Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her

Henrik Ibsens Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brechts sire endurance and Her Children Henrik Ibsens Hedda Gabler and Bertolt Brechts Mother Courage and Her Children present two strongly defined female heroines whose actions not lonesome(prenominal) adversely affect the other characters lives but also suggest a fundamental problem with their societies. Both playwrights establish the macroscopic view of night clubs ills in the microscopic, individual characters of Hedda and Mother Courage. Both characters have an dogged magnetism that, on the one hand, allows them to control others but, on the other, causes them to make direful choices that reflect a repressive community. Ibsen creates in Hedda Gabler a dominating, fiercely dictatorial female heroine who controls everyone in her circle, from her weak husband Tesman, to Lovborg, Mrs. Elvsted and even, to a lesser degree, guess Brack, who reverses roles with Hedda by the end of the play. Hedda, as a chameleon figure, alternately shi fts her artful tactics to maintain control, and each character cannot stay away from her influence. totally when Hedda has lost control of Lovborg, does she resort to an act of supreme self-control suicide. sample Brack believes he has won in his battle of wills with Hedda and believes he remains the scarcely cock in the yard at the plays end. Nevertheless, her suicide reinforces her superiority because she has claimed the ultimate position of control in the play. Judge Brack cannot maintain his lustful intentions through coercive blackmail, and she will not relinquish the agent to any character or realization, whether it is Tesmans loving yet remonstrative pleas or Judge Bracks slyly conniving wiles. She defines her own role by her self-inflicted death... ...she does choose this role, ultimately valuing profit over her childrens safety. She continues on this trip without her children even as the play ends. Both characters, Hedda and Mother Courage, express set dictate d by confederation. Though Mother Courages actions repeal her family and Heddas suicide destroys herself and her unborn child, both characters choose these destructive paths. In effect, they become like the society itself, embodying its values and motivations, its limitation and corruption. Neither Hedda nor Mother Courage possess any real individual power or self-control to overcome a society that forces them to act destructively. Ibsen and Brecht represent societys power to coerce characters like Hedda and Mother Courage into pass judgment values that refract social ones as destructive to them as to the society that informs their characters.