cally clever as always, describing Hedda in these terms: "a neurotic and lascivious woman is apt to be horrified when she finds she is pregnant (ix).") Nora, the lead character in Ibsen's A Doll's House, certainly is easier than Hedda to define in terms of motivation, whether in a feminist context or not: a middle-class housewife treated by her husband as a plaything, a "doll," she rebels at the male assumption of power and intellectual superiority inherent in her current situation. Hedda Gabler's motivations are not so simply identified.
A recapitulation of the plot is necessary for reference (Ibsen 501-604):
HEDDA GABLER, the 29 year-old daughter of the aristocratic General Gabler, has married well-meaning, middle-class academic Jorgen TESMAN on something of a whim - after having clandestinely flirted for years with Tesman's rival, the brilliant but self-destructive Eilert LOVBORG. There is no attempt made in the drama to explain her reasons for marrying Tesman; she did not allow herself intimacy or marriage with Lovborg, as she explains, for fear of scandal. In all of her actions and relations, Hedda is very clear on the restrictions of her social position on her actions.
The play begins as Hedda and Tesman return from a six-month honeymoon/research trip throughout Europe. Tesman has overextended himself financially in order to impress his aristocratic bride - but returns to his bourgeois academic community on the expectation of a major university appointment arranged by the wealthy, politically influential (from Hedda's upper circle) BRACK. Met by Tesman's AUNT JULIANA, a self-sacrificing woman who recognizes immediately (but does not reveal to Tesman) that the new bride is in the first months of pregnancy, Hedda confesses to Brack that she is dying of boredom from the entire situation of her marriage (not revealing the pregnancy to him, either). Brack, sensing an opening, uses this as an invitation to propose r...