Q#1: what is the tragic flaw in the character of hedda gabler?

Hedda Gabler is the main protagonist of the play Hedda Gabler, written by Norwegian playwright
Henrik Ibsen. She is a privileged, manipulative, young woman who is newly wed to George
Tessman, a mild-mannered academic.

Q#2: why does hedda kill herself?

Because she's being blackmailed, Hedda has to decide whether to face the public scandal of an
investigation regarding the pistol, or the private shame of an affair with Judge Brack. She's
horrified of scandal, so she kills herself to escape it.

Q#3: what is the main idea of pygmalion?

The theme of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is social classes and manners. This idea is
found throughout the book. Shaw starts out by showing the differences between the classes
during the time period. He then goes into showing the reader how people of different classes
interacted.

Q#4: define the concept of pygmalion?

a king of Cyprus who makes a female figure of ivory that is brought to life for him by Aphrodite.

Q# 5:Who is Mr. lovborg?

Hedda is the daughter of the famous General Gabler; as a child she was used to luxury and
high-class living. As the play begins, she is returning from her honeymoon with Jürgen Tesman,
a scholar with good prospects but not as much money as Hedda is accustomed to. Her married
name is Hedda Tesman. Hedda is an intelligent, unpredictable, and somewhat dishonest young
woman who is not afraid to manipulate her husband and friends.

Q#6: Discuss hedda gabler as a naturalistic play?

NATURALISM IN HEDDA GABLER  Written in 1890, Hedda Gabler is
a naturalistic social drama by Henrik Ibsen.  Naturalistic depiction of a woman constricted
by her society and because of her inherent nature she keeps on sucking the life out of other
individuals.
Q#1: To what extent is hedda gabler as a naturalistic play?
NATURALISM IN HEDDA GABLER  Written in 1890, Hedda Gabler is
a naturalistic social drama by Henrik Ibsen.  Naturalistic depiction of a woman constricted
by her society and because of her inherent nature she keeps on sucking the life out of other
individuals.

