THERE ARE two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man.
The wife in the play ends by having no idea of what is right or wrong; natural feeling on the one hand and belief in authority on the other have altogether bewildered her.
A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.
She has committed forgery, and she is proud of it; for she did it out of love for her husband, to save his life. But this husband with his commonplace principles of honor is on the side of the law and looks at the question from the masculine point of view.
Spiritual conflicts. Oppressed and bewildered by the belief in authority, she loses faith in her moral right and ability to bring up her children. Bitterness. A mother in modern society, like certain insects who go away and die when she has done her duty in the propagation of the race. Love of life, of home, of husband and children and family. Now and then a womanly shaking off of her thoughts. Sudden return of anxiety and terror. She must bear it all alone. The catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably. Despair, conflict, and destruction.
(Krogstad has acted dishonorably and thereby become well-to-to-do; now his prosperity does not help him, he cannot recover his honor.)
A room comfortably, but not showily, furnished. A door to the right in the back leads to the hall; another door to the left in the back leads to the room or office of the master of the house, which can be seen when the door is opened. A fire in the stove. Winter day.
She enters from the back, humming gaily; she is in outdoor dress and carries several parcels, has been shopping. As she opens the door, a porter is seen in the hall, carrying a Christmas tree. She: Put it down there for the present. (Taking out her purse) How much? Porter: Fifty öre. She: Here is a crown. No, keep the change. The porter thanks her and goes. She continues humming and smiling contentedly as she opens several of the parcels she has brought. Calls off to find out if he is home. Yes! At first, conversation through the closed door; then he opens it and goes on talking to her while continuing to work most of the time, standing at his desk. There is a ring at the hall door; he does not want to be disturbed; shuts himself in. The maid opens the door to her mistress’s friend, just arrived in town. Happy surprise. Mutual explanation of the state of affairs. He has received the post of manager in the new joint-stock bank and is to begin at New Year’s; all financial worries are at an end. The friend has come to town to look for some small employment in an office or whatever may present itself. Mrs. Stenborg encourages her, is certain that all will turn out well. The maid opens the front door to the debt collector. Mrs. Stenborg terrified; they exchange a few words; he is shown into the office. Mrs. Stenborg and her friend; the circumstances of the collector are touched upon. Stenborg enters in his overcoat; has sent the collector out the other way. Conversation about the friend’s affairs; hesitation on his part. He and the friend go out; his wife follows them into the hall; the Nurse enters with the children. Mother and children play. The collector enters. Mrs. Stenborg sends the children out to the left. Big scene between her and him. He goes. Stenborg enters; has met him on the stairs; displeased; wants to know what he came back for? Her support? No intrigues. His wife cautiously tries to pump him. Strict legal answers. Exit to his room. She: (repeating her words when the collector went out) But that’s impossible. Why, I did it from love!
The last day of the year. Midday. Nora and the old Nurse. Nora, driven by anxiety, is putting on her things to go out. Anxious random questions of one kind and another intimate that thoughts of death are in her mind. Tries to banish these thoughts, to make light of it, hopes that something or other may intervene. But what? The Nurse goes off to the left. Stenborg enters from his room. Short dialogue between him and Nora. The Nurse re-enters; looks for Nora; the youngest child is crying. Annoyance and questioning on Stenborg’s part; exit the Nurse; Stenborg is going in to the children. Doctor enters. Scene between him and Stenborg. Nora soon re-enters; she has turned back; anxiety has driven her home again. Scene between her, the Doctor, and Stenborg. Stenborg goes into his room. Scene between Nora and the Doctor. The Doctor goes out. Nora alone. Mrs. Linde enters. Scene between her and Nora. Lawyer Krogstad enters. Short scene between him, Mrs. Linde, and Nora. Mrs. Linde in to the children. Scene between Krogstad and Nora. She entreats and implores him for the sake of her little children; in vain. Krogstad goes out. The letter is seen to fall from outside into the letter box. Mrs. Linde re-enters after a short pause. Scene between her and Nora. Half confession. Mrs. Linde goes out. Nora alone. Stenborg enters. Scene between him and Nora. He wants to empty the letter box. Entreaties, jests, half-playful persuasion. He promises to let business wait till after New Year’s Day; but at 12 o’clock midnight . . . ! Exit. Nora alone. Nora: (looking at the clock) It is five o’clock. Five; seven hours till midnight. Twenty-four hours till the next midnight. Twenty-four and seven—thirty-one. Thirty-one hours to live.
