World Lit Exam 2 Works – Flashcards

(Jean-Jacques) Rousseau

John Keats

Romanticism-This poem represents a writer who wants to escape the real world and bringing in the immortality of beauty. *Discusses how the author temporarily lives in the Art World which is filled with ecstasy, but had to return to the real world.

Rousseau relates his past. He presents a self-portrait that is "in every way true to nature" and that hides nothing. He begins his tale by describing his family, including his mother's death at his birth. He ruminates on his earliest memories, which begin when he was five, a dawning of consciousness that he traces to his learning to read. He discusses his childhood in the years before his father left him and his own decision to run away to see the world at the age of sixteen. He often dwells for many pages on seemingly minor events that hold great importance for him. Rousseau frequently discusses the more unsavory or embarrassing experiences of his life, and he devotes much of the early section to these types of episodes.Rousseau continues to describe his life and eventually reaches adulthood. The narrative continues in a similar vein in the later sections, with Rousseau focusing less on places traveled and jobs held than on his personal trials, unrequited loves, and sexual frustrations. He speaks at length of his significant relations with women, including his rather unremarkable longtime companion Thérése le Vasseur and the older matron Madame de Warens, at whose home he often stayed as a young man. In the last of the twelve books that make up the work, Rousseau speaks about his intellectual work, his writing, and his relations to contemporary philosophers

-Goes against enlightenment thoughts and ideas. Rousseau's Confessions sought to bare the entire life of its author subject, detailing all his imperfections, virtues, individual neuroses, and formative childhood experiences as a means of explaining and justifying the views and personality of his adult self. As a work of literature, it inaugurated the modern genre of autobiography and influenced narrative technique in the great novels that would appear in the following century.

Cannot see where he is, but his imagination guides him- provoked by senses around him- gives the inspiration he wants. Has been in love and afraid of death- became appealing and now he can die w/o regrets- but even when his soul goes on the bird will still be singing in vain- time rich for death because he has heard the birds song- acceptance of death. Bird is not afraid of death- birds song will live forever- divine- ability to create lives on- Bird only goes to spread happiness- has been around forever. Snaps back to reality- bird has taken toll on him- deceiving- can't trick yourself out of death- bird flys away- questions if the vision he saw of nature/imagination was a dream or reality- inspiration- teaches him not to worry about future- music of bird is lasting because of the reminder of dream vs reality.

Wordsworth

Romanticizes nature, and talks about how children are connected to the world before. We lose this as we get older. It makes him sad, but he is happy to behold the sights of spring. All about how this life is an intimation of a life before.

Romanticism -In the first stanza, the speaker says wistfully that there was a time when all of nature seemed dreamlike to him, "apparelled in celestial light," and that that time is past; "the things I have seen I can see no more." -Second stanza, he says that he still sees the rainbow, and that the rose is still lovely; the moon looks around the sky with delight, and starlight and sunshine are each beautiful. But the speaker feels that a glory has passed away from the earth. -Third stanza, the speaker says that, while listening to the birds sing in springtime and watching the young lambs leap and play, he was stricken with a thought of grief; but the sound of nearby waterfalls, the echoes of the mountains, and the gusting of the winds restored him to strength. He declares that his grief will no longer wrong the joy of the season, and that all the earth is happy. He exhorts a shepherd boy to shout and play around him. -Fourth stanza, he addresses nature's creatures, and says that his heart participates in their joyful festival. He says that it would be wrong to feel sad on such a beautiful May morning. Nevertheless, a tree and a field that he looks upon make him think of "something that is gone," and a pansy at his feet does the same. He asks what has happened to "the visionary gleam": "Where is it now, the glory and the dream?" -Fifth stanza, he proclaims that human life is merely "a sleep and a forgetting" that human beings dwell in a purer, more glorious realm before they enter the earth. "Heaven," he says, "lies about us in our infancy!" As children, we still retain some memory of that place, which causes our experience of the earth to be suffused with its magic—but as the baby passes through boyhood and young adulthood and into manhood, he sees that magic die. -Sixth stanza, the speaker says that the pleasures unique to earth conspire to help the man forget the "glories" whence he came. -Seventh stanza, the speaker beholds a six-year-old boy and imagines his life, and the love his mother and father feel for him. He sees the boy playing with some imitated fragment of adult life, imitating "a wedding or a festival" or "a mourning or a funeral." The speaker imagines that all human life is a similar imitation. -Eighth stanza, the speaker addresses the child as though he were a mighty prophet of a lost truth, and rhetorically asks him why, when he has access to the glories of his origins, he still hurries toward an adult life of custom and "earthly freight." -Ninth stanza, the speaker experiences a surge of joy at the thought that his memories of childhood will always grant him a kind of access to that lost world innocence and exploration. -Tenth stanza, bolstered by this joy, he urges the birds to sing, and urges all creatures to participate in "the gladness of the May." He says that though he has lost some part of the glory of nature and of experience, he will take solace in "primal sympathy," in memory, and in the fact that the years bring a mature consciousness—"a philosophic mind." -Final stanza, the speaker says that this mind—which stems from a consciousness of mortality, as opposed to the child's feeling of immortality—enables him to love nature and natural beauty all the more, for each of nature's objects can stir him to thought, and even the simplest flower blowing in the wind can raise in him "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Coleridge