Naturalism in Hedda Gabler

Naturalism is a term applied generally to literature which attempts accurately to imitate nature.
Hence, it is often used as synonymous with realism. More commonly, it used to express a specific
kind of realism, which is the slavish attempt to produce details from life without selection. Thus, it is
sometimes referred to as photographic realism. In French literature, the term 'naturalism' is used for
a school of nineteenth-century novelists including Flaubert, Zola, and the brothers Goncourt. They
attempted to approach life in a scientific manner, recording external appearances only, but recording
them with the all-seeing patience of the scientist. Therefore, they revealed the seamy aspects of life
which Victorian England had been studiously ignoring. Henrik Ibsen was a great playwright of the
19th century, and played a large role in the evolution of modern day naturalism/ realism. The setting,
detailed stage direction and character description are parts of the naturalistic style. These elements
are found greatly in Ibsen's works, especially Hedda Gabler.
Ibsen is Norwegian, so his play is a translated one. He is the father of naturalism. Realism is a close-
movement to naturalism. In this play, we have a painting, the hero stands and a forest behind him
and a living room, chairs and tables. Everything is common. All of this is the beginning of the
naturalistic movement which comes, in the second half of the century. Naturalism takes its roots
from earlier drama. It is taken from the Bourgeois drama. In naturalistic drama, there are no
soliloquies. The audience should interpret everything in it.
The influence of Ibsen on drama makes him one of the main founders of Naturalism. That is, he
changes the whole concept of drama from being escapist to expressing social and psychological
problems. Ibsen's interest is in social problems from which thesis plays takes its ideas, but his plays
were said to have been written to reinforce the feminine movement. Yet, he did not believe in
institutions and any political parties or social campaigns. His main focus was on the individual and
presenting real life characters and their psychological depth.. His focus was not on the social
environment, but on the individual and its interaction with social life. He had faith in human beings
like many naturalists; he was interested in the influence of the environment and heredity and how
these two interact to shape the character of individual. He studied psychological motivation and their
internal conflict as well as the conflict between what society expects them to do and their
inclinations.
The Naturalistic Setting and Stage Direction : - The first element of naturalism that the audience
comes across is the setting. The description of the setting is typical of a middle-class living room.
Within this setting, there is the symbolic use of certain Stage props, stage images and metaphors.
The stage props are the items which are used as parts of the decoration. They have symbolic
significance. They also connote implied meaning which are related to the theme and characters. The
stage props are considered to be as element of naturalistic drama which is employed to serve the
dramatic idea. One of the stage props is the pistols which belong to her father. Hedda likes
practicing shooting because it is related to her social upbringing. She has been brought up by her
father who has been a military man. He has taught her to use pistols and ride horses. Thus, she has
been brought up to have masculine qualities. She has tendency to rebel against the accepted
traditional role of woman. Moreover, the pistols are considered to be an instrument of destruction.
She has sadistic nature. Playing with pistols shows her inner desire to be in the world of men. They
are symbol of her denied sexuality. The audience has to look at the pistol as a symbol of suicide.
She gives a pistol to Lovborg to kill himself. This shows that it is a means of destruction. They
symbolize violence as Hedda kills herself by using them in the encl. Another stage prop is her
father’s portrait which is a symbol of’ his masculine and harsh qualities. The picture reminds the
reader of the General’s strong influence on Hedda's character. Hedda is always seen looking to this
picture. He is a military man, so Hedda's upbringing has been affected by his profession. Also, the
piano is always associated with the upper classes. It is an item of luxury and not everyone can afford
buying it. It belongs to Hedda who is an aristocratic lady. Hedda wants to buy a new one which suits
the furniture instead of hers. This tells us about her spending habits; she is spendthrift. There is a
reference to a glass-door because she always looks out of it. She looks at life from a directive
transparent glass door and this tells us about her character. Hedda always stands beside that door.
This reflects her desire to free herself from the chains of her marital life and social rules. She longs
for freedom. She wants to get rid of the life of entrapment in Tesman house. The glass door is her
only means to look at the outer world. She is not adventurous and she watches life, but she doesn’t
take the initiative or a step in controlling her life. She is not happy when she looks out of the glass
door. The stage figurative image of the autumn and the falling leaves express Hedda’s inner
feelings. It is like a death wish; she is depressed to the extent that she wishes death. Furthermore,
the manuscript has a symbolic significance. It stands for the product of the relationship and
cooperation between Lovborg and Mrs Elvsted. Mrs Elvsted has external great effort to help Lovborg
in writing this manuscript. Therefore, she considers the manuscript to be her baby. Hedda is jealous
of Mrs Elvsted; therefore, she plans to destroy the product of the relationship between Mrs Elvsted
and Lovborg. She burns the manuscript. The stove is another stage prop. It represents destruction
and danger as it contains fire and heat. Fire is always related to Hedda who has destructive motives.
She is' going to burn manuscript of Lovborg in order to destroy the fruit of Lovborg and Thea
collaboration. This reflects her jealousy and malice. She is motivated by her jealousy to burn the
manuscript. Thus, both fire and Hedda has destructive effects.
Naturalistic Division of Acts: - this play does not follow the classical division of the play into five acts.
According to Naturalism, this seems to be artificial because in life things happen naturally. What is
important is the complication itself. The first act is the exposition and the complication at the same
time. The audience gets hints of financial and psychological conflicts and problems from the very
beginning. Here, there are two different life styles. There is a warm, intimate and affable relationship
between Berta and Miss Tesman as if they are friends. There is not the servant-mistress
relationship. Those who belong to the Bourgeois class can discuss the problems with their servants.
There is not this pride and formality. Yet, the aristocrats do not even express their problems openly
in front of their servants. There were barriers between the different social classes.
Psychological Realism: - In Ibsen's plays, there are no moral lessons. His plays are open-ended and
developed into psychological realism. This affects the dialogue and the use of language. His late
plays, including Hedda Gabler, are characterized by dramatic shorthand. The language is
deceptively simple; it hides more than it shows. Ibsen neither comments on the play nor on his
characters. His only comment is that this play is not a thesis one, a part of a social propaganda or a
study of the psychology of a criminal. There is not any soliloquy, and the audience is always kept in
speculations. The audience has to understand the qualities of the character from the way in which
he interacts with the others and from his gestures and facial expressions. The audience tries to get
clues that can help analysing the psychology of the characters. The character towards the end
analyses itself. Thus, readers should not take everything as face value.
Naturalistic Characters: - Ibsen's characters are very real characters. He focuses on character
depth, so he emphasizes characterization and motivity of characters. He is concerned about how
they are revealed through their actions and contact with objects around them. You can think of
naturalism as an extreme form of realism. They are different interpretation of characters. Characters
are to hide something to understand. They are very difficult to understand. Characters avoid the
topic they talk about. This is called dramatic short hand. It is a dialogue with a lot of missing words
and sentences. This is part of realistic speech. The reader has to guess the missing parts. Ibsen is
very objective in portraying Hedda's character and this is part of Naturalism. This play is a very
objective portrait of Hedda. Ibsen doesn’t pass a specific judgment on her. The character of Hedda
is a complex one, and there is more demand on the part of the audience to judge her and know her
motivations behind the actions she does in the play. The social problems on the social background
do not concern the audience, but what concerns them is the study of the character and her
psychology and motivation. She seems to have many social problems regarding her identity and her
role as a woman.
Tesman is an intellectual and academic person. This appears when he comes on stage carrying a
suitcase full of books. He is carelessly dressed; he does not care very much about his appearance.
This is not his concern; his major concern is studying, reading and collecting books. This is the only
thing he is excited about. He is a book worm and even in his honey moon he used to collect books
and read them. This quality has both a positive and a negative side. He is a boring and stuffy
person. He is thirty-three years old and has a cheerful round face. He wears spectacles and has fair
hair and beard. In literature, the fair haired person, whether a man or a woman, is not sexually or
physically attractive and is not passionate as well. He is rather stout and not the stereotype of a
sportive person. He kept visiting libraries and doing books even in his honeymoon. This means that
he is not affectionate at all.
Naturalistic Conflict: - Ibsen also shows the conflict between the individual inclinations and social
obligations which is part of the naturalism ideology. Ibsen reveals social conformity imposes certain
life style and confinement on people of different social classes, but Ibsen shows that the individuals
are sometimes forced by the society to lead a kind of life that they hate in order to, keep the social
appearance or prestige. Hedda has married Tesman because he is respectable a person. She is
talking about the social role imposed upon her.

