Hedda Gabler Essay

Two women stand in a room, conversing. One, quite beautiful and fair, seems to stand in the shadow of the other—a dark, plainer woman whose harsh nature does not fit her rounded belly and wedding ring. Hedda, the darker woman, wishes so strongly to embrace her maternal side—to emulate the beautiful Thea and match her feminine social appearance. In his play Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen details the journey of young Hedda Tesman towards self-discovery and despairing suicide. Ibsen uses several symbols throughout the novel to represent the Jungian path of individuation—a process of self-realization and understanding. In the play, the manuscript represents Hedda’s stages of personal recognition: covetousness of others, raging denial of her flaws,

Hedda first learns of the manuscript from one she envies, discovering that Eilert “never wrote anything without [Thea’s] assistance” (18). The manuscript represents what Hedda deeply desires—a creative, spontaneous, and beautiful personality to help her more closely fit society’s ideal woman. Hedda longs for the “comradeship” of Thea and Eilert founded on their collaborative manuscript. Her jealousy arises from the dark, selfish areas of her personality, known in Jungian psychology as the shadow. Later in the second act, Eilert discusses the manuscript as “the book I have put my true self into” (34). His words jar the unaware Hedda, and the manuscript begins symbolizing what she lacks in self-knowledge. Hedda does not yet know she cannot force herself to have the creative qualities the manuscript represents. Her shadow controls her inner self as she remains ignorant to its workings, frustrated with her lacking

She grows irritated at her non-creative nature that arises from the very strong masculine aspect of her persona, know in Jungian psychology as the animus. Hedda desperately wishes to use and twist creativity and beauty in others through manipulation to satisfy her desires, but fails in her initial attempt to control Eilert’s destiny, only succeeding in helping him lose his manuscript. Hedda begins to view Eilert’s loss of the manuscript as a victory and believes she can somehow conquer her strong animus through destruction. Hedda asks if the manuscript can “be reproduced…or written over again,” illustrating her underlying hope that the feminine qualities she lacks might be destructible or temporal (Ibsen 51). As Hedda finally burns the manuscript at the close of Act III, she describes it as “burning [a] child:” the greatest form of female creativity (Ibsen 59). Hedda comes to a place of bitter denial at her true self, acting as if her imbalanced psyche will not affect her. Instead of attempting to control and use beauty, Hedda resorts to destroying