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 Eulenberg translations of Guy de Maupassant, Charles Dickens and further works by Émile Zola. Until 1936 numerous German translations were published by Max Bruns, Reclam, Nymphenburger Verlag (Munich), and other publishing houses. At the same time she published numerous newspaper articles, mostly about Monism. In 1936 the Nazi authorities started persecution of Hedda and Herbert Eulenberg to destroy their economical and intellectual existence. While several members of her family were arrested in concentration camps, Hedda could no longer find a German publisher who was prepared to publish her works. After 1945 she began to pick up her work again, which she