...in The Doll’s House & Hedda Gabler To an average reader, at first glance, Henrik Ibsen’s plays Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House are just an entertaining read. However a more in-depth study of the text shows that throughout A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler Ibsen makes use of symbols, motifs and circular conclusions to demonstrate the development of two housewives throughout the late 19th century. One of the ways that Ibsen shows this is symbolism. Throughout Hedda Gabler the symbols that Ibsen presents are: the piano that Hedda plays shortly before her death, General Gabler’s two pistols, Tesman’s slippers, the portrait of General Gabler and the manuscript. The latter hangs in Tesman’s drawing room and it symbolizes the constant overlook of General Gabler. It also builds up a complex in Tesman, as the general is the man that Hedda loves and the man that he will never be. The portrait presents Hedda’s domination over Tesman as well, since it is his drawing room and yet it isn’t aunt Julle’s portrait that is hanging there it is Hedda’s fathers. General Gabler’s two pistols are amongst the most important symbols in the play. The two pistols represent, much like the portrait, the General’s power over the family even though he is deceased - this is proven, as it is the pistols that take Hedda’s life and that of her lover - which is also a case of circular conclusion, because Hedda has threatened others with her pistols before, and in Act One of the play Hedda says that at least she...
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...Escape Hedda from Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen and Chandara from Punishment by Rabindranath Tagore are two powerful women who seek refuge through suicide. Both women face circumstances that suppress their independent spirit, and yet with their death they claim victory above all and gain their freedom. Hedda is a character of many qualities, she proves to be very intelligent and also confident with the ability to intimidate most of the characters within the play. She is also tricky in her motives, and in dire need of entertainment to rid her boredom; which has accrued due to the fact that she is a woman in a time that constrained them to the home. Forced to inhibit her thoughts, she uses manipulative tactics to redeem some form of control over her husband and her friends. Her bold nature shows that she is unafraid and therefore adds to her power. Hedda was raised by her father, a general. Rather than learning how to cook and clean, like other women of her time, she learned to ride horses, and shoot pistols. She had a different mindset concerning life; perhaps in a different age she would have been a great leader, however the society of the time had different plans for her and so she would have to lead a life in the clutches of the social order. She was a beautiful woman who could have chosen to marry from a number of men, however she chose to marry George Tesman, a man who envied her from the beginning and was able to provide her with the luxuries of life without...
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...Henrik Ibsen highlights a sense of entrapment in the play Hedda Gabler by employing several dramatic techniques that often reassert the implications of dialogue, thus enhancing the understanding of each character’s state of mind among the audience. Ibsen primarily uses the character of Hedda, a bourgeois woman trapped in a loveless marriage to convey this feeling of confinement by presenting her as a woman who seems deeply frustrated with the narrow and restricted expectations of the 19th-century society. Through her mindset that is always conflicted between her duty to behave with the utmost propriety and her desire to break free from these expectations, Ibsen exposes the idea of psychological entrapment which is supported by the dialogue,...
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...Da David Levithan is the author of many acclaimed novels, including Boy Meets Boy, the New York Times bestselling Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green), and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn), which was adapted into a popular movie. He is also an editorial director at Scholastic in New York. David lives in New Jersey. THE LOVER'S DICTIONARY DAVID LEVITHAN The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests. The Text Publishing Company Swann House 22 William Street Melbourne Victoria 3000 Australia textpublishing.com.au Copyright © David Levithan 2011 The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. Originally published in 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York This edition published by The Text Publishing Company 2011 Cover design by W. H. Chong Text design by Jonathan D. Lippincott National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Levithan, David. Title: The lover’s dictionary / David Levithan. ISBN: 9781921656910 (pbk.) Dewey Number: 813.6 For my parents, with...
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