In Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler', General Gabler's 'Pistols' that Hedda plays with and eventually uses primarily symbolize:
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Correct answer: Her inherited male authority, destructive power, and desperate wish to control her destiny
The pistols connect Hedda to her father's aristocratic, military world and contrast sharply with the domestic, bourgeois reality of her marriage to Tesman. They symbolize her longing for power, tragic masculine control, and ultimate destructive independence within a suffocating environment.
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