Hedda Gabler Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 61 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Hedda Gabler.

Hedda Gabler Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 61 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Hedda Gabler.
This section contains 804 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Hedda Gabler Study Guide

Hedda Gabler was published in December of 1890, a few weeks before it was first performed. Norwegian, English, German, French, Russian, and Dutch versions were printed almost simultaneously, with the result that the consternation many readers felt quickly spread throughout Europe. The play garnered the worst press reviews of any of Ibsen's mature plays, even Rosmersholm, which had been critically mauled four years earlier. The newer work offended many and puzzled more critics, who, as Hans Heiberg noted in Ibsen: A Portrait of the Artist, found the main character too monstrous, a "revolting female creature" who "received neither sympathy nor compassion." Just as damning, the work seemed to lack a message, a corrective purpose, the sort of social critique for which Ibsen had become so famous.

Hedda's character was the principal target of much of the negative criticism. Quoted in Ibsen: A Biography, Alfred Sinding-Larsen called her...

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This section contains 804 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Hedda Gabler Study Guide
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Hedda Gabler from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.