How can a summary of Hedda Gabler be reduced to one sentence?

Hedda Gabler is a four-act play by
Henrik Ibsen. The main character, Hedda, has just returned from her honeymoon with her
new husband George. While George and his family seem very nice, we find that Hedda is
rude, manipulative and unnecessarily unkind to those in George's
household.

readability="9">

Hedda is selfish, proud, and cold, cruelly
heedless of the pain she inflicts on others in her efforts to satisfy the inner
desires...

As the play moves
along, Hedda gathers information from Thea Elvsted about Eilert Lovborg, a man Thea
loves who will not enter into a relationship with her because his heart belongs to an
old love who drove him away at the point of a gun. When Hedda mentions her own guns, we
realize that she is Lovborg's former
sweetheart.

Even while Hedda "desires the power to shape
one person's destiny," it seems she is bent upon destroying any hopes for happiness
those around her might have: she betrays Thea's confidence to Lovborg, robs Lovborg of
his sense of hope for personal redemption, and reveals that she cares nothing for her
new husband—only for his potential to be successful.

While
Judge Brack tries to manipulate Hedda into a sexual relationship, Hedda drives Lovborg
away, providing him with a pistol so that he might end his life in a "beautiful" way.
Lovborg does shoot himself, but it is an ugly end. When Brack sees
Hedda's other pistol, he realizes that Lovborg took his life with
her gun, a scandalous turn of events that he
believes he can use to force Hedda to give in to his sexual
advances.

Hedda goes into another room, shooting herself
"beautifully" in the temple.

While this is a very brief
overview of the story, it contains enough information to provide one with a one-sentence
summary that addresses the play's major action. Here is one
sentence:

readability="15">

Hedda Gabler, by Henrik
Ibsen, is a play about a self-serving and willful woman, Hedda, who cares little for
others, particularly her new husband and her old flame; she is unkind and self-serving
to the point that she thinks nothing of crushing the hopes of others, drives a former
sweetheart to take his own life, and then shoots herself rather than face the
unpleasantness of scandal over what she has
done.