A muffled sound of dance music is heard from the floor above. A lighted lamp on the table. Mrs. Linde sits in an armchair and absently turns the pages of a book, tries to read, but seems unable to fix her attention; once or twice she looks at her watch. Nora comes down from the party; so disturbed she was compelled to leave; surprise at finding Mrs. Linde, who pretends that she wanted to see Nora in her costume. Helmer, displeased at her going away, comes to fetch her back. The Doctor also enters, to say good-by. Meanwhile Mrs. Linde has gone into the side room on the right. Scene between the Doctor, Helmer, and Nora. He is going to bed, he says, never to get up again; they are not to come and see him; there is ugliness about a deathbed. He goes out. Helmer goes upstairs again with Nora, after the latter has exchanged a few words of farewell with Mrs. Linde. Mrs. Linde alone. Then Krogstad. Scene and explanation between them. Both go out. Nora and the children. Then she alone. Then Helmer. He takes the letters out of the letter box. Short scene; good night; he goes into his room. Nora in despair prepares for the final step, is already at the door when Helmer enters with the open letter in his hand. Big scene. A ring. Letter to Nora from Krogstad. Final scene. Divorce. Nora leaves the house.
THE PLAY is to be like a picture of life. Belief undermined. But it does not do to say so. “The Orphanage”—for the sake of others. They are to be happy—but this too is only an appearance—everything is ghosts.
A leading point: She has been a believer and romantic—this is not entirely obliterated by the standpoint reached later—“Everything is ghosts.”
Marriage for external reasons, even when these are religious or moral, brings a Nemesis upon the offspring.
She, the illegitimate child, can be saved by being married to—the son—but then—?
¶ He was dissipated and his health was shattered in his youth; then she appeared, the religious enthusiast; she saved him; she was rich. He was going to marry a girl who was considered unworthy. He had a son by his wife, then he went back to the girl; a daughter.
¶ These modern women, ill-used as daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated according to their gifts, prevented from following their calling, deprived of their inheritance, embittered in temper—it is these who furnish the mothers of the new generation. What will be the result?
¶ The keynote is to be: The prolific growth of our intellectual life, in literature, arts, etc.—and in contrast to this: all of mankind gone astray.
The complete human being is no longer a product of nature, he is an artificial product like grain, and fruit trees, and the Creole race and thoroughbred horses and dogs, the vine, etc.
The fault lies in that all mankind has failed. If a man claims to live and develop in a human way, it is megalomania. All mankind, and especially the Christian part of it, suffers from megalomania.
¶ Among us, monuments are erected to the dead, since we have a duty toward them; we allow lepers to marry; but their offspring . . . ? The unborn . . . ?
¶ This married woman more and more imagines that she is an important personality, and as a consequence feels compelled to create for herself a sensational past—
¶ If an interesting female character appears in a new story or in a play, she believes that it is she who is being portrayed.
¶ The masculine environment helps to confirm her in this belief.
¶ The two lady friends agree to die together. One of them carries out her end of the bargain. But the other one who realizes what lies in store for her loses her courage. This is the reversal—
¶ “He has such a disgusting way of walking when one sees him from behind.”
¶ She hates him because he has a goal, a mission in life. The lady friend has one too, but does not dare to devote herself to it. Her personal life treated in fictional form.
¶ In the second act the manuscript that is left behind—
¶ “The lost soul” apologizes for the man of culture. The wild horse and the race horse. Drinks—eats paprika. House and clothes. Revolution against the laws of nature—but nothing stupid, not until the position is secure.
¶ The pale, apparently cold beauty. Expects great things of life and the joy of life.
The man who has now finally won her, plain and simple in appearance, but an honest and talented, broad-minded scholar.
¶ The manuscript that H. L. leaves behind contends that man’s mission is: Upward, toward the bearer of light. Life on the present foundations of society is not worth living. Therefore he escapes from it through his imagination. By drinking, etc.—Tesman stands for correct behavior. Hedda for blasé oversophistication. Mrs. R. is the nervous-hysterical modern individual. Brack represents the personal bourgeois point of view.
¶ Then H. departs this world. And the two of them are left sitting there with the manuscript they cannot interpret. And the aunt is with them. What an ironic comment on humanity’s striving for progress and development.
¶ But Holger’s double nature intervenes. Only by realizing the basely bourgeois can he win a hearing for his great central idea.
