Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Published 1891 · 29,858 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Drama
How hard is Hedda Gabler to read?
Hedda Gabler scores 55 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Realistic prose slightly more elevated than A Doll's House; Hedda's language is distinctive.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Natural dialogue with more subtext than A Doll's House.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Psychological study raises questions about freedom, creativity, and gender.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Past relationships and motivations emerge gradually; requires attention.
- Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
- Hedda's motivations are never explained; interpretation must supply them.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- The pistols, the manuscript, the vine leaves in Løvborg's hair, the back room.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Hedda's contempt for her world is visible; her self-destruction is both triumph and failure.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Hedda's death is final but its meaning unclear; "People don't do such things."
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Four acts, single set; classical concentration of action.
How Hedda Gabler is regarded
Hedda Gabler holds a literary regard score of 85 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where Hedda Gabler sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism
Placed by a full reading of the text (69 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Hedda Gabler scores 70 out of 100. A second mythos, irony, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.
- Mode: Low Mimetic
Oh, what curse is it that makes everything I touch turn ludicrous and mean?
- Symbol: Formal
I can see him already—with vine-leaves in his hair—flushed and fearless—
- Mythos: Ironic Tragedy iv (tragic pathos) (tragedy iv)
People don't do such things.
- Genre: Drama
[A shot is heard within. TESMAN, MRS. ELVSTED, and BRACK leap to their feet.
Where the story of Hedda Gabler takes place
- Tesman's villa, west end of Christiania, early autumn, 1860s-1890 (1860 to 1890), the main setting
5 things that are true of Hedda Gabler, with the passage for each
Ibsen says he titled the play for Hedda's father, not her husband.
Hedda, as a personality, is to be regarded rather as her father's daughter than as her husband's wife.
Hedda fires pistols from the garden door at Judge Brack in Act II.
Now I'll shoot you, Judge Brack!
Hedda burns Lovborg's manuscript in the stove, calling it his and Thea's child.
Now I am burning your child, Thea!
Lovborg is found shot in the bowels, not the breast, in Mademoiselle Diana's boudoir.
No—in the bowels.
Tesman reacts to Hedda's suicide by thinking at first that she is playing with the pistols.
Oh, now she is playing with those pistols again.
Scenes in Hedda Gabler that Frye would name
7 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:
- Pathos, Act IV
Shot herself! Shot herself in the temple! Fancy that!
Hedda's suicide is the sacrificial death scene, followed by bathos.- Hamartia, Act II
I want for once in my life to have power to mould a human destiny.
Hedda's fatal flaw, the need for control joined to cowardice about scandal, sets the tragedy in motion.- Displacement, Act II
At ten o'clock—he will be here. I can see him already—with vine-leaves in his hair—flushed and fearless—
The Dionysian myth of the vine-leaved hero shows through Hedda's realistic motivation.- Demonic imagery, Act III
[Throws one of the quires into the fire and whispers to herself.] Now I am burning your child, Thea!
The burning of the manuscript as a child is a demonic parody of birth and sacrifice, with fire consuming the creative work.- Sparagmos, Act III
I have torn my own life to pieces. So why should I not tear my life-work too—?
Lovborg claims the manuscript is torn apart, an image of dismemberment of the life-work as child.- Pharmakos, Act IV
Eilert Lovborg was found shot in—in Mademoiselle Diana's boudoir.
Lovborg is the sacrificed figure, destroyed by the scheme of Hedda and Brack.
Books that share these scenes with Hedda Gabler
- Demonic imagery: 1984, The Fellowship of the Ring, Wuthering Heights
- Anagnorisis: Jane Eyre, The Reader, Don Quixote
- Sparagmos: 1984, The Old Man and the Sea, Crime and Punishment
- Pathos: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bring Up the Bodies, The Idiot
- Hamartia: Wuthering Heights, Outer Dark, The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Displacement: Wuthering Heights, The Metamorphosis, Don Quixote
- Pharmakos: 1984, Penelopiad, King James Bible