Written after a drug induced sleep caused him to have a vision. Was interrupted halfway through so it is an unfinished work. Signals the rise of romanticizing orientalism - the fascination with "the other"; Persian, Muslim, Hindu...lots of other cultures are introduced into English. Gothic tendencies - working with the aesthetics of sublimity. Perversity, sexuality.

The speaker describes the "stately pleasure-dome" built in Xanadu according to the decree of Kubla Khan, in the place where Alph, the sacred river, ran "through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea." Walls and towers were raised around "twice five miles of fertile ground," filled with beautiful gardens and forests. A "deep romantic chasm" slanted down a green hill, occasionally spewing forth a violent and powerful burst of water, so great that it flung boulders up with it "like rebounding hail." The river ran five miles through the woods, finally sinking "in tumult to a lifeless ocean." Amid that tumult, in the place "as holy and enchanted / As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted / By woman wailing to her demon-lover," Kubla heard "ancestral voices" bringing prophesies of war. The pleasure-dome's shadow floated on the waves, where the mingled sounds of the fountain and the caves could be heard. "It was a miracle of rare device," the speaker says, "A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!" The speaker says that he once saw a "damsel with a dulcimer," an Abyssinian maid who played her dulcimer and sang "of Mount Abora." He says that if he could revive "her symphony and song" within him, he would rebuild the pleasure-dome out of music, and all who heard him would cry "Beware!" of "His flashing eyes, his floating hair!" The hearers would circle him thrice and close their eyes with "holy dread," knowing that he had tasted honeydew, "and drunk the milk of Paradise."

Holderlin

The fruits are ripe, dipped in fire, Cooked and sampled on earth. And there's a law, That things crawl off in the manner of snakes, Prophetically, dreaming on the hills of heaven. And there is much that needs to be retained, Like a load of wood on the shoulders. But the pathways are dangerous. The captured elements and ancient laws of earth Run astray like horses. There is a constant yearning For all that is unconfined. But much needs To be retained. And loyalty is required. Yet we mustn't look forwards or backwards. We should let ourselves be cradled As if on a boat rocking on a lake. But what about things that we love? We see sun shining on the ground, and the dry dust, And at home the forests deep with shadows, And smoke flowering from the rooftops, Peacefully, near the ancient crowning towers. These signs of daily life are good, Even when by contrast something divine Has injured the soul. For snow sparkles on an alpine meadow, Half-covered with green, signifying generosity Of spirit in all situations, like flowers in May — A wanderer walks up above on a high trail And speaks irritably to a friend about a cross He sees in the distance, set for someone Who died on the path... what does it mean? My Achilles Died near a fig tree, And Ajax lies in the caves of the sea Near the streams of Skamandros — Great Ajax died abroad Following Salamis' inflexible customs, A rushing sound at his temples — But Patroclus died in the King's armor. Many others died as well. But Eleutherai, the city Of Mnemosyne, once stood upon Mount Kithaeron. Evening Loosened her hair, after the god Had removed his coat. For the gods are displeased If a person doesn't compose And spare himself. But one has to do it, And grief is soon gone.

Completed around 1803, Hölderlin anticipates many of the themes of Modernism by over a century.

Flaubert

REALISM; a novel about an unhappy wife with romantic ideals married to a hopelessly dull husband; -Satires about romanticism -Interesting narrative techniques: indirect discourse!! -first 30 pages in first person, switches to Emma, 3rd person from different points of view.