¶ Mrs. Rising is afraid that H., although “a model of propriety,” is not normal. She can only guess at his way of thinking but cannot understand it. Quotes some of his remarks—
¶ One talks about building railways and highways for the cause of progress. But no, no, that is not what is needed. Space must be cleared so that the spirit of man can make its great turnabout. For it has gone astray. The spirit of man has gone astray.
¶ Holger: I have been out. I have behaved obscenely. That doesn’t matter. But the police know about it. That’s what counts.
¶ H. L.’s despair lies in that he wants to master the world but cannot master himself.
¶ Tesman believes that it is he who has in a way seduced H. L. into indulging in excesses again. But that is not so. It is as Hedda has said: that it was he she dreamed of when she talked about “the famous man.” But she does not dare tell Tesman this.
¶ To aid in understanding his own character, L. has made notes in “the manuscript.” These are the notes the two of them should interpret, want to interpret, but cannot possibly.
¶ Brack is inclined to live as a bachelor, and then gain admittance to a good home, become a friend of the family, indispensable—
¶ They say it is a law of nature. Very well then, raise an opposition to it. Demand its repeal. Why give way. Why surrender unconditionally—
¶ In conversations between T. and L. the latter says that he lives for his studies. The former replies that in that case he can compete with him.—(T. lives on his studies) that’s the point.
¶ L. (Tesman) says: I couldn’t step on a worm! “But now I can tell you that I too am seeking the professorship. We are rivals.”
¶ She has respect for his knowledge, an eye for his noble character, but is embarrassed by his insignificant, ridiculous appearance, makes fun of his conduct and remarks.
¶ The aunt asks all sorts of ambiguous questions to find out about those things that arouse her imagination the most.
¶ NOTES: One evening as Hedda and Tesman, together with some others, were on their way home from a party, Hedda remarked as they walked by a charming house that was where she would like to live. She meant it, but she said it only to keep the conversation with Tesman going. “He simply cannot carry on a conversation.”
The house was actually for rent or sale. Tesman had been pointed out as the coming young man. And later when he proposed, and let slip that he too had dreamed of living there, she accepted.
He too had liked the house very much.
They get married. And they rent the house.4
But when Hedda returns as a young wife, with a vague sense of responsibility, the whole thing seems distasteful to her. She conceives a kind of hatred for the house just because it has become her home. She confides this to Brack. She evades the question with Tesman.
¶ The play shall deal with “the impossible,” that is, to aspire to and strive for something which is against all the conventions, against that which is acceptable to conscious minds—Hedda’s included.
¶ The episode of the hat makes Aunt Rising lose her composure. She leaves—That it could be taken for the maid’s hat—no, that’s going too far!
That my hat, which I’ve had for over nine years, could be taken for the maid’s—no, that’s really too much!
¶ Hedda: Yes, once I thought it must be wonderful to live here and own this house.
Brack: But now you are contradicting yourself.
Hedda: That may be so. But that’s how it is anyway.
¶ Hedda: I don’t understand these self-sacrificing people. Look at old Miss Rising. She has a paralyzed sister in her house, who has been lying in bed for years. Do you suppose she thinks it is a sacrifice to live for that poor creature, who is a burden even to herself? Far from it! Just the opposite. I don’t understand it.
¶ Hedda: And how greedy they are for married men. Do you know what, Judge Brack? You don’t do yourself any good by not getting married.
Brack: Then I can practically consider myself married.
Hedda: Yes, you certainly can—in one way—in many ways even—
Brack: In many ways? What do you mean by that?
Hedda: No thanks. I won’t tell you.
¶ When Mrs. Elvsted says that the first part of Lövborg’s book deals with the historical development of “Sociology,” and that another volume will appear later, Tesman looks at her a little startled.
¶ Very few true parents are to be found in the world. Most people grow up under the influence of aunts or uncles—either neglected and misunderstood or else spoiled.
¶ Hedda rejects him because he does not dare expose himself to temptation. He replies that the same is true of her. The wager! . . . He loses . . . ! Mrs. Elvsted is present. Hedda says: No danger—He loses.
¶ Hedda feels herself demoniacally attracted by the tendencies of the times. But she lacks courage. Her thoughts remain theories, ineffective dreams.5
¶ The feminine imagination is not active and independently creative like the masculine. It needs a bit of reality as a help.
