The whole drama shows Hedda’s paradoxical marriage, romantic, and life attitudes, these contradictory things finally result in her tragedy ending. At the beginning of Act I, it shows”A large, pleasantly and tastefully furnished drawing room, decorated in somber tones.”(P 782) The room is elegant and the furniture is grace, but the tone is dark and the atmosphere is negative, this is controversial and conveys a depressive feeling. This also indicates that Hedda is not satisfied with her present life. Hedda is an upper-class lady, but she marries to a lower-class scholar. We can realize that she despises Tesman and Aunt Julie’s lifestyle from her words, for instance, Hedda says Aunt Julie’s new hat is old and umseemly, and Hedda even calls her Miss Tesman instead of Aunt Julie, Hedda actually dose not think they are family. Ibsen even use her ante-marital name Hedda Gabler to emphasizes her upper-class status.
Then why Hedda chooses to marry Tesman? When Judge Brack asks her, she says, “Well, he’s a very diligent archivist anyway. Some day he might do something interesting with all of it.”(P 802) Hedda thinks Tesman is a reliable husband, and he has got the PhD degree and may have a bright future. Though she does not love him，she is pusillanimous to against the temporal situation that she need a sumptuous life. Lovborg can not provide this life to her since he is dissipated with bad reputation (before he writes the book). Hedda dose not dare to go on with him, she cares about ohters’ comments. Thus she finally marries to a “diligent archivist”. However, Hedda gets tired to her marriage quickly after the honeymoon. She says Tesman is a specialist who is “not so much fun to travel with. Not for the long run anyway.”(P 802) She falls into the contradictory situation again. On the one hand, she needs the materials, thus she could not leave Tesman,; On the other hand, she desires a man who really understands and inspires her, so she still cares Lovborg.
The paradoxical situation makes her depressive especially after Lovborg writes the book and wins wonderful reputations. When she knows the affairs between Lovborg and Mrs. Elvsted, she gets vicious and takes a series of ridiculous actions. She foments the relationship between them. When Hedda and Lovborg waits for Mrs. Elvsted, she suggests Lovborg that Mrs. Elvsted does not totally trust in him, this makes Lovborg angry and he decides to leave with Tesman and Brack. Hedda may think that she can still affect Lovborg’s mood and she is happy about that. She even images Lovborg with vine leaves in his hair. As far as I am concerned, though Hedda loves Lovborg, the love is somewhat ridiculous. She does not dare to go on with him when he is not successful, but she cannot stand Lovborg betrays her when he becomes successful. Maybe all she cares about are her own feelings and happiness.
I think it would be beneficial to take your argument a bit further and pursue the true meaning behind Hedda’s actions. Why was she so manipulative and vicious? How did her mind work? What pleasure did she derive from such psychopathic mischief to others? I think the most interesting thing about this question, which is central to the whole drama, is that it is unanswerable, or has been made unanswerable by Henrik Ibsen. Why? Because this is a play where all the audience have access to are acts and actions of the characters, not inner thoughts and feelings. There’s not even a soliloquy in this play to give the audience any clue on how to enter Hedda’s thoughts and reasoning. All we can gather from reading the script which describes the character’s actions or even seeing the performance, are hard facts, and therefore not enough to psychoanalyze the characters. Was Hedda mad? psychopathic? manipulative? We cannot affirm anything because we do not have access to her inner thoughts. However, upon reading the piece, I constantly have to question Hedda’s sanity, in an attempt to comprehend her “ridiculous decisions and paradoxical life”, as you put it. Yet no one can affirm nor fully understand her mental state, what we have, and that’s what Ibsen wants, are mere speculations about what Hedda could be thinking.
Thus, impressed as I was already by how Ibsen unveiled and eventually stripped each character off, I was most amazed by his ability to provide the audience with enough description of the characters to skillfully leave them with only uncertain speculation about what could be the reason behind the character’s actions, thus leave the discussion and contemplation open to possibilities.
I agree with you that even though Hedda married Tesman, she did not love him at all. In the introduction, it stated that Hedda belonged to upper – middle class; however, her husband, Tesman grew up in lower middle class. In the totally different background, the most important reasons that she married Tesman because it was an only option for her to get the house out of boredom (780). In addition, Hedda explained to Brack two reasons why she chose Hedda as her husband. First of all, “he’s certainly be called a most acceptable man in every way” (802). In the part, she pointed out that even though Tesman did not have strong financial, he had already gotten degree which would give her some glories and enrich her future life. In addition, she thought Tesman was a reasonable men in the period time. For example, form soliloquy by Hedda, she said that “he went around constantly begging with all his strength, begging for permission to let him take care of me”(802). In the soliloguy, Hedda described Tesmen by using “begging” to show that Tesman was completely genuine to her. As a result, she thought although she did not love him at all, she would have some abilities to influence on him and make her life become interesting.