Charles Bovary is a young boy, unable to fit in. As a child, and later when he grows into a young man, Charles is mediocre and dull. He barely manages to become a second-rate country doctor. His mother marries him off to a widow who dies soon afterward, leaving Charles much less money than he expected. Charles soon falls in love with Emma, the daughter of a patient, and the two decide to marry. After an elaborate wedding, they set up house in Tostes, where Charles has his practice. But marriage doesn't live up to Emma's romantic expectations. After she attends an extravagant ball, she begins to dream constantly of a more sophisticated life, and eventually her listlessness makes her ill. When Emma becomes pregnant, Charles decides to move to a different town in hopes of reviving her health. In the new town of Yonville, the Bovarys meet Homais, the town pharmacist, a pompous windbag. Emma also meets Leon, a law clerk, who, like her, is bored with rural life and loves to escape through romantic novels. When Emma gives birth to her daughter Berthe, motherhood disappoints her. Romantic feelings blossom between Emma and Leon. However, when Emma realizes that Leon loves her, she feels guilty and throws herself into the role of a dutiful wife. Leon grows tired of waiting and departs to study law in Paris. His departure makes Emma miserable. At an agricultural fair, a wealthy neighbor named Rodolphe, who is attracted by Emma's beauty, declares his love to her. He seduces her, and they begin having a passionate affair. Emma is often indiscreet. Charles, however, suspects nothing. His professional reputation, suffers a severe blow when he and Homais attempt an experimental surgical technique and fails. Disgusted with her husband's incompetence, Emma throws herself even more passionately into her affair with Rodolphe. She borrows money to buy him gifts and suggests that they run off together. Soon enough, though, the jaded and worldly Rodolphe has grown bored of Emma's demanding affections. Refusing to elope with her, he leaves her. Heartbroken, Emma grows desperately ill and nearly dies. By the time Emma recovers, Charles is in financial trouble from having to borrow money to pay off Emma's debts. Still, he decides to take Emma to the opera in the nearby city of Rouen. There, they encounter Leon. This meeting rekindles the old romantic flame between Emma and Leon, and the two embark on a love affair. As Emma continues sneaking off to Rouen to meet Leon, she also grows deeper and deeper in debt to the moneylender Lheureux, who lends her more and more money at exaggerated interest rates. Over time, Emma grows bored with Leon. Not knowing how to abandon him, she instead becomes increasingly demanding. Meanwhile, her debts mount daily. Eventually, Lheureux orders the seizure of Emma's property to compensate for the debt she has accumulated. Terrified of Charles finding out, she frantically tries to raise the money that she needs, appealing to Leon and to all the town's businessmen. Eventually, she even attempts to prostitute herself by offering to get back together with Rodolphe if he will give her the money she needs. He refuses, and, driven to despair, she commits suicide by eating arsenic. She dies in horrible agony. For a while, Charles idealizes the memory of his wife. Eventually, though, he finds her letters from Rodolphe and Leon, and he is forced to confront the truth. He dies alone in his garden, and Berthe is sent off to work in a cotton mill.

Madame Bovary- A sly, sinister merchant and moneylender in Yonville who leads Emma into debt, financial ruin, and eventually suicide by playing on her weakness for luxury and extravagance.He is a bit of a devil figure who tempts people with luxuries they can't afford and knows just when to appear with his requests for money and promises of more loans.

Madame Bovary- main character. She harbors idealistic romantic illusions, covets sophistication, sensuality, and passion, and lapses into fits of extreme boredom and depression when her life fails to match the sentimental novels she treasures. Has extramarital affairs and she runs up enormous debts against her husband's property and commits suicide.

Madame Bovary-A country doctor-very dull; he tries to operate on Hippolyte's leg, it develops gangrene and has to be removed. Charles marries Emma who is perfect to him. doesn't see her affairs with Rodolphe and Leon. After Emma's suicide, he learns of her affairs and dies a broken man.

Madame Bovary-apothecary at Yonville; pompous, self-impressed man of bourgeois who helps Charles become established as a doctor . superficial and obnoxious. loves to hear himself talk. His pomposity can cause real harm, An irreligious man, perfect embodiment of all the bourgeois values and characteristics

Madame Bovary-Emma's friend in Yonville, who later becomes her lover. When he is a law clerk in Yonville, he shares many of Emma's romantic preconceptions and her love for sentimental novels. He falls in love with her but moves away to Paris to study law, partly because he considers their love impossible as long as she remains married. When Emma meets him later in Rouen, his time in the city has made him more sure of himself. He now perceives Emma to be unsophisticated and thinks he can win her love.

Madame Bovary-Emma's first lover, a wealthy landowner with estate near Yonville. shrewd, selfish, and manipulative. has had many lovers. He plots his seduction of Emma with strategic precision, begins an affair with her, and then abandons her when he becomes bored of her romantic fancies / emotional demands.