¶ Lövborg has had inclinations toward “the bohemian life.” Hedda is attracted in the same direction, but she does not dare to take the leap.
¶ Buried deep within Hedda there is a level of poetry. But the environment frightens her. Suppose she were to make herself ridiculous!
¶ Hedda realizes that she, much more than Thea, has abandoned her husband.
¶ The newly wedded couple return home in September—as the summer is dying. In the second act they sit in the garden—but with their coats on.
¶ Being frightened by one’s own voice. Something strange, foreign.
¶ NEWEST PLAN: The festivities in Tesman’s garden—and Lövborg’s defeat—already prepared for in the 1st act. Second act: the party—
¶ Hedda energetically refuses to serve as hostess. She will not celebrate their marriage because (in her opinion, it isn’t a marriage)
¶ Holger: Don’t you see? I am the cause of your marriage—
¶ Hedda is the type of woman in her position and with her character. She marries Tesman but she devotes her imagination to Eilert Lövborg. She leans back in her chair, closes her eyes, and dreams of his adventures. . . . This is the enormous difference: Mrs. Elvsted “works for his moral improvement.” But for Hedda he is the object of cowardly, tempting daydreams. In reality she does not have the courage to be a part of anything like that. Then she realizes her condition. Caught! Can’t comprehend it. Ridiculous! Ridiculous!
¶ The traditional delusion that one man and one woman are made for each other. Hedda has her roots in the conventional. She marries Tesman but she dreams of Eilert Lövborg. . . . She is disgusted by the latter’s flight from life. He believes that this has raised him in her estimation. . . . Thea Elvsted is the conventional, sentimental, hysterical Philistine.
¶ Those Philistines, Mrs. E. and Tesman, explain my behavior by saying first I drink myself drunk and that the rest is done in insanity. It’s a flight from reality which is an absolute necessity to me.
¶ E. L.: Give me something—a flower—at our parting. Hedda hands him the revolver.
Then Tesman arrives: Has he gone? “Yes.” Do you think he will still compete against me? No, I don’t think so. You can set your mind at rest.
¶ Tesman relates that when they were in Gratz she did not want to visit her relatives—
He misunderstands her real motives.
¶ In the last act as Tesman, Mrs. Elvsted, and Miss Rysing are consulting, Hedda plays in the small room at the back. She stops. The conversation continues. She appears in the doorway—Good night—I’m going now. Do you need me for anything? Tesman: No, nothing at all. Good night, my dear! . . . The shot is fired—
¶ CONCLUSION: All rush into the back room. Brack sinks as if paralyzed into a chair near the stove: But God have mercy—people don’t do such things!
¶ When Hedda hints at her ideas to Brack, he says: Yes, yes, that’s extraordinarily amusing—Ha ha ha! He does not understand that she is quite serious.
¶ Hedda is right in this: There is no love on Tesman’s part. Nor on the aunt’s part. However full of love she may be.
Eilert Lövborg has a double nature. It is a fiction that one loves only one person. He loves two—or many—alternately (to put it frivolously). But how can he explain his position? Mrs. Elvsted, who forces him to behave correctly, runs away from her husband. Hedda, who drives him beyond all limits, draws back at the thought of a scandal.
¶ Neither he nor Mrs. Elvsted understands the point. Tesman reads in the manuscript that was left behind about “the two ideals.” Mrs. Elvsted can’t explain to him what E. L. meant. Then comes the burlesque note: both T. and Mrs. E. are going to devote their future lives to interpreting the mystery.
¶ Tesman thinks that Hedda hates E. L.
Mrs. Elvsted thinks so too.
Hedda sees their delusion but dares not disabuse them of it. There is something beautiful about having an aim in life. Even if it is a delusion—
She cannot do it. Take part in someone else’s.
That is when she shoots herself.
The destroyed manuscript is entitled “The Philosophy Ethics of Future Society.”
¶ Tesman is on the verge of losing his head. All this work meaningless. New thoughts! New visions! A whole new world! Then the two of them sit there, trying to find the meaning in it. Can’t make any sense of it. . . .
¶ The greatest misery in this world is that so many have nothing to do but pursue happiness without being able to find it.
¶ “From Jochum Tesman there developed a Jørgen Tesman—but it will be a long, long time before this Jørgen gives rise to a George.”
¶ The simile: The journey of life = the journey on a train.
H.: One doesn’t usually jump out of the compartment.
No, not when the train is moving.
