Hedda Gabler 2

Hedda Gabler is not an easy character to get to know. At first reading she seems a bitter personality portrayed in an old-fashioned script set in an out-outmoded and foreign society. How could a woman in 102-year-old play possibly be understandable or relevant to the late-twentieth-century student? However, upon further examination,Hedda Gabler's fictional reality not only offers us the opportunity to observe the art and social concerns of Ibsen's day, but extends to us …

…such scholars as Elinor Fuchs and Joan Templeton have convincingly shown that he was at the very least pathetic to the beginnings of the women's movement, and was even actively involved in the push to redefine the role of women in society. Certainly the creator of such seminal feminist archetypes as Lona Hessell, Nora Helmer, Helena Alving and Ellida Wangel could not have been blind to the implications of the plays in which they appeared.