Hedda Gabler

"Oh. I just stand here and shoot into the blue."
 
Hedda Gabler dreams a life that is great, wild and beautiful -- a life in which she pulls the strings. She’d once thought it a shrewd move to marry Jörgen Tesman, an ambitious scientist. However she now realizes that with him, she’s looking at a life of cautious deliberation and boredom. Tesman hopes he’ll be offered a professorship, which would guarantee them a good income. But then his old acquaintance Ejlert Lövborg comes to town. He has long been Tesman’s rival when it comes to women and work. Lövborg, a man with a spark of genius, has finally overcome his addictions and written a book that people will soon be talking about. Tesman sees his hopes fading – and Hedda realises that the calculations she has based her life on just don’t add up. Determined not to waste any more of her energy, she makes a decision with deadly consequences.
 
Henrik Ibsen addresses issues central to a bourgeois society: the relationship between financial security and freedom; the hope of improving one’s status and the fear of its loss, as well as the desire to lead a normal life without having to conform.