Nor stand still when it is stationary. There’s always someone on the platform, staring in.
¶ Hedda: Dream of a scandal—yes, I understand that well enough. But commit one—no, no, no.
¶ Lövborg: Now I understand. My ideal was an illusion. You aren’t a bit better than I. Now I have nothing left to live for. Except pleasure—dissipation—as you call it . . . Wait, here’s a present (The pistol)
Í Tesman is nearsighted. Wears glasses. My, what a beautiful rose! Then he stuck his nose in the cactus. Ever since then—!
¶ NB: The mutual hatred of women. Women have no influence on external matters of government. Therefore they want to have an influence on souls. And then so many of them have no aim in life (the lack thereof is inherited)—
¶ Lövborg and Hedda bent over the photographs at the table.
He: How is it possible? She: Why not? L.: Tesman! You couldn’t find words enough to make fun of him. . . . Then comes the story about the general’s “disgrace,” dismissal, etc. The worst thing for a lady at a ball is not to be admired for her own sake . . . L.: And Tesman? He took you for the sake of your person. That’s just as unbearable to think about.
¶ Just by marrying Tesman it seems to me I have gotten so unspeakably far away from him.
¶ He: Look at her. Just look at her! . . . Hedda: (stroking her hair) Yes, isn’t she beautiful!
¶ Men and women don’t belong to the same century. . . . What a great prejudice that one should love only one!
¶ Hedda and Brack talk about traveling to the small university towns. Hedda: Now I’m not counting that little trip through the Tyrol—
¶ Brack: (to Tesman) Are you blind and deaf? Can’t you see? Can’t you hear—
Tesman: Ah. Take the manuscript. Read to me!
¶ The demoniacal element in Hedda is this: She wants to exert her influence on someone—But once she has done so, she despises him. . . . The manuscript?
¶ In the third act Hedda questions Mrs. Elvsted. But if he’s like that, why is he worth holding on to. . . . Yes, yes, I know—
¶ Hedda’s discovery that her relations with the maid cannot possibly be proper.
¶ In his conversation with Hedda, Lövborg says: Miss H—Miss—You know, I don’t believe that you are married.
¶ Hedda: And now I sit here and talk with these Philistines—And the way we once could talk to each other—No, I won’t say any more . . . Talk? How do you mean? Obscenely? Ish. Let us say indecently.
¶ NB!! The reversal in the play occurs during the big scene between Hedda and E. L. He: What a wretched business it is to conform to the existing morals. It would be ideal if a man of the present could live the life of the future. What a miserable business it is to fight over a professorship!
Hedda—that lovely girl! H.: No! E. L.: Yes, I’m going to say it. That lovely, cold girl—cold as marble.
I’m not dissipated fundamentally. But the life of reality isn’t livable—
¶ In the fifth act: Hedda: How hugely comic it is that those two harmless people, Tesman and Mrs. E., should try to put the pieces together for a monument to E. L. The man who so deeply despised the whole business—
¶ Life becomes for Hedda a ridiculous affair that isn’t “worth seeing through to the end.”
¶ The happiest mission in life is to place the people of today in the conditions of the future.
L.: Never put a child in this world, H.!
¶ When Brack speaks of a “triangular affair,” Hedda thinks about what is going to happen and refers ambiguously to it. Brack doesn’t understand.
¶ Brack cannot bear to be in a house where there are small children. “Children shouldn’t be allowed to exist until they are fourteen or fifteen. That is, girls. What about boys? Shouldn’t be allowed to exist at all—or else they should be raised outside the house.”
¶ H. admits that children have always been a horror to her too.
¶ Hedda is strongly but imprecisely opposed to the idea that one should love “the family.” The aunts mean nothing to her.
¶ It liberated Hedda’s spirit to serve as a confessor to E. L. Her sympathy has secretly been on his side—But it became ugly when the public found out everything. Then she backed out.
¶ MAIN POINTS:
1. They are not all made to be mothers.
2. They are passionate but they are afraid of scandal.
3. They perceive that the times are full of missions worth devoting one’s life to, but they cannot discover them.
¶ And besides Tesman is not exactly a professional, but he is a specialist. The Middle Ages are dead—
¶ T.: Now there you see also the great advantages to my studies. I can lose manuscripts and rewrite them—no inspiration needed—
¶ Hedda is completely taken up by the child that is to come, but when it is born she dreads what is to follow—
¶ Hedda must say somewhere in the play that she did not like to get out of her compartment while on the trip. Why not? I don’t like to show my legs. . . . Ah, Mrs. H., but they do indeed show themselves. Nevertheless, I don’t.
