Bovary and Gabler

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler are two complete different characters but underneath it all they are very much the same. Both Emma and Hedda want things that they can not obtain. Emma wants to be part of the glamorous world of the wealthy and Hedda wants the powers that in her time, only a man can have. Emma is a farm girl who marries a simple country doctor. She wants a love that she has read about in her romance novels but what she desires most is to be part of the high society, the rich and famous, the expensive pearls and glamorous furs lifestyle. Emma buys beautiful silks and dresses, but with nowhere to wear them, she just sits in her living room with the blinds shut. Her husband does not make enough money to support her desires so Emma buys all the luxurious things on credit, and pretty soon it all catches up with her. On the other hand Hedda Gabler is already part of the high society; Hedda has always had what she wanted. She is the type of person Emma would have liked to be. Hedda however has different desires then Emma. She wants the power that her father the General had. Hedda wants to have control like a man would, but since she is only a women, she tries to find this power by manipulating others around her. Hedda tries to control Lovbergs actions by handing him a gun to kill himself; she wants to have power over someone else’s life. Even though they are very much the same, they are also different from each other. As stated before, Emma came from a poor background, being a farm girl and a country doctor’s wife while Hedda was the General’s daughter and had everything she could have ever wanted. Emma wasn’t really known by anyone, she was just a simple pretty girl in a very rural area, Hedda however, everyone knew, everyone desired. She was the “main attraction” in her town with hundreds of suitors fighting over who would have her hand in marriage. While their desires were different, they stemmed from the same place. Both of these