"Vinløv i håret": The Relationship between Women, Language, and Power in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler

This article examines the relationships among language, power, and gender in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. It shows how the central character in Ibsen's play, while conscious of the manipulative potential of words, nevertheless fails to negotiate that potential and ultimately chooses silence as a means to challenge her position in the patriarchal order. Such an analysis of the power of words represents a continuation of Ibsen's own analysis of the mechanisms of meaning and highlights the playwright's aesthetic self-consciousness, both of which are central elements in Ibsen's modernism.