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 Gabler as her father's daughter than her husband's wife." Hedda, the daughter of an aristocratic and enigmatic general, has just returned to her villa in Kristiania (now Oslo) from her honeymoon. Her husband is George Tesman, a young, aspiring, and reliable (but not brilliant) academic who continued his research during their honeymoon. It becomes clear in the course of the play that she has never loved him but married him because she thinks her years of youthful abandon are over. It is also suggested that she may be pregnant. The reappearance of George's academic rival, Eilert Løvborg, throws their lives into