Finished: Ghosts (Ibsen) & Hedda Gabler (Ibsen). Two not light-hearted plays. Two plays about people who are unhappy in their family situations. People with tragic consequences due to their own actions and those of others. Both were a bit predictable, but both kept me reading.

Ghosts was shorter and sad and a little twisty. I feel certain that Jacob Engstram started the fire because he knew, somehow, that the money would go to him. That is never addressed though. Mostly I felt sorry for the life Mrs. Alving had been stuck in. To send her son away at a young age, risking her relationship with him, just so he wouldn't grow up knowing what a low-life his father was....only to have it profoundly affect him anyway in a way she couldn't have predicted. I was left a little numb by this play!

Hedda Gabler was more tragic in the sense of what goes around comes around. Hedda was herself the catalyst for almost all of the unhappiness in the play, including her own ultimate unhappiness. She was a soulless character who manipulated the puppet strings of all the other characters, edging them on to their own emotional crises. I was so glad when Tesman and Thea were going to work together in the end to restore the manuscript. Tesman deserved someone so much better than Hedda. And then, karma bit Hedda in the rear...or shot her in the temple, I should say. :-)

Overall, again....not much humor or light in these "classics" I'm reading.