Ghosts

AUTHOR:

Written in 1881 and first performed on stage in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois by a touring Danish company,
Henrik Ibsen's play, "Ghosts, A Domestic Drama in Three Acts", is a brilliant commentary on the
hypocrisy prevalent in the nineteenth century. It's subject matter of incest, euthanasia, religion and
venereal disease brought strong controversy and negative comments.

The venerated widow of Captain Alving is working with her pastor to dedicate an orphanage she built in
the name of her deceased husband. The orphanage is the latest step in the reverence she has built in his
name. But, through the conversation with her pastor, who is extremely bigoted, the audience learns that
her marriage was not happy. Her husband was a debauched drunk. And although she tried to leave him
once, this same pastor told her to go back to her husband and try harder. So, instead of releasing them
both from a loveless marriage, they stayed together, and she hid his misdeeds from the world and his
son. When their son was young, she sent him away to school and the only way he knew his father was
through his mother's flowery letters.

At one point she caught her husband raping the housemaid and gave her money to leave. The woman
married and had her illegitimate daughter, who then grew up to work as the new maid. When the
Alving's son tries to have a romantic relationship with the girl, the mother finally reveals the whole
story. She also tells her son that his health problems were caused by his father's venereal disease. In the
end the son's health has taken such a turn that he wants his mother to help him kill himself.

Book Summary

Act I

This play takes place in the home of Mrs. Alving that overlooks her garden. There is a large room in the
front and a smaller room in the back. The room in the back overlooks a fjord covered in mist. The play
opens with Regine arguing with her 'father' Jacob Engstrand at the door by the garden. She is the maid
of the house and the young master, Oswald is sleeping upstairs and she wants Engstrand to leave before
he wakes him. But, Engstrand wants to talk to her about a business venture he is planning, a sailor's
establishment. He plans on using the money he earned while working at an orphanage. His plan includes
her coming along to work for him. He tries to lure her by mentioning ways to earn her way in the world,
such as marriage or maybe prostitution.

He hints at the three hundred dollars her mother earned by sleeping with a yachtsman when she
became pregnant with Regina. She doesn't want to go with him because of his drinking, bad behavior
and the way he treats her. Regina shoves the man out the door telling him that she is quite happy with
the job she has. Meanwhile, Pastor Manders comes up the walk. Even though Engstrand is angry that
she turns him down, he leaves so he can avoid the pastor.

The next part of the scene involves the pastor. Regine is happy to see him and begins to ask him who he
thinks she should marry, especially after he points out how well she is filling out. He tries to veer the
conversation away by asking her if everything is ready for the dedication of the orphanage. He tries to
convince her to help her father since he needs someone to care for him. Finally, he asks to see Mrs.
Alving.

While he is waiting for Mrs. Alving, he looks at the books on the table. Mrs. Alving wants to talk about
her newly arrived son who has been gone for two years as she enters. Soon they sit down to go over the
paperwork involved in the orphanage. Suddenly he interrupts her and asks about her books. Although
he does not approve of the books, she tells him that they make her feel confident when they confirm
her opinions. His opinions are based on the opinions of others; he has never read them himself. The
pastor begs her to keep her opinions to herself, especially in regards to the orphanage.

As the two go over the contracts involved in the orphanage, the two discuss buying insurance for it. He
tells her that he doesn't think the influential people in the town would approve because the insurance
would show them to have little faith in God. After some convincing, she finally agrees. Their
conversation moves onto Jakob Engsrand and the pastor thinks he is showing vast improvements by
visiting his daughter every day. But, Mrs. Alving tells him the man doesn't visit that often. "When he is
sober." The pastor argues back that if she released Regina from her position she could keep him on a
good path. Mrs. Alving disagrees violently. "Oh, I know what sort of a father he's been to her. No, she's
not going back to him if I can help it." When she hears Oswald coming in she tells the pastor to drop the
subject.

In comes Oswald smoking a pipe and wearing a light overcoat. The pastor notices how the young man
resembles his father, a fine upstanding man. When the pastor muddles his way through an apology
about his opinions about the young man's previous life, Mrs. Alving is proud of how adult her son reacts.
Mrs. Alving asks her son not to smoke the pipe in her garden room, but when Oswald says he was only
trying it because it was his father's and he has memories of his father urging him to try it when he was a
small child and he became ill. Mrs. Alving tells him that he must have dreamed it.

