Henrik Ibsen conventions. Many modern readers, who might regard anti-Victorian didacticism as dated, simplistic or hackneyed, have found these later works to be of absorbing interest for their hard-edged, objective consideration of interpersonal confrontation. "Hedda Gabler" is probably Ibsen's most performed play, with the title role regarded as one of the most challenging and rewarding for an actress even in the present day. "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House" center on female protagonists whose almost demonic energy proves both attractive and destructive for those around them, and while Hedda has a few similarities with the character of Nora in "A Doll's House",
Hedda Gabler protagonists of literature. By that, Krutch means that Hedda is neither logical nor insane in the old sense of being random and unaccountable. Her aims and her motives have a secret personal logic of their own. She gets what she wants, but what she wants is not anything that normal people would acknowledge (at least, not publicly) to be desirable. One of the significant things that such a character implies is the premise that there is a secret, sometimes unconscious, world of aims and methods — one might almost say a secret system of values — that is often much