Madame bovary 5
Madame bovary 5I think Hedda is the forerunner of the quintessential film noir chic--simultaneously tough and weak, scheming, continuously dissatisfied, and bored with her own lot in life. She never really loves, but rather consumes. She needs attention and has a pathological fear of being rejection. She designs the entire plot that culminates in her old flame's suicide because it is something to do--a game--and one that revolves around her. Her own suicide galvanizes this idea--she notes her husband's growing affections for his level headed assistant and realizes (probably always has) that her impulsiveness is peavish. She is also suspect--the game has been foiled for her and she is getting old (no longer a woman worth chasing by Victorian standards). And so she pulls the trigger.
Gabler's "living through others" is classic: women have been taught traditionally to define themselves in terms of their (often subservient, "nurturing") relations to others, rather than in terms of individual achievement,independent of domestic connections, as men are.
If we identify a "strong" woman (Hedda Tesman) whose husband is an ineffectual, bumbling and clueless scholar (Jorgen Tesman), haven't we in fact found an example of "role reversal"?
And while quite willful, she proves incapable of action on her own (until her suicide). She manipulates, then lives vicareously through others--which...
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