Henrik Ibsen, Notes for 'Hedda Gabler' (1890)
Translated by Evert Sprinchorn

Introduction

The playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) wrote down his ideas about Hedda Gabler in a large notebook, continually adding and revising.

Notes for Hedda Gabler (1890)

• 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.…

• 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.

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 hate 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!…

• 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 feels herself demoniacally attracted by the tendencies of the times. But she lacks courage. Her thoughts remain theories, ineffective dreams.

• The feminine imagination is not active and independently creative like the masculine. It needs a bit of reality as a help.

• Løvborg 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 Løvborg'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) …

• Hedda is the type of woman in her position and with her character. She marries Tesman but she devotes her imagination to Eilert Løvborg. 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 Løvborg.…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. Not on the aunt's part. However full of love she may be.

Eilert Løvborg 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 her 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.

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.…

• 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.

• Løvborg: 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)

• 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)—…

• Men and women don't belong to the same century.…What a great prejudice that one should love only one!…

• 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—…

• 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—…

• 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 Løvborg 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—…

I can't bear.

Notes for Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Evert Sprinchorn, from Playwrights on Playwriting, Toby Cole, ed. Hill and Wang, © Toby Cole 1960, 1988. Reprinted by permission of Toby Cole.