It offers a hint about a future outcome.
The answer would be contraction
Thea is more bound to convention than Hedda. Although she breaks with convention at leaving her husband, Thea still remains bound to the idea of a woman being subservient to a man. She simply trades the person to which she will submit. She trasfer her alligiance immediately from her husband to Lovborg, willing to do anything he might chose. In contrast, Hedda loaths the role of a housewife. This doesn't suit her at all, she was raised by her father, a general in the Army, and he taught her manly things like riding a horse and the shooting of weapons. Women, in those times, were not known to do such things. She lements to Lovborg, "Do think it quite incomprehensible that a young girl—when it can be done—without any one knowing—should be glad to have a peep, now and then, into a world which—?" Lovborg responds, "Which?" and Hedda answers, "which she is forbidden to know about". Hedda longed to know the things that men, alone, were allowed to share.
Thea was also more courageous that Hedda. She had the strength to leave her husband, even in the face of public ridicule. She show courage again when she searched for Lovborg's notes and desired to have them published. Hedda though was never truly courageous. She was driven only by her emotions and whims. When she had the opportunity to give back Lovborg's manuscript, she show herself a coward and chose, instead, to get her revenge by burning it. It would have taken real backbone to give back the manuscript, which was destined to be a best seller and cast a shadow on her husband's work, but she was not a person of courage.
