Respond to any of the following critical commentaries on Ibsen's Hedda Gabler:
A. “Hedda is neither a monster or a saint … simply a tragic character who is destroyed by the unharmonious and irreconcilable contrasts in her own character.”
B. “Hedda is not a vampire-woman. If she is dangerous, it is because she stands at bay. She is frustrated at every turn. Her plight is desperate. All her aggressions are aroused; she is defending her inmost life.”
C. “Hedda has no source of richness in herself and must constantly seek it in others, so that her life becomes a pursuit of sensation and experiment; and her hatred of bearing a child is the ultimate expression of her egotism, the sickness that brings death.”
D. “Bound in as Hedda is by the literal and figurative corsets of the day, it’s easy to understand how, years before, she had been eager to live vicariously, channeling her libido into listening to Lovborg’s tales of his debaucheries, while at the same time too terrified of her own sexual desires to respond to his overtures.”
B. “Hedda is not a vampire-woman. If she is dangerous, it is because she stands at bay. She is frustrated at every turn. Her plight is desperate. All her aggressions are aroused; she is defending her inmost life.”
C. “Hedda has no source of richness in herself and must constantly seek it in others, so that her life becomes a pursuit of sensation and experiment; and her hatred of bearing a child is the ultimate expression of her egotism, the sickness that brings death.”
D. “Bound in as Hedda is by the literal and figurative corsets of the day, it’s easy to understand how, years before, she had been eager to live vicariously, channeling her libido into listening to Lovborg’s tales of his debaucheries, while at the same time too terrified of her own sexual desires to respond to his overtures.”
