Diana

Diana — known as "the red-haired singer" — is a significant absent figure in nineteenth-century drama. She never speaks, enters, or defends herself, yet her establishment serves as the play's moral underworld, where respectability disintegrates. Ibsen's choice to withhold her from the stage highlights bourgeois society's need to keep such women invisible alongside its dramatic technique. The audience learns about Diana solely through other characters, mainly Judge Brack, whose gleeful account in Act III is tinted by self-interest. She thus becomes an epistemological issue: we see her only through the distorting perspective of those who control the narrative surrounding her.

Diana lacks a conventional character arc, as she neither grows nor changes within the action we observe. Instead, she has a function, which shifts throughout the play's final movements. Initially, she is merely background: the disreputable world from which Thea Elvsted spent years extracting Lövborg. She becomes notably active — catastrophically so — in Act III, when Lövborg attends her party, misplaces his manuscript, and accuses her of theft. The ensuing brawl and his arrest directly accelerate the tragedy. Diana's motivation, as far as the text permits us to piece it together, is consistent: she runs an establishment, entertains patrons, and reportedly provided Lövborg with a pistol. Whether that act stemmed from indifference, dark generosity, or another motive remains unclear — Ibsen withholds her inner thoughts.

The pivotal moment involving Diana is Brack's account to Hedda in Act III. He describes, with barely concealed delight, the scandal at Diana's house: Lövborg intoxicated, the manuscript missing, the violent accusation, the police involvement. This account shatters Hedda's carefully constructed fantasy. She had envisioned Lövborg's death as "beautiful" — her phrase, repeated with near-religious conviction — with vine leaves in his hair, representing a romantic self-annihilation that would prove life could transform into something aesthetically worthy. Brack's revelation that Lövborg actually died in Diana's boudoir, from an accidental or self-inflicted wound to the abdomen rather than the temple, entirely destroys that image. Diana's physical space — her house, her bedroom — becomes the site where Hedda's last romantic illusion is extinguished. Brack then exploits this: the pistol found on Lövborg can be traced back to Hedda, and Diana's house becomes the leverage for his blackmail.

With Lövborg: Diana embodies the temptation Thea could suppress but never eliminate. Lövborg returns to her party despite his reformed life, and it is there that he loses the manuscript — the "child," as Thea refers to it — that symbolized everything he had rebuilt. His accusation against Diana reflects his instinct to externalize blame; whether she actually stole the manuscript (it had indeed fallen from his pocket) is inconsequential to his self-destruction, which was always internal.

With Hedda: Their relationship is entirely mediated and comes across as antagonistic. Hedda deliberately sends Lövborg back toward Diana's world, yet the consequences from Diana's house are beyond her control. The boudoir where Lövborg dies starkly contrasts with Hedda's own drawing room — both spaces confine women, but one is socially accepted while the other is not.

With Brack: Brack exploits Diana's scandal as both information and weapon. His intimate understanding of events at her establishment raises unsettling questions about his familiarity with that world — questions Ibsen pointedly leaves unanswered.

With Thea: Diana stands in stark contrast to Thea's influence. Where Thea provides Lövborg with purpose, sobriety, and collaborative creativity, Diana's world offers pleasure, dissolution, and ultimately leads to the destruction of everything Thea has built.