Madame Bovary-town priest in Yonville, focuses more on worldly matters than spiritual. often argues with Homais about value of religion, seems incapable of grasping deep spiritual problems.

Madame Bovary-Homais's assistant. He is young, impressionable, and simple. He falls terribly in love with Emma and unwittingly gives her access to the arsenic that she uses to commit suicide.

Madame Bovary-A bitter, conservative woman who spoiled her son Charles as a youth and disapproves of his marriage to Emma. She sees through Emma's lies and tries to get Charles to rein in his wife's excessive spending, but she rarely succeeds.

Madame Bovary-Emma's father, a simple, essentially kindly farmer with a weakness for drink. He is devoted both to Emma and to the memory of his first wife, whom he loved deeply.

Marx and the Engels

"History of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle." They argue that all changes in the shape of society, in political institutions, in history itself, are driven by a process of collective struggle on the part people with similar economic situations in order to realize their material or economic interests. Class struggles have always existed—slaves against masters, serfs against landlords, and so on. The modern industrialized world has been shaped by one such subordinate class—the bourgeoisie, or merchant class—in its struggle against the aristocratic elite of feudal society. Through world exploration, the discovery of raw materials and metals, and the opening of commercial markets across the globe, the bourgeoisie, whose livelihood is accumulation, grew wealthier and politically emboldened against the feudal order, which it eventually managed to sweep away through struggle and revolution. The bourgeoisie have risen to the status of dominant class in the modern industrial world, shaping political institutions and society according to its own interests. Far from doing away with class struggle, this once subordinate class, now dominant, has replaced one class struggle with another. The merchants' zeal for accumulation has led them to conquer the globe. The bourgeois view, which sees the world as one big market for exchange, has fundamentally altered all aspects of society. Under industrialization this process of expansion and change have created a new subordinate urban class whose fate is tied to that of the bourgeoisie. This class is the industrial proletariat, or modern working class. These workers have been uprooted by the expansion of capitalism and forced to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie, a fact that offends them to the core of their existence as they recall those workers of earlier ages who owned and sold what they created. Modern industrial workers are exploited by the bourgeoisie and forced to compete with one another for ever-shrinking wages as the means of production grow more sophisticated. The factory is the arena for the formation of a class struggle. Modern industrial workers will come to recognize their exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie. Although the economic system forces them to compete with one another for ever shrinking wages, through common association on the factory floor they will overcome the divisions between themselves, realize their common fate, and begin to engage in a collective effort against the bourgeoisie. The workers will form collectivities and gradually take their demands to the political sphere. Meanwhile, the workers will be joined by an ever-increasing number of the lower middle class whose entrepreneurial livelihoods are being destroyed by the growth of huge factories owned by a shrinking number of superrich industrial elites. Gradually, all of society will be drawn to one or the other side of the struggle. Like the bourgeoisie before them, the proletariat and their allies will act together in the interests of realizing their economic aims. They will move to sweep aside the bourgeoisie and its institutions. The bourgeoisie, through its established mode of production, produces the seeds of its own destruction: the working class.

Class struggle

written by Dostoyevsky. Counter-Enlightenment.

