of playbill-style information about the performers and the play. While this recordings is not a must buy, it will be a helpful audio component to classes studying the work of Norway's great 19th century playwright.
Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Drama in four acts by Henrik Ibsen, published in 1890 and produced the following year. The work reveals Hedda Gabler as a selfish, cynical woman bored by her marriage to the scholar Jorgen Tesman. Her father's pair of pistols provide intermittent diversion, as do the attentions of the ne'er-do-well Judge Brack. When Thea Elvestad, a longtime acquaintance of Hedda's, reveals that she has left her husband for the writer Ejlert Lovborg, who once pursued Hedda, the latter becomes vengeful. Learning that Ejlert has forsworn liquor, Hedda first steers him to a rowdy gathering at Brack's and subsequently burns the reputedly brilliant manuscript that he loses there while drunk. Witnessing his desperation, she sends him one of the pistols and he shoots himself. Brack deduces Hedda's complicity and demands that she become his mistress in exchange for his silence about the matter. Instead, she ends her ennui with the remaining pistol. The work is remarkable for its nonjudgmental depiction of an immoral, destructive character, one of the most vividly realized women in dramatic literature. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Language Notes
Text: English, Norwegian (translation)

Customer Reviews

Hedda, the prisioner
Hedda Gabler lives in an absolute prison. Her idylic residence is a prison, her marriage to a hopeful "ilustrious intellectual" is a prison, but above all, she lives imprisoned by herself, trapped by the social parameters that demand her to live the way she does. Hedda just can't figure out how to get out of that tedious state. She's intelligent, cold, severe; Gabler has an almost prodigious capacity to obtain all the information she inquires about the people around her; she manipulates them, she seems to get involved, but she simply tries to take advantage of the situation. Apparently, she doesn't feel much, but in reality, Hedda is in constant turmoil - her involvement has to do, almost exclusively, with what she just cannot allow herself to do.

For this woman, being able to have some sort of "power" over someone becomes the most exciting of all experiences, however - there's a point when she no longer will be able to manipulate the situation on her favor, she will realize how many forces have power over her; therefore, she will simply do the most congruent and coherent of things, as unexpected and shocking as the outcome of this play could possibly be.

Hedda Gabler was a remarkable play ahead of its time!
Henrik Ibsen was truly the Father of Modern Drama! His plays are much more "in-tune" with today's life than many scholars want to believe or will admit. Hedda was 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. It would appear that Thea Elvstead was the woman with more control, but this is not true. 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 & Thea) and Judge Brack, she takes the final power into her own hand. How ironic that the power is her late father's pistol. How tragic is her death when it was the ultimate control of a destiny that she so strongly desired? Henrik, you were a true visonary!!!

Hedda The Misunderstood
Aw Contrare my friends, Hedda was not bored, but trapped. A woman before her time, as most of Ibsen's female characters, unable to yield to the societal norms of the day. A strong, well educated woman existing in a time when permission to go out and about had to be asked of the dominant male of the house. The insurgence of the Industrial Revolution was taking place, the world was changing quickly, and with it old manors and chivalry was being extincted. These mores which Hedda had been raised to cling to were falling away for the world, but not for Hedda. They ran concourse to the blood in her veins.
Despite an inner strength of character and longing to dominate, inspire, and influence, she found herself torn between the new world and the way in which she was raised. Those values and their presence is signified by the silent character of her father, in the form of a picture that is continually refferred to.
When Hedda is overshadowed by Mrs. Elvstead in Lovborg's life she scrambles to make her mark, to have some influence. The nature of that inspiration is of no interest to her. As a madman who longs for fame and finds it in a violent act, Hedda does what she does for the power/influence in it, but not out of malice. Though we, the audience, may judge what her actions may have lead to, this is a moot avenue of perspective. It is "why" she does what she does that makes her such an intriguing character.