¶ Shot herself! Shot herself!
Brack (collapsing in the easy chair): But great God—people don’t do such things!
¶ NB!! Eilert Lövborg believes that a comradeship must be formed between man and woman out of which the truly spiritual human being can arise. Whatever else the two of them do is of no concern. This is what the people around him do not understand. To them he is dissolute. Inwardly he is not.
¶ If a man can have several male friends, why can’t he have several lady friends?
¶ It is precisely the sensual feelings that are aroused while in the company of his female “friends” or “comrades” that seek release in his excesses.
¶ Now I’m going. Don’t you have some little remembrance to give me—? You have flowers—and so many other things—(The story of the pistol from before)—But you won’t use it anyhow—
¶ In the fourth act when Hedda finds out that he has shot himself, she is jubilant. . . . He had courage.
Here is the rest of the manuscript.
¶ CONCLUSION: Life isn’t tragic. . . . Life is ridiculous. . . . And that’s what I can’t bear.
¶ Do you know what happens in novels? All those who kill themselves—through the head—not in the stomach. . . . How ridiculous—how baroque—
¶ In her conversation with Thea in the first act, Hedda remarks that she cannot understand how one can fall in love with an unmarried man—or an unengaged man—or an unloved man—on the other hand—6
¶ Brack understands well enough that it is Hedda’s repression, her hysteria that motivates everything she does.
¶ On her part, Hedda suspects that Brack sees through her without believing that she understands.
¶ H.: It must be wonderful to take something from someone.
¶ When H. talks to B. in the fifth act about those two sitting there trying to piece together the manuscript without the spirit being present, she breaks out in laughter. . . . Then she plays the piano—then—d—.
¶ Men—in the most indescribable situations how ridiculous they are.
¶ NB! She really wants to live a man’s life wholly. But then she has misgivings. Her inheritance, what is implanted in her.
¶ Loving and being loved by aunts . . . Most people who are born of old maids, male and female.
¶ This deals with the “underground forces and powers.” Woman as a minor. Nihilism. Father and mother belonging to different eras. The female underground revolution in thought. The slave’s fear of the outside world.
¶ NB!! Why should I conform to social morals that I know won’t last more than half a generation. When I run wild, as they call it, it’s my escape from the present. Not that I find any joy in my excesses. I’m up to my neck in the established order. . . .
¶ What is Tesman working on?
¶ Hedda: It’s a book on the domestic industries of Brabant during the Middle Ages.
¶ I have to play the part of an idiot in order to be understood. Pretend that I want to rehabilitate myself in the eyes of the mob—today’s mob.
¶ When I had finished with my latest book, I conceived the idea for a brilliant new work. You must help me with it. I need women, Hedda—! In the Middle Ages the female conscience was so constituted that if she discovered she had married her nephew, she was filled with rancor——
¶ Shouldn’t the future strive for the great, the good, and the beautiful as Tesman says it should? Yes! But the great, the good, the beautiful of the future won’t be the same as it is for us—
¶ H.: I remember especially a red-headed girl whom I have seen on the street. Br.: I know whom you mean—H.: You called her—it was such a pretty name— Br.: I know her name too. But how do you know it was pretty? H.: Oh, Judge Brack, you are an idiot.
¶ The passenger and his trunk at the railway station. P. decides where he is going, buys his ticket. The trunk is attended to—
¶ Hedda: Slender figure of average height. Nobly shaped, aristocratic face with fine, wax-colored skin. The eyes have a veiled expression. Hair medium brown. Not especially abundant hair. Dressed in a loose-fitting dressing gown, white with blue trimmings. Composed and relaxed in her manners. The eyes steel-gray, almost lusterless.
¶ Mrs. Elvsted: weak build. The eyes round, rather prominent, almost as blue as water. Weak face with soft features. Nervous gestures, frightened expression—
¶ See above. E. L.’s idea of comradeship between man and woman. . . . The idea is a life-saver!
¶ If society won’t let us live morally with them (women), then we’ll have to live with them immorally—
¶ Tesman: The new idea in E. L.’s book is that of progress resulting from the comradeship between man and woman.
¶ Hedda’s basic demand is: I want to know everything, but keep myself clean.
