Norwegian Women from the 1800s

Hedda Tesman

HEDDA

[Goes up the room.] Well, I shall have one thing at least to kill time with in the meanwhile.

TESMAN

[Beaming.] Oh thank heaven for that! What is it, Hedda. Eh?

HEDDA

[In the middle doorway, looks at him with covert scorn.] My pistols, George.

TESMAN

[In alarm.] Your pistols!

HEDDA

[With cold eyes.] General Gabler’s pistols. [She goes out through the inner room, to the left.]

Henrik Ibsen’s character Hedda Tesman, is a major character in this play because it most revolves around her manipulative and unpleasant persona. Overall, she is not a very good person due her actions described above (some of which may give away the play). She tricks Eilert Lovborg in killing himself; treats others and elder whom she has no interest of with a great lack of respect. Hedda was a Norwegian woman from the late the 1800s, where women were trapped in their homes because they had nothing to do, except fulfill the roles of a wife. However, from these few lines above Hedda’s spends her free time she playing with pistols. Guns were weapons only for the men but here we can see that she does not care. Rather she goes on and gives her husband the “cold eye.” It can be seen from the very few pages she is the one who wear the pants in the relationship but can portray her to be the man when in favor of her plan.  As a lady from the 1800s it was definitely unladylike for one to be playing with guns. Instead she should have been doing something that represented typical female behavior. For instance, she should have been taking care of the house, or the male figure(s) in her life. Women were not expected to have individual interests; everything women should have done was in service to a male, or needs of the male. Women fragile creatures who needed to be taken care of by the strong protective male.

In addition, to her manipulation she is not ashamed to be talking to men without her husband’s presence. She is a woman of great intellect, and knows what she is doing for the most part. Women around that era, were modest, quiet, respectful, and would never directly look at another men; but Hedda she was something completely different. She was definitely advanced for her time period. Ibsen’s portrayal of Hedda was great because although she was the antagonist, it was interesting to see the roles to have changed. Plays normally perceived men to be evil and women to be of purity and honesty, however, Hedda has taken on the role of the of the villain. As a result, she uses her intelligence to outwit everyone who she does not like and still is bored.