Hedda Gabler · Concept
Marriage and domesticity
The Tesman household runs on academic ambition and female service — Hedda rejects domesticity but cannot escape its economics.
George Tesman expects Hedda to manage, entertain, and support his career; Aunt Juliana and Berta embody acceptable female devotion. Marriage and domesticity in this play are contracts: George’s promotion and the promised chair depend on networks Hedda must smile through. Mrs. Elvsted’s escape from her husband for Lovborg’s work shows another marriage’s suffocation.
Hedda’s pregnancy, hinted and dreaded, would nail her further into the role she mocks. Appearance versus reality appears when she plays hostess while plotting destruction. Link marriage theme to class and status — the villa, the pistols from General Gabler, the fear of sliding into shabby gentility — so readers see why Hedda clings to respectability even as she sabotages it.