Henrik Ibsenв Ђ™s Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brechtв Ђ™s Mother...
Henrik Ibsen s Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brecht s Mother Courage and Her Children
Henrik Ibsen s Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brecht s Mother Courage and Her Children present two
strongly defined female heroines whose actions not only adversely affect the other characters lives
but also suggest a fundamental problem with their societies. Both playwrights establish the
macroscopic view of society s ills in the microscopic, individual characters of Hedda and Mother
Courage. Both characters have an indomitable magnetism that, on the one hand, allows them to
control others but, on the other, causes them to make desperate choices that reflect a repressive
society.
Ibsen creates in Hedda Gabler a dominating, fiercely controlling female ... Show more content on
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Though Ibsen depicts Hedda as a cold, unnatural creature who cannot love her husband, her child,
or even her lover Lovborg, she nevertheless remains a victim in life and, by her suicide, in death.
Society holds no place for Hedda other than as a wife or mother, and the implication remains
throughout the play that Hedda, as an intelligent individual, has wasted her intelligence and abilities
on her domestic role. Hedda channels her creative energy into a fruitless, harmful end, and the
coldness of her character matches the idea that anyone opposing the social roles set forth for them
must exist as an unnatural, unfeeling creature. If her life has given her a cage, then her death,
which seems to free Hedda, in actuality only gives yet another destructive manifestation of her
energies. Ibsen implies, by her death, that the only way Hedda finds freedom from an oppressive
system lies in the internalization of her destructive actions, or her suicide.
Though Hedda, in view of this restrictive society, potentially evokes our sympathetic emotions, she
nevertheless makes choices Ibsen carefully delineates in the play that lead to her ultimate
destruction. Perhaps the greatest tragedy underlying both Hedda s character and the play as a
whole remains with Hedda herself, for she ultimately chooses to take what society offers her
Tesman and the life of a social wife. When offered
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