Hedda Gabler

About the show

Hedda, the daughter of a general, has just returned to her villa in Kristiania (now Oslo) from her honeymoon. Her husband is George Tesman, a young, aspiring, and serious academic who continued his research during their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she never loved him, but married him probably because she thinks her years of youthful abandon are over. The reappearance of George's academic rival, Eilert Løvborg, throws their lives into disarray. Eilert, a writer, is a recovering alcoholic who has wasted his talent until now. Thanks to a relationship with Hedda's old schoolmate, Thea Elvsted (who is in the process of leaving her husband for him), Eilert is showing signs of rehabilitation (for example refusing alcohol) and has just published a bestseller in the same field as George's. When Hedda and Eilert talk privately together, it becomes apparent that they are former lovers. The critical success of his recently published work makes Eilert a threat to George, as Eilert is now a competitor for the university professorship George had been hoping for and anticipating. George and Hedda are financially overstretched, and George tells Hedda that he will not be able to finance the regular entertaining or luxurious housekeeping that she had been expecting. Upon meeting Eilert, however, the couple discovers that he has no intention of competing for the professorship, but rather has spent the last few years working on what he considers to be his masterpiece, the "sequel" to his recently published work. Apparently jealous of Thea's influence over Eilert, Hedda hopes to come between them. Despite his previous drinking problem, she encourages Eilert to accompany George and his associate, Judge Brack, to a party, which promises to be raucous. George returns home from the party at dawn the following day and reveals that he found the manuscript (the only copy) of Eilert's great new work, which the latter lost while drunk. George is then called away to his aunt's house, leaving the manuscript in Hedda's possession. When Eilert next sees Hedda and Thea, he tells them that he has lost the manuscript. Thea is horrified, and it is revealed that she had considerable influence in its development. Hedda says nothing to contradict Eilert or to reassure Thea. After Thea has left, Hedda encourages Eilert to commit suicide, giving him a pistol that had belonged to her father. She then burns the manuscript and tells George she has destroyed it to secure their future. George is momentarily horrified. Almost immediately the news comes that Eilert has killed himself after the party, and George and Thea are determined to try to reconstruct his unpublished new book from Eilert's notes, which Thea has kept. Hedda is shocked to discover from Judge Brack that Eilert's death, apparently in a brothel, was messy and probably accidental; this "ridiculous and vile" death contrasts with the "beautiful and free" one that Hedda had imagined for him (and asked him to ensure). Worse, Brack knows the origins of the pistol. He tells Hedda that if he reveals what he knows, a scandal will likely arise around her. Hedda realises that this places Brack in a position of continuous power over her, which he implies he will use to coerce her, possibly into a sexual relationship. Leaving the others, she goes into her smaller room and then shoots herself in the head with her other pistol. The others in the room assume that Hedda is simply firing shots, and they follow the sound to investigate. The play ends with George, Brack and Thea discovering her body.