The anonymous narrator of Notes from Underground is a bitter man living alone in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the 1860s. He is a veteran retired because he has inherited some money. The novel consists a confused and often contradictory set of memoirs or confessions describing and explaining his alienation from modern society. Notes from Underground is divided into two sections. The first, "Underground," is shorter and set when the Underground Man is forty years old. This section serves as an introduction to the character of the Underground Man, explaining his theories about his antagonistic position toward society. He is "a sick man . . . a wicked man . . . an unattractive man" whose self-loathing and spite has crippled and corrupted him. He is a well-read and highly intelligent man, and he believes that this fact accounts for his misery. He has become disillusioned with all philosophy. He has appreciation for the Romantic idea of "the beautiful and lofty," but he is aware of its absurdity in his mundane existence. The Underground Man has great contempt for nineteenth--century utilitarianism, a school of thought that attempted to use mathematical formulas and logical proofs to align man's desires with his best interests. The Underground Man complains that man's primary desire is to exercise his free will, whether or not it is in his best interests. In the face of utilitarianism, man will do nasty and unproductive things simply to prove that his free will is unpredictable and therefore completely free. The Underground Man is not proud of all this useless behavior, however. He has enormous contempt for himself as a human being. He is aware that he is so overcome by inertia that he cannot even become wicked enough to be a scoundrel, or insignificant enough to be an insect, or lazy enough to be a true lazybones. The second fragment of Notes from Underground, entitled "Apropos of the Wet Snow," describes specific events in the Underground Man's life in the 1840s, when he was twenty-four years old. This second section reveals the narrator's progression from his youthful perspective, influenced by Romanticism and ideals of "the beautiful and lofty," to his mature perspective in 1860, which is purely cynical about beauty, loftiness, and literariness in general. "Apropos of the Wet Snow" describes interactions between the Underground Man and various people who inhabit his world: soldiers, former schoolmates, and prostitutes. The Underground Man is so alienated from these people that he is completely incapable of normal interaction with them. The Underground Man's alienation manifests itself in all kinds of relationships. In a confused attempt at social interaction, the Underground Man deliberately follows some school acquaintances to a dinner where he is not wanted, alternately insulting them openly and craving their attention and friendship. Later that same evening, the Underground Man attempts to rescue an attractive young prostitute named Liza by delivering impassioned, sentimental speeches about the terrible fate that awaits her if she continues to sell her body. When Liza comes to visit the Underground Man in his shoddy apartment several days later, he reacts with shame and anger when he realizes she has reason to pity or look down upon him. The Underground Man continues to insult Liza throughout the visit. Hurt and confused, she leaves him alone in his apartment. Here the Underground Man decides to end his notes. In a footnote at the end of the novel, Dostoevsky reveals that the Underground Man fails to make even this simple decision to stop writing, as Dostoevsky says that the manuscript of the notes goes on for many pages beyond the point at which he has chosen to cut it off.

Notes from the Underground-The anonymous narrator and protagonist of the novel. He lives in a state of total alienation and isolation from society. Severely misanthropic, the he believes himself to be more intelligent and perceptive than most other people in the world, but he also despises himself and frequently feels himself to be inferior or humiliated. We see all of the events and characters in the novel from the Underground Man's skewed perspective.

Notes from the Underground-A young prostitute whom the Underground Man tries to rescue after sleeping with her at a brothel. She is somewhat shy and innocent despite her profession, and she responds emotionally to the Underground Man's efforts to convince her of the error of her ways. She is naturally loving and sympathetic, but she also has a sense of pride and nobility.

Notes from the Underground-A former schoolmate of the Underground Man, the only one with whom the Underground Man currently maintains a relationship. The Underground Man sees him as an honest, independent man who is less narrow-minded than most people. Nonetheless, the Underground Man also suspects that he despises him and finds his friendship burdensome.

-implements 3rd person limited omniscient -1st person unreliable narration-jaded, pessimistic views, mean, one-sided -1st person naive techniques

