In this excerpt, Cardullo compares and contrasts elements of legacy in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Ghosts.

In Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Hedda's ideal (to live beautifully, free from the constraints of her socialization) dies with her, but Løvborg' s ideal (a book on the future of civilization, in which he frees himself, and potentially others, from the poisonous constraints of society by writing a prescription for that society's health or liberation) lives—it is reconstructed from notes by Tesman and Thea. Hedda kills herself with child: Løvborg and Thea speak of the manuscript as their "child." Hedda dies to achieve the ideal she could not achieve in life; Løvborg kills himself (or is killed in a mistaken attempt to retrieve his manuscript from "Mademoiselle Diana's boudoir") because he felt he had achieved, or helped to make possible, the ideal through his book...