Beginning 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 fe ....

Middle of Essay
.... 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 creative action, and identifies with it (though she can't even manage that--her fantasy is of herself mirrored in the glory of her hero, with ivy leaves in his hair--the perfect, wo ....