Part 1 of Essay
I think Hedda is the forerunner of the quintessential film noir chic--simultaneously tough and weak, scheming, continuously dissatisfied, and bored with her own lot in life. She never really loves, but rather consumes. She needs attention and has a pathological fear of being rejection. She designs the entire plot that culm ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... of domestic connections, as men are. If we identify a "strong" woman (Hedda Tesman) whose husband is an ineffectual, bumbling and clueless scholar (Jorgen Tesman), haven't we in fact found an example of "role reversal"? And while quite willful, she proves incapable of action on her own (until her suicide). She manipulates, then lives vicareously through others--which looks a lot to me like a take on conservative stereotypes, a quite UNreversed woman who can't gone amuck. She *fantasizes* male creati ....