Hedda Gabler recap

Hedda Tesman returns from her honeymoon bored by her marriage and fearful of a life without freedom or influence. Her former admirer Eilert Løvborg has recovered from alcoholism with Thea Elvsted's help and written an important manuscript. Resenting Thea's hold over him, Hedda provokes Løvborg into drinking and attending Judge Brack's party. He loses the manuscript; Tesman finds it and entrusts it to Hedda, who secretly burns it. When the despairing Løvborg says he intends to die, Hedda gives him one of her father's pistols and urges a controlled, beautiful death. Instead, he is fatally wounded in compromising circumstances. Brack recognizes Hedda's pistol and uses the threat of scandal to place her under his power. As Tesman and Thea work together to reconstruct Løvborg's book, Hedda sees no escape from confinement or Brack's control. She retires to another room and shoots herself.

Jørgen Tesman and his new wife, Hedda, return from a long honeymoon to an expensive villa Tesman believes Hedda wanted. His aunt Juliana has put her savings at risk to secure it, while Hedda receives her efforts with contempt and complains that the house and marriage offer little pleasure. Tesman expects a university appointment, but Judge Brack warns that Eilert Løvborg may compete for it. Thea Elvsted arrives, saying that Løvborg has left the household where he tutored her stepchildren. She followed him because she fears he may relapse into drinking. Thea's account reveals that her companionship helped Løvborg reform and produce both a successful book and an unpublished manuscript about the future. Hedda draws out Thea's secrets and learns how much influence the other woman has had over him. Juliana's hopes and several guarded exchanges suggest that Hedda may be pregnant, intensifying her sense that a conventional domestic future is closing around her.

Hedda tells Brack that she married Tesman without loving him and now finds her prospects intolerably dull, while Brack continues to suggest a private alliance. Løvborg arrives and says he will not challenge Tesman for the university post, though the significance of his new manuscript still unsettles Tesman. Left alone with Hedda, Løvborg recalls their intense former companionship. Hedda would listen to his accounts of a life she was afraid to experience herself, but she once threatened him with one of her father's pistols when their intimacy became too direct. Thea has since given him the courage and discipline Hedda did not. Irritated by their bond, Hedda exposes Thea's fear that Løvborg will drink again. He first refuses alcohol and Brack's bachelor gathering, then drinks, announces that he will attend, and takes the manuscript with him. Tesman follows. Thea is distraught, while Hedda declares that she wants to see Løvborg return with mastery over himself.

Thea spends the night waiting at the Tesmans' home. Tesman returns in the morning and tells Hedda that Løvborg became drunk, delivered wild speeches, and lost his precious manuscript. Tesman found it on the road and gives it to Hedda for safekeeping before leaving to attend his dying aunt Rina. Brack then reports that Løvborg's night continued at Diana's rooms, where he caused a disturbance while searching for a lost packet and was taken into police custody. Løvborg arrives and tells Thea that he deliberately destroyed their joint work, describing it as their child; she leaves in despair. Alone with Hedda, he admits that he actually lost the manuscript and cannot endure the disgrace. He intends to end his life. Hedda asks him to do it deliberately and gives him one of General Gabler's pistols. After he leaves, she burns the manuscript rather than return it, telling herself that she is destroying the child created by Løvborg and Thea.

Aunt Rina dies, leaving Tesman grieving but soon absorbed by another duty. Løvborg has also been shot. Hedda initially believes he fulfilled her demand for a deliberate death, but Brack privately corrects the story: the wound occurred at Diana's rooms, and the pistol was found there. He recognizes it as one of General Gabler's weapons. A public inquiry could trace it to Hedda, so Brack can now control her through the threat of scandal. Hedda understands that she has fallen into another person's power with no respectable means of escape. Thea produces the notes she kept while working with Løvborg, and Tesman eagerly joins her in trying to reconstruct the destroyed manuscript. Their shared labor draws them together and leaves Hedda without a place in the undertaking. Brack expects to remain the dominant third member of the household. Hedda goes into the inner room, plays the piano, and shoots herself. Tesman, Thea, and Brack rush in to find her dead.

Løvborg dies from a shot fired with one of General Gabler's pistols, but the death does not have the deliberate form Hedda encouraged. Judge Brack reports that the pistol discharged at Diana's rooms and that the circumstances will cause a public scandal. He recognizes the weapon as Hedda's and makes clear that he can expose her connection to the death whenever he chooses. Hedda realizes that avoiding scandal now requires submitting to Brack's private power over her. Meanwhile, Aunt Rina has died, and Tesman and Thea begin reconstructing Løvborg's lost book from Thea's notes. Their absorbed partnership gives Tesman a meaningful task but leaves Hedda outside the work that will preserve Løvborg's ideas. With Brack assuming that he has secured his place in their household, Hedda goes into the adjoining room, plays a final burst on the piano, and shoots herself. Tesman, Thea, and Brack discover her body; Brack responds with disbelief that anyone would act in such a way.