Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest are both regarded as their best work getting praise and recognition for their contribution to the literary world. Due to Ibsen’s extensively complex main character Hedda Tesman, she is regarded to be one of the “most difficult roles in theatre” (T.Ross). The Importance of Being Earnest is Oscar Wilde’s most recognized piece which would also be his last play before being sent to jail convicted of homosexual acts. Props can be used in such a way that can account for the characters qualities, create deeper meaning for the time and the character, and also can accent the type of character whether flat or round. But which play is better at creating character development based on the criteria above.
Ibsen and Wilde are known to use props that the characters use to endow attributes upon their characters. The two main characters Hedda Gabler and Jack Worthing have the most apparent props that represent them. Hedda Gabler has one main prop that helps define her as a character, her pistols. Hedda’s pistols present her qualities of being violent, controlling, and seeking power over people “I want for once in my life to have power to mould a human destiny” (Citation), the quote and the qualities helps paint the picture that Hedda is a ticking time bomb ready to go off at any moment. Wilde’s main character Jack Worthing has a main prop as well, his cigarette box. The Cigarette box is one of the most important props in the play, because it symbols a double life that Jack is leading, one in the city with Gwendolen, and the life he leads in the country with his ward Cecily. Ibsen and Wilde use this technique effectively to show the props and characters have a connection…
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…t the character lives in and also to advance the reader’s understanding of the character as a whole. While Ibsen did have a deeper meaning for his play Wilde’s deeper meaning is more complex and says more about the society they lived in; with the use of things that homosexual people would recognize as homosexual paraphernalia is a of defiance against the times social views and morals. The final aspect is the use of flat versus round characters, both Ibsen and Wilde use this method effectively but Ibsen’s use of a round character, Hedda Gabler, is superior to Ibsen’s flat characters because the reader will not be able to predict what she will do next and to what degree she will do it making for better character development. Overall with the criteria set forth in this essay the better play is Hedda Gabler because of Hedda Gabler’s more extensive character development.