¶ I want to know everything—everything—everything—
H.:— —
H.: If only I could have lived like him!
¶ Is there something about Brabant? B.: What on earth is that? . . .
¶ The wager about the use of both pistols.
¶ Miss T.: Yes, this is the house of life and health. Now I shall go home to a house of sickness and death. God bless both of you. From now on I’ll come out here every day to ask Bertha how things are—
¶ In the third act H. tells E. L. that she is not interested in the great questions—nor the great ideas—but in the great freedom of man. . . . But she hasn’t the courage.
¶ The two ideals! Tesman: What in the name of God does he mean by that? What? What do we have to do with ideals?
¶ The new book treats of “the two ideals.” Thea can give no information.
¶ NB! Brack had always thought that Hedda’s short engagement to Tesman would come to nothing.
Hedda speaks of how she felt herself set aside, step by step, when her father was no longer in favor, when he retired and died without leaving anything. Then she realized, bitterly, that it was for his sake she had been made much of. And then she was already between twenty-five and twenty-six. In danger of becoming an old maid.
She thinks that in reality Tesman only feels a vain pride in having won her. His solicitude for her is the same as is shown for a thoroughbred horse or a valuable sporting dog. This, however, does not offend her. She merely regards it as a fact.
Hedda says to Brack that she does not think Tesman can be called ridiculous. But in reality she finds him so. Later on she finds him pitiable as well.
Tesman: Could you not call me by my Christian name?
Hedda: No, indeed I couldn’t—unless they have given you some other name than the one you have.
Tesman puts Lövborg’s manuscript in his pocket so that it may not be lost. Afterward it is Hedda who, by a casual remark, with tentative intention, gives him the idea of keeping it.
Then he reads it. A new line of thought is revealed to him. But the strain of the situation increases. Hedda awakens his jealousy.
¶ In the third act one thing after another comes to light about Lövborg’s adventures in the course of the night. At last he comes himself, in quiet despair. “Where is the manuscript?” “Did I not leave it behind me here?” He does not know that he has done so. But after all, of what use is the manuscript to him now! He is writing of the “moral doctrine of the future”! When he has just been released by the police!
¶ Hedda’s despair is that there are doubtless so many chances of happiness in the world, but that she cannot discover them. It is the want of an object in life that torments her.
When Hedda beguiles T. into leading E. L. into ruin, it is done to test T.’s character.
¶ It is in Hedda’s presence that the irresistible craving for excess always comes over E. L.
Tesman cannot understand that E. L. could wish to base his future on injury to another.
¶ Hedda: Do I hate T.? No, not at all. I only find him boring.
¶ Brack: But nobody else thinks so.
Hedda: Neither is there any one but myself who is married to him.
Brack: . . . not at all boring.
Hedda: Heavens, you always want me to express myself so correctly. Very well then, T. is not boring, but I am bored by living with him.
Hedda: . . . had no prospects. Well, perhaps you would have liked to see me in a convent (home for unmarried ladies).
Hedda: . . . then isn’t it an honorable thing to profit by one’s person? Don’t actresses and others turn their advantages into profit, I had no other capital. Marriage—I thought it was like buying an annuity.
Hedda: Remember that I am the child of an old man—and a worn-out man too—or past his prime at any rate—perhaps that has left its mark.
Brack: Upon my word, I believe you have begun to brood over problems.
Hedda: Well, what cannot one take to doing when one has gone and got married.
¶ E. L.: It’s impossible for me to call you Mrs. T. You will always be H. G. to me.
¶ Both Miss T. and B. have seen what lies in store for Hedda. . . . T. on the other hand cries out: My God, I had no idea.
¶ When E. L. tells H. that he cannot possibly confess to Thea that her and his book has been lost, H. says: I don’t believe a word of that. E.L.; No, but I know how terribly dismayed she will be.
Translated by Evert Sprinchorn
(Section 6 translated by A. G. Chater)
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul. I always proceed from the individual; the stage setting, the dramatic ensemble, all of that comes naturally and does not cause me any worry, as soon as I am certain of the individual in every aspect of his humanity. But I have to have his exterior in mind also, down to the last button, how he stands and walks, how he conducts himself, what his voice sounds like. Then I do not let him go until his fate is fulfilled.
