Hedda Gabler

Summary

A honeymoon ends not with confetti but with cordite: Hedda—patrician, bored, and haunted by her dead duelist father’s matched pistols—returns to a marriage that already feels like a tomb. While her husband, the pedantic George Tesman, burrows into medieval manuscripts, Hedda prowls their overstuffed salon like a panther scenting blood. She fixates on Ejlert Løvborg, the recovering addict whose new book promises rebirth under the luminous guardianship of Thea Elvsted. Hedda’s game is subtle: a half-smile here, a whispered memory there, until the reformed genius is once again guzzling absinthe and misplacing destiny. When Tesman recovers the lost holograph, Hedda claims it with gloved fingers, knowing possession is sharper than adultery. She hands Løvborg one of her father’s pistols—an invitation, not a threat—and watches him vanish into the night. He dies messily, in Thea’s arms, the gunshot echoing like a slammed door. Hedda’s final act is maternal in its perversity: she burns the manuscript, calling it “the child,” then presses the remaining pistol to her own temple. Curtain falls on smoke, ash, and the acrid perfume of wilful annihilation.

Synopsis

Hedda Gabler, the degenerate daughter of a drunken, dueling father, has just returned with her husband, George Tesman, from their honeymoon. Hedda, who possesses an uncanny affection for her father's pistols, lives in jealous watchfulness over Ejlert Lovberg, a former lover whom she often pictures in Tesman's place, in her imagination. Lovberg, while under the positive influence of Thea Elvsted, has written an important book, and Hedda, learning this, sets out to recapture Lovberg's affection, whereupon he takes to drinking, loses the manuscript, and is cast into despair. Tesman finds the manuscript, which Hedda then obtains from him. Lovberg then breaks with Thea and goes to Hedda. She shows him her pistols; he takes one and goes to Thea's home where, in her arms, he shoots himself. Hedda, after burning the manuscript that she regards as the child of Lovberg and Thea, shoots herself as well.