Henrik Ibsen

Hedda Tesman is Norway in the 1890s, so she's very repressed, both socially and sexually. She grew up rich and privileged. Now she's married to George, a would-be professor and academic bore. Hedda has just returned from her six-month honeymoon with George and is settling into married life in the house he has bought specifically to please her. On top of the boredom and repression, Hedda is in all likelihood pregnant, though she won't admit it despite several hints from George's Aunt Julie, a kind older woman who takes care of her invalid sister Rina. Conflict enters the scene when Mrs. Elvsted visits to the Tesmans. She's there looking out for a guy named Eilert Løvborg, a recovering alcoholic who tutors her children. Hedda, the master of manipulation, soon gets Mrs. Elvsted alone and coerces her into admitting the truth: she and Eilert are involved, and she wants to leave her husband for him. Eilert has published a book - he's in the same field of history as Mr. Tesman - and Mrs. Elvsted has followed him to the city to make sure he doesn't fall back on his old drinking ways. She begs the Tesmans to look out for him. Shortly after, Judge Brack, the big man around town, comes by and flirts with Hedda. It's clear he's interested in her. Everyone keeps asking Hedda the same question: why has she, the best catch in town, married a bore like George? Hedda admits that 1) she had to marry someone and 2) she thought George, through his scholarly pursuits, would be famous some day. Eilert stops by the Tesmans and we discover that Hedda has a history with him. When Hedda broke off their romance, she did so to avoid the scandal of hanging out with a questionable alcoholic like Eilert. She also threatened to shoot him with one of her father's pistols. Now that he's with Mrs. Elvsted, Hedda decides to entertain herself by causing some trouble. She tells Eilert that Mrs. Elvsted was afraid he would drink again. This angers Eilert, who promptly starts drinking again. He goes out to a party with the Judge and Hedda's husband George, but not before revealing a tantalizing and plot-thickening tidbit: he's written another book, this one using information from the past to predict the future. He's written it with the help of his new muse, Mrs. Elvsted. He has the only copy, a hand-written manuscript. Mrs. Elvsted stays with Hedda. Of course, Eilert drinks himself silly at the party. He never returns that night. While Mrs. Elvsted is sleeping, George comes back early the next morning, tells Hedda about the drunken debauchery, and shows her something: Eilert's manuscript. It seems that Eilert dropped it while drunk and George recovered it, eager to keep it safe so he could return it to his friend once sober. When a letter comes regarding Aunt Rina's fading health, George rushes out. Later that morning, Eilert comes running in. Mrs. Elvsted wakes up in time for him to break up with her, telling her that he tore up the manuscript and doesn't want to see her any more. Mrs. Elvsted declares that he has destroyed their child (meaning the book) and leaves. Only then does Eilert admit, to Hedda, that he lost the manuscript. Hedda says nothing about the recovered manuscript and instead gives him a pistol. She's eager for Eilert to have a beautiful, poetic death - she wants him to shoot himself in the temple. Finally alone again, Hedda burns the manuscript to ashes. When she confesses this to George later, he is overjoyed that his wife loves him enough to destroy the work of his professional rival. Mrs. Elvsted visits again the next morning to find out what's going on with Eilert, and Judge Brack comes by to tell everyone that Eilert is dead by suicide. Mrs. Elvsted and George, feeling quite horrible, decide to re-write the manuscript using Mrs. Elvsted's notes. While they start work, the Judge takes Hedda aside and tells her that Eilert didn't commit suicide - rather he accidentally shot himself in the gut. Hedda is devastated that the great poetic death she imagined never came to pass. Brack also reveals that the pistol was Hedda's. He can keep this info quiet, but only if she does what he wants. No one tells Hedda what to do. She shoots herself in the temple.

Not a nice person. She taunts a recovering alcoholic about his masculinity and goads him into drinking again. She takes advantage of her husband's dying aunt to steal an irreplaceable document. She tries to trick a man into committing suicide and takes pleasure in the romance of his death. As the play begins, she is returning from her honeymoon with George Tesman, a scholar with good prospects but not as much money as she is accustomed to. Her married name is Tesman. She is an intelligent, unpredictable, and somewhat dishonest young woman who is not afraid to manipulate her husband and friends.

(Hedda Gabler) He is an amiable, intelligent young scholar. He tries very hard to please his young wife, Hedda, and often does not realize that she is manipulating him. In fact, he often seems foolish for his age, and when he annoys Hedda, the audience has reason to sympathize with her. He is hoping for a professorship in history, and at the beginning of the play it seems that his one great rival, Ejlert Lövborg, a notorious alcoholic, no longer stands in his way. He was raised by his Aunt Julle.

(Hedda Gabler) Aunt of George Tesman. After Tesman's parents died, she raised him. She is well-meaning, and she is constantly hinting that Tesman and Hedda should have a baby. She tries to get along with Hedda, but the difference in their class backgrounds is painfully apparent. She lives with the ailing Aunt Rina, another aunt of Tesman's.

(Hedda Gabler) Judge of relatively inferior rank. He is a friend of both Tesman* and Hedda, and he visits their house regularly. He has connections around the city, and is often the first to give Tesman information about alterations in the possibility of his professorship. He seems to enjoy meddling in other people's affairs. He is a worldly and cynical man.

(Hedda Gabler) A genius who is Tesman's biggest competitor in the academic world. After a series of scandals related to drinking, he was once a public outcast but has now returned to the city and has published a book to rave reviews. He also has another manuscript that is even more promising. Mrs. Elvsted helped him with both manuscripts. He once shared a close relationship with Hedda.

(Hedda Gabler) She is a meek but passionate woman. She and her husband hired Ejlert Lövborg as a tutor to their children, and Mrs. Elvsted grew attached to Ejlert, acting as his personal secretary and aiding him in his research and writing. When Ejlert leaves her estate to return to the city, she comes to town and goes to Tesman* for help, fearing Ejlert will revert to his alcoholism. She went to school with Hedda and remembers being tormented by her.

-Ibsen masters subtext -he implements extremely natural retrogressive exposition-refers to backstory -feminist work -realism-this is what conversation sounds like -peering into their world on stage like you are there -reply to the optimist view of the enlightenment-enlightened self interest -polite on the surface, but actually very impolite