Hedda Gabler (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Barranger, Milly S. Barron’s Simplified Approach to Henrik Ibsen, Barron’s Educational Series, 1969.

  This brief monograph offers uncomplicated readings of Hedda Gabler and two other major Ibsen plays: The Wild Duck and Ghosts. It is a helpful guide to interpretation focusing on character, themes, and dramatic technique.

• Durbach, Errol. Ibsen the Romantic: Analogues of Paradise in the Later Plays, University of George Press, 1982.

  Durbach discusses the romantic and counter-romantic currents in Ibsen that underlies his characters’ search for meaning, their efforts to redeem themselves from an inhibiting and stultifying, uncreative life. It is a search that can be destructive, as in Hedda’s case.

• Lyons, Charles R. Hedda Gabler: Gender, Role, and World, Twayne, 1990.

  Lyons discusses both the cultural and historical milieu of Hedda Gabler, then discusses the play as a kind of mimetic snapshot of human behavior caught in that historical matrix and argues that reader responses should reflect that limitation.

• McFarlane, James, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen, Cambridge University Press, 1994.

  A collection of articles by contemporary scholars, this anthology includes important pieces on such topics as Ibsen’s realistic problem plays, his relationship to feminism, and his impact on modern drama. The work includes helpful aids, including a chronology and notes on the first publication and performance of each of Ibsen’s works.

• Meyer, Michael. Ibsen: A Biography, Doubleday, 1971.

  A well-documented critical biography, this study makes extensive use of Ibsen’s correspondence and summarizes the critical reception of his works in his own day.

• Northam, John. Ibsen’s Dramatic Method: A Study of the Prose Dramas, Universitetsforlaget, 1971.

  A recommended starting place for the study of Ibsen’s technique, this work approaches the plays by analyzing the playwright’s language and its correlation with visual, on-stage images, as, for example, the opposing physical differences between Hedda and Thea Elvsted.

• Young, Robert. Time’s Disinherited Children: Childhood, Regression, and Sacrifice in the Plays of Henrik Ibsen, Norvik Press, 1989.

  Young’s central thesis is that the motives and needs of many of Ibsen’s major characters reveal the disinherited child in the adult.