Explination To Women In Victorian Norway, By Henrik Ibsen

Hedda’s desire for power and her lack of control over her own life lead her to attack others. She spends much of the play conspiring against and manipulating others in an attempt to garner power over them. As she explains to Mrs. Elvsted, “Just once in my life I want to help shape someone’s destiny” (Ibsen 888). Her use of the pistols to control Lovborg and her own destiny further symbolizes the masculine power these phallic objects hold for her. ROUGH TRANSITION To women in Victorian Norway, marriage was a matter of survival. Women were entirely dependent upon men. The men were to provide financially for the family, and women were to take care of men physically, sexually, and spiritually (par. Zelster). Women played a vital but limited role, and Victorian society valued them less than male citizens. Society portrayed women as fragile, weak, and of little use outside the home. While working on A Doll’s …show more content…
Cut from a different cloth than those around her, Hedda wishes to escape the provincial society around her. Compared to the other female characters in the play, she seems like an unnatural woman. Jenny Bjorklund, author of Playing with Pistols: Female Masculinity in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, points out, “Hedda does not conform to the woman’s role of the time: she feels imprisoned in her gender role, her marriage, and her presumed pregnancy…” (Bjorklund 1). Hedda is unable to find fulfillment in the typical roles of women. She “cannot help a man create, either biologically or intellectually, because… she desires to arrogate the masculine role to herself (Templeton 209-210). As Ibsen himself wrote in his working notes, “she really wants to live the whole life of a man” (Templeton 230). Through this play, as in several others, Ibsen portrays the restrictive life of women’s experiences in contemporary society and the resulting emotional damage they