Recommendations
Books Like Hedda Gabler
Best books to read after Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Readers who love Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen are drawn to its combination of psychological complexity, the portrait of a woman trapped by her society's refusal to give her any legitimate channel for her intelligence and desire for power, and the devastating formal precision with which Ibsen builds to the offstage shot — they want plays and novels that deal with women's unfreedom, desire, and the destruction that follows when desire has nowhere to go.
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A Doll's House
by Henrik Ibsen
The companion feminist Ibsen play — Nora Helmer's decision to leave her husband. The two Ibsen plays most frequently staged today: Nora's ending is the active, hopeful version; Hedda's is the version for the woman who has no equivalent exit available
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Madame Bovary
by Gustave Flaubert
The companion investigation of the woman destroyed by the gap between her romantic aspirations and the reality of bourgeois provincial life. Both are the defining works of this tradition: Emma is destroyed by the gap between her romantic fiction and reality; Hedda by the gap between her hunger for power and beauty and the complete absence of any legitimate channel for either
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The Awakening
by Kate Chopin
The American companion in the tradition of the woman who discovers she cannot live within the constraints her society imposes — Edna Pontellier in New Orleans. The Awakening and Hedda Gabler are companion investigations of the same problem from the same decade with the same conclusion: both end in the woman's death
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Miss Julie
by August Strindberg
The companion in the Scandinavian dramatic tradition of the psychologically intense play about a woman who cannot fit the role her society assigns her. Ibsen and Strindberg are the two masters of the Scandinavian tradition; Miss Julie and Hedda Gabler are companion explorations of the woman destroyed by the gap between what she is and what her society will allow
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The Master Builder
by Henrik Ibsen
The later companion Ibsen play — Halvard Solness and Hilde Wangel's demand that he climb the tower. Companion late Ibsen plays organized around people destroyed by the gap between their aspirations and what their circumstances allow: Hedda by her society's refusal; Solness by his own terror of the height he has committed himself to reaching
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Portrait of a Lady
by Henry James
James's companion in the literary tradition of the woman who chooses her own captivity — Isabel Archer's refusal to leave Osmond. Both are companion investigations of the woman who is given the opportunity to be free and then destroys herself by refusing or sabotaging it: Hedda burns Eilert's manuscript; Isabel returns to Osmond
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Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Woolf's companion in the tradition of the investigation of what is lost when a woman's ambitions are channeled entirely into social performance. Both Hedda Gabler and Mrs Dalloway are organized around the question of what happens to the intelligence and desire of women who are denied any legitimate channel for them
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
by Edward Albee
Albee's companion in the tradition of the play about destructive desire and the violence concealed in domestic life — George and Martha's terrible night. Both Hedda Gabler and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are organized around a person's destructive exercise of the only power available to them, and the damage that the exercise of that power causes
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