As the conversation continues, Oswald brings up more subjects that shock the pastor, especially the
families he has lived with. Mrs. Alving lends her support to her son's arguments while Oswald fervently
complains about the hypocrisy of people who disclaim the lifestyle he loves because it is more
bohemian.

After Oswald leaves the pastor begins to berate Mrs. Alving on her own personal choices. He reminds
her about the time she tried to seek shelter with him when she ran from her husband. The pastor tells
her she was wrong to place judgments on her husband. He tells her it was her feelings of rebellion that
caused the problems and she was wrong to jeopardize his own reputation by seeking help from him.
Because he blames her for the faults of her son by putting on her earlier mistakes, he tries to pass on
feelings of guilt to her. But, she tells him that when she came back to her husband he did not improve.
She just learned how to hide it better. She endured his long nights of drunkenness when she would drink
with him in order to keep him in his room at night. Especially after she caught him making a pass as their
young housekeeper.
When their son was seven and old enough to ask questions, she sent him away to school so he would
not be "poisoned by the air" in their house. Then she worked at building up the business and their
home, although her husband received full credit while he slept the days away and drank the nights
away.

The pastor asks her if she is trying to restore her late husband's reputation by making the orphanage a
monument to him, but she replies to the negative. She put the money he brought into their marriage
into the orphanage, so that when her son inherits he will only inherit from her and not from his horrible
father. The pastor finally apologizes for his assumptions and agrees that she had a lot to endure. As the
two continue talking it is revealed that Regine's mother was the housemaid that Captain Alving attacked.
Mrs. Alving paid Jacob Engstrand three hundred dollars to marry the woman.

Soon Oswald returns from his walk and goes to help Regine with dinner. While he is gone the pastor tells
Mrs. Alving that although he will have difficulty finding encouraging words to say about the late Captain
Alving, he will do his duty to avoid a scandal. The two are horrified when they hear Regine calling from
the kitchen for Oswald to let her go. Mrs. Alving attributes it to ghosts and tells the pastor not to say
anything.

Act II

When dinner is over the pastor and Mrs. Alving talk of mundane things until Oswald and Regine are off
to their separate tasks and they have privacy to continue their conversation of earlier. Although the
pastor wants Regine to go to her father so she will be safe from Oswald, Mrs. Alving just thinks the
flirtation was a whim. But, when the pastor thinks of Engstrand he considers how many times Engstrand
lied to him. Engstrand had told him how sorry he was for making Regine's mother pregnant before their
marriage. Now he realizes that Engstrand is hypocritical, especially when he thinks about the money he
must have gotten for marrying her.

Mrs. Alving tries to get him to see his hypocrisy by pointing out that her marrying Captain Alving for his
money was no difference from what Engstrand did. She tells him that Regine's mother was no more a
"fallen" woman than Captain Alving was a "fallen" man. She also reminds her that she was in love with
someone else when she married Alving.

Mrs. Alving wishes that she had told Oswald, the truths about his father, but the pastor reminds her not
to. That it is her duty to keep her son happy. In a mood of rebellion, Mrs. Alving tells the pastor that she
would approve the marriage of Regine and Oswald as long as they were made aware of their kinship.
She tells the pastor that he has probably married quite a few couples in the village who were related.

Since the subject is something he can't justify, the pastor changes the subject to asking her why she calls
herself a coward. She has told him that she felt a coward for not leaving her husband and keeping the
truth from their son. She also tells him that she is haunted by "ghosts." When he asks her what she
means by ghosts she explains, "I'm inclined to think that we are all ghosts, Pastor Manders, every one of
us. It's not just what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us. It's all kinds of old defunct
theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that. It's not that they actually live on in us; they
are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them. I've only to pick up a newspaper and I seem to
see ghosts gliding between the lines. Over the whole country there must be ghosts, as numerous as the
sands of the sea. And here we are, all of us abysmally afraid of the light."

