What Is The Theme Of Courage In Hedda Gabler

Henrik Ibsen’s, Hedda Gabler contributes many ideas to the topic of the meaning of life. Hedda exemplifies many common emotions that a typical person would have when dealing with life regardless of her social placement in the story. Along with many other ideas in the play, the reader is given the ability to observe the reactions of the characters and the situations they face when dealing with life that would not be considered uncommon today. With one of the underlying themes of the story being the meaning of courage, the reader also is given the opportunity to explore the meaning of living, and having the courage to do so. In Hedda Gabler 's case, we are able to see the other side of the coin, being that courage does not only come from living …show more content…
Hedda chooses to marry Tesman even though he is beneath her social class. We see a human side of her in this action that may be overlooked by most when analyzing her character. She seems to be chasing a dream for a normal life in hopes that she can be perfectly fine without all the fuss she is used to, or to put it simply, her dream to be satisfied. She proves that she has a heart and is not totally ruled by her higher upbringing. It is understandable to think that as we learn more about her husband, we understand Hedda 's motive for giving up on life later on, though she doesn’t seem to care about doing much to better their relationship. From the beginning of her marriage, she sees that her husband, although in love, doesn 't treat her as a new wife is generally treated. He takes for granted her emotional state, and considers her a happy wife. However, it is apparent that Hedda is very bored with her marriage, and even seems to accept Tesman and be simply satisfied rather than someone she could be completely invested in. In discussing her honeymoon, she later goes on to tell Brack that,”…the whole time, [I was] wishing exactly the same [to be home].” She goes on to explain to Brack how uninterested Tesman was during the honeymoon, which caused the marriage to start out sour. It took courage for her to accept the life she chose and to try to improve upon it when there was already a good …show more content…
Hedda’s life ended pointlessly. She was simply fed up with her perfectly sad little life, meanwhile, Lovborg had accomplished quite a bit in his time. The only reason he would’ve committed suicide would be over the sadness of his lost “child” with Elvsted. Lovborg’s courage came from living and going on with what life handed him, while Hedda gave up when she hadn’t even tried to live her life to the fullest, which was not very courageous in the