Q#2: Discuss G.B Shaw as a playwright specially with reference to the

Pygmalion?
Born in Dublin in 1856 to a middle-class Protestant family bearing pretensions to nobility
(Shaw's embarrassing alcoholic father claimed to be descended from Macduff, the
slayer of Macbeth), George Bernard Shaw grew to become what some consider the
second greatest English playwright, behind only Shakespeare. Others most certainly
disagree with such an assessment, but few question Shaw's immense talent or the
play's that talent produced. Shaw died at the age of 94, a hypochondriac, socialist, anti-
vaccinationist, semi-feminist vegetarian who believed in the Life Force and only wore
wool. He left behind him a truly massive corpus of work including about 60 plays, 5
novels, 3 volumes of music criticism, 4 volumes of dance and theatrical criticism, and
heaps of social commentary, political theory, and voluminous correspondence. And this
list does not include the opinions that Shaw could always be counted on to hold about
any topic, and which this flamboyant public figure was always most willing to share.
Shaw's most lasting contribution is no doubt his plays, and it has been said that "a day
never passes without a performance of some Shaw play being given somewhere in the
world." One of Shaw's greatest contributions as a modern dramatist is in establishing
drama as serious literature, negotiating publication deals for his highly popular plays so
as to convince the public that the play was no less important than the novel. In that way,
he created the conditions for later playwrights to write seriously for the theater.

Of all of Shaw's plays, Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and popularly
received, if not the most significant in literary terms. Several film versions have been
made of the play, and it has even been adapted into a musical. In fact, writing the
screenplay for the film version of 1938 helped Shaw to become the first and only man
ever to win the much coveted Double: the Nobel Prize for literature and an Academy
Award. Shaw wrote the part of Eliza in Pygmalion for the famous actress Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, with whom Shaw was having a prominent affair at the time that had set all of
London abuzz. The aborted romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle
reflects Shaw's own love life, which was always peppered with enamored and beautiful
women, with whom he flirted outrageously but with whom he almost never had any
further relations. For example, he had a long marriage to Charlotte Payne-Townsend in
which it is well known that he never touched her once. The fact that Shaw was quietly a
member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, an organization whose
core members were young men agitating for homosexual liberation, might or might not
inform the way that Higgins would rather focus his passions on literature or science than
on women. That Higgins was a representation of Pygmalion, the character from the
famous story of Ovid's Metamorphoses who is the very embodiment of male love for the
female form, makes Higgins sexual disinterest all the more compelling. Shaw is too
consummate a performer and too smooth in his self- presentation for us to neatly
dissect his sexual background; these lean biographical facts, however, do support the
belief that Shaw would have an interest in exploding the typical structures of standard
fairy tales.