Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Published 1891 · 29,248 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.