HEDDA GABLER, PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE SPACE OF (THE) PLAY by Nigel Hand The established view of Hedda Gabler sees the play as a study of the frustration and despair engendered in the exceptional individual by a conventionalised society. In this paper I present a psychoanalytic re-interpretation of the play which in certain respects inverts this received reading. Insofar as it does so, however, my interpretation is intended not to cancel the received view but to …showed first 75 words of 4334 total…

…showed last 75 words of 4334 total…ly women, are natural enough in themselves, but everything which subsequently happens in the play serves to make the nature of the sexual relationship between the off-stage couple (which is of course variously constituted) a source of great perplexity for the 'spectator' both on and off the stage, this of course being the essence of the primal scene experience. Here then we have the third variation of the triangular figure which structures the pl