Hedda Gabler/ Henrik Ibsen

The year: 1890; the country: Norway. Hedda Gabler returns from her honeymoon to a house and life she despises, with a husband for whom she has no respect. Into this unhappy home bring two men who would become her lover – one an upstanding judge, and the other a brilliant but dissolute man with a scandalous past.

Just a word of warning about Hedda. You probably won’t like her, but she’s a fascinating literary creation. She’s more complicated than you think (if the responses of earlier classes are any indicator). The actress Kate Burton called Hedda “a female Hamlet.” I’m not sure I‘d go that far, but she’s more than just a “mean girl“. There are reasons for everything she does, (although sometimes they are dark even to her). Take the “bonnet incident”. You can take her at face value when she tells Judge Brack that she doesn’t know why she does things like that.

But for a key to understanding Hedda look closely at the nature of her relationship with Lovborg — especially in the past. (Hint: they were never physically intimate.) What Hedda wanted from the relationship and what Lovborg wanted were too vastly different things. Another key is when Hedda talks about people staring at her legs (or ankles, in one translation), so she refuses to get off the train. She seems tough and in control, but in reality she's quite vulnerable.

Oh -- and shouldn't this play be called Hedda Tesman?