Hedda Gabler more important than the rational one. Ibsen was interested in the then-embryonic science of mental illness and had a poor understanding by present-day standards. His "Ghosts" is another example of this. Examples of the troubled 19th-century female might include oppressed, but "normal", wilful characters; women in abusive or loveless relationships; and those with some type of organic brain disease. Ibsen is content to leave such explanations unsettled. Bernard Paris interprets Gabler's actions as stemming from her "need for freedom [which is] as compensatory as her craving for power... her desire to shape a man's destiny." The play was performed in
Hedda Zinner Hedda Zinner Hedda Zinner, or Hedda Erpenbeck-Zinner (20 May 1905 – 7 January 1994), was a German political writer, actress, comedian, journalist and radio director. Hedda Zinner was born in Lemberg on May 20, 1905. She attended the Acting Academy there from 1923 to 1925. Zinner began working as an actress but her interest in the workers' movement led her to move to Berlin and, in 1929, join the Communist Party of Germany. She became a journalist for left-wing journals. When Hitler came to power, she moved to Vienna and then Prague, where she founded the cabaret Studio 34 in