Hedda Gabler Analysis

In Hedda Gabler, we see this exact thing come to fruition. Hedda is a classic example of the New Woman: someone who desires equality to men, to be free from societal expectations regarding motherhood and most importantly to have her own independence. Hedda knows there is a world out there that she is not experiencing because she is a woman, as she notes in a conversation with Løveborg,
“HEDDA: Do you find it so very surprising that a young girl – if there’s no chance of anyone knowing -
LØVEBORG: Yes?
HEDDA: That she’d like some glimpse of a world that -
LØVEBORG: That?
HEDDA: That she’s forbidden to know anything about.” (Ibsen, 265)
It is this desire for independence in conjunction with her adamant refusal to become a mother that drives
When compared with his works, A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, we see this clearly. They share many similar traits from their approach to their discussion of the tragedy of the modern family to the representation of their women to even the structure of their sets and story lines. Before the modernist movement, Ibsen was the biggest playwright around so the idea that O’Neill would not be influenced by his works is a bit ludicrous. Whatever profession one gets into, one is going to look at who came before them to learn and be inspired by them; it’s merely a fact of life. If someone today said they wanted to write a contemporary suspense-horror novel but then insisted that Stephen King had been no influence (even though he is the preeminent contemporary horror writer) it wouldn’t make much sense. Influence is something key to being successful in art because through influence comes one’s own revelations, interpretations and creations which can result in one’s greatest work, as is in the case of Eugene O’Neill. Without the influence of Henrik Ibsen, O’Neill’s play wouldn’t have been as great and if that isn’t an example of the importance and power a great influence can have, I don’t know what