As a rule, I make three drafts of my dramas which differ very much from each other in characterization, not in action. When I proceed to the first sketch of the material I feel as though I had the degree of acquaintance with my characters that one acquires on a railway journey; one has met and chatted about this or that. With the next draft I see everything more clearly, I know characters just about as one would know them after a few weeks’ stay in a spa; I have learned the fundamental traits in their characters as well as their little peculiarities; yet it is not impossible that I might make an error in some essential matter. In the last draft, finally, I stand at the limit of knowledge; I know my people from close and long association—they are my intimate friends, who will not disappoint me in any way; in the manner in which I see them now, I shall always see them.
1 Henrik Ibsen, From Ibsen’s Workshop, translated by A. G. Chater, The Works of Henrik Ibsen. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), XII, pp. 91–95 (A Doll’s House), pp. 185–86 (Ghosts). “This volume contains all the notes, sketches, drafts, and other ‘foreworks’ (as he used to call them) for Ibsen’s plays from Pillars of Society onwards. . . . The papers here translated throw invaluable light upon the genesis of his ideas and the development of his technique. They are an indispensable aid to the study of his intellectual processes during that part of his career which made him world famous. . . . Nowhere else, so far as I am aware, do we obtain so clear a view of the processes of a great dramatist’s mind” (from the introduction by William Archer). “Of A Doll’s House we possess a first brief memorandum, a fairly detailed scenario, a complete draft, in quite actable form, and a few detached fragments of dialogue” (Archer).
2 “Of the studies for Ghosts only a few brief fragments have been preserved. The most important of these are mere casual memoranda, some of them written on the back of an envelope addressed to ‘Madame Ibsen.’ These memoranda fall into six sections, of which the fourth and fifth seem to have as much bearing on other plays—for instance, on An Enemy of the People and The Lady From the Sea as on Ghosts. I should take them rather for detached jottings than for notes specially referring to that play” (Archer).
3 More preliminary notes have been preserved for Hedda Gabler than for almost any other play by Ibsen. These notes afford the student of playwriting a rare opportunity to trace the growth of a masterpiece from the first embryonic thoughts through its birth as a full-length draft. Nearly all of these preliminary notes are given here, grouped in seven sets to indicate their different sources: scattered loose sheets, notebooks, even a calling card. Of greatest interest are the notes in sets 1 and 5 taken from a little black book, now in the possession of Tancred Ibsen, which Ibsen carried about with him. According to Else Høst, Hedda Gabler: En monografi (Oslo: 1958), pp. 78 ff., the notes in set I were çrobably jotted down in the fall of 1889 and comprise the abortive ideas for a play about a prominent woman novelist, Camilla Collett, who imagined that Ibsen had used her as a model for the heroine of The Lady from the Sea. Ibsen made no progress with this play, but among the notes for it he had planted the seeds of another play: a play about a cowardly woman, the woman’s jealousy of a man with a mission in life, and a misplaced manuscript which represents that mission. The lengthy sequence of notes in set 5, almost certainly in chronological order, was probably made during the winter and spring of 1890 and reveals the convolutions of Ibsen’s thought as the characters, plot, and motives of Hedda Gabler take shape. In late July or early August, Ibsen began to write a full-length draft, most of which is translated in From Ibsen’s Workshop, Vol. XII of the Archer edition of Ibsen’s Collected Works. This draft was thoroughly revised in October, fair copied in October and November, and Hedda Gabler was published on December 4, 1890, in time for the Christmas season. The notes are arranged in the order given in the Centennial Edition of Ibsen’s works (21 vols.; Oslo: 1928–1957), ed. Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, and Didrik Arup Seip, XI, pp. 496–516. (Translator’s note.)
4 Both of them, each in his and her own way, have seen in their common love for this house a sign of their mutual understanding. As if they sought and were drawn to a common home.
Then he rents the house. They get married and go abroad. He orders the house bought and his aunt furnishes it at his expense. Now it is their home. It is theirs and yet it is not, because it is not paid for. Everything depends on his getting the professorship. (Ibsen’s note.)
5 This note is omitted in the Centennial Edition. It is translated from Else Høst, Hedda Gabler: En monografi (Oslo: 1958), p. 82.
6 1. But, my heavens, Tesm. was unmarried. H.: Yes, he was. Th.: But you married him. H.: Yes, I did. Th.: Then how can you say that . . . Well now—
2. But now he’s married. H.: Yes, but not to someone else.
7 A. E. Zucker, Ibsen: The Master Builder (New York: Henry Holt, 1929), pp. 194, 208. Copyright 1929, Henry Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.