Presents literary criticism which profiles English writer George Orwell. His essays are often found in freshman college readers and in anthologies of English writers, and two of his novels—"Animal Farm" and "1984"—have been translated into many languages.

It was not human detail nor present-day social conditions that Ibsen sought as he edited and refined his first draft of the play. Much of this, in fact, he removed. It was the subhuman and the superhuman allusions – the talk of hair-burning, vine leaves, and the huntress Diana, erupting through the dry suburban chatter like a dangerous geyser –that Ibsen inserted into his final revised text.

In the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, December 21, 1879, at the climax of a new play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, actress Betty Hennings slammed a door and exited the stage. The bang it made has echoed ever since. Ten years later, another of Ibsen’s women, Hedda Gabler, left theatregoers reeling with the sound of an even bigger bang – that of the revolver with which she takes her own life.

Richard Eyre would like to apologise to Ibsen for doubting the greatness of Hedda Gabler. Great plays are great precisely because, to borrow King Lear's words, they show us the "mystery of things" rather than serve as tools for polemic or guides to good living.

Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen is a drama of psychological drives conditioned by a specific socio-economic environment. The particular social system against which the play is etched is its strongest determinant of character and character development. The woman Hedda Gabler is the product of a singular social heritage and milieu.

Presents literary criticism which profiles English writer George Orwell. His essays are often found in freshman college readers and in anthologies of English writers, and two of his novels—"Animal Farm" and "1984"—have been translated into many languages.

During the course of the play, Ibsen places considerable emphasis upon Thea's hair, upon the manuscript as her "child," and upon General Gabler's pistols, and his treatment of these items suggests that he intended them to have symbolic significance. We shall be concerned in this essay with determining this significance and its effect upon the total meaning of the play.

In his Anatomy of Criticism Northrop Frye contends that in many tragedies "... nemesis is deeply involved with the movement of time" and that the cognition or tragic recognition in the tragedies" is normally the recognition of the inevitability of a causal sequence in time." These contentions seem particularly helpful in defining aspects of tragedy in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which has traditionally evaded classification as tragedy or tragi-comedy.

Presents literary criticism which profiles English writer George Orwell. His essays are often found in freshman college readers and in anthologies of English writers, and two of his novels—"Animal Farm" and "1984"—have been translated into many languages.