In this act, Hedda fully expresses her desire to have power over someone. Frustrated at being unable to push her husband into a political career, incapable of maternal feelings, Hedda strives to compete with Thea for her influence over Lövborg. Having restored his liberty, she now looks forward to Eilert’s fulfilling her romantic image of him as the incarnation of “the joy of life”: he shall return “flushed and fearless with vine leaves in his hair!” That she has at once destroyed Thea’s life work and Lövborg’s morale is unimportant to Hedda; she merely wishes to have proof of her own worth by having power over someone.
At the same time that her craving for life distinguishes Hedda from “ordinary women,” she shows, in this act, her deep commitment to the same bourgeois ethics which chain a woman to her domestic duties. Expressing to the judge that she accepted George Tesman because he “is correctness itself,” Hedda implicitly rejects Brack’s proposition of a domestic triangle: such a scandalous relationship would be repugnant to her. The judge, not recognizing that Hedda maintains such strict conventions, believes she has accepted his frank proposal.
Eilert Lövborg, however, shows more insight into Hedda’s nature. When he accuses her of cowardice, he recognizes that she was too much a conformist to love an erratic and unconventional personality. Nevertheless, at the time of their youthful friendship, Hedda expressed her “craving for life” by being fascinated by Eilert’s intensity and brilliance; extracting detailed confessions from him was her way of vicariously experiencing a liberated and excessive way of life she was too afraid to live for herself.