The pastor disregards her opinions as coming from the kind of books she's been reading. She disagrees
and tells him her ideas stem from the sense of "duty" he put in her when she ran to him. He admits that
it had been hard for him to do his duty that night and send her back to her husband because he also had
feelings for her. She tries to tell him that when she had come to him and he turned her away it was a
crime to do so, but then he turns the conversation back to Engstrand.

Suddenly Engstrand knocks at the door. He comes in his Sunday Best and is penitent. The pastor is still
angry at him for misleading him, but he smooths the water by telling him about the prayer sessions he
has led and asking the pastor to conduct a service for the workmen after the orphanage is complete. He
also justifies his marriage to Regine's mother by saying that he was helping her and he didn't want to
tarnish her name by spreading the truth of their circumstances around. The pastor once again leans
toward his fellow man. He apologizes to Engstrand for doubting him and when Engstrand misconstrues
his idea for a home for sailors as a kind of refuge, instead of the bar it will be, the pastor offers his help.
After he sends Engstrand off to prepare the orphanage for the service, he asks Mrs. Alving what she
thinks. She chides him for his naivety. But when she tries to embrace him as he is leaving he pushes her
away and leaves. The scene ends with her sighing and staring out the window again.

Soon Mrs. Alving walks into the dining room where she sees her son drinking. He says the dampness is
making him drink, and although he is happy to be home, he can't paint because of the weather. He sits
next to her and tells her about some health problems he's been having. He went to the doctor in Paris
and was told he was being visited by the sins of the father. But, he showed them his mother's letters to
prove that his father was a saint, so they blame his health on his lifestyle choices.

Mrs. Alving becomes more and more agitated. When he asks for more to drink she calls Regine to bring
in some champagne. He asks her to join them and with Mrs. Alving's permission, she does. He has told
his mother that Regine is the only one who can help him and that she had been looking forward to
joining him in Paris. He says that she is the warmth he needs.

Seeing that her son is very unhappy, Mrs. Alving prepares to tell him the whole truth, when the pastor
comes back. He still insists that Regine returns to Engstrand, but Oswald suggests that he and Regine
should marry. Now, Mrs. Alving wants to come clean, but the pastor is still trying to prevent it when they
hear voices from outside. The orphanage is on fire. While the pastor states that the fire is a result of the
sinfulness of the household, he also bemoans the lack of insurance on the building.

Act III

Act three begins in the dark with a faint glow coming from the dying embers of the orphanage fire. As
Regine and the pastor are talking about the fire, Engstrand enters. He begins to insinuate that the fire
started because the pastor wanted lit candles for the service therefore it is his fault. Then Mrs. Alving
enters and insists the pastor take the papers for the orphanage away and never talk to her about it
again. He tries to think what will happen with the funds left over and what the congregation will think of
him. Engstrand slyly tells him that he will help him keep the secret of the cause of the fire if he will
devote the funds to his "home for sailors." Engstrand helps him to justify his actions of donating the
money to his "home" by comparing him to Jesus. Then Engstrand says he will name the home "Captain
Alving's Home" in his memory.

As the pastor is leaving Oswald enters. He tells Engstrand that the "home" will probably burn, too, since
that seems to happen to all memories of his father. Then he pulls Regine and his mother close and tells
them that he needs their help. His mother has decided on a way to reveal the truth without completely
destroying his father to him. She tells him that his father was full of life, and that she and the town were
too tame for him. He sought the company of drunkards to fill the empty places in his life. Then she hints
about Regine's true parentage in a way that she understands even if Oswald doesn't. She is angry and
asks to leave. Soon she overtakes the pastor and demands her inheritance from the money promised for
the saloon since she should have been raised the daughter of a gentleman.

Oswald is a little surprised at the revelations, but it doesn't help with his own condition. His mother tries
to tell him that every child should love his father, but Oswald asks her if she still believes such
superstitions. "Yes, surely you realize that, Mother. It's simply one of those ideas that get around and..."
To which she replies, "Ghosts." When she asks if he loves her he says that at least he knows her, he
never knew his father. Then he asks her is she can help him with his feelings of dread. He tells her that if
Regine was still there she would have without a thought. His mother says he is all she lives for, of course
she will help, until she learns the help he wants is to commit suicide. He shows her four morphine
tablets that were given to him by his doctors. He says that when the sun rises the dread settles over him
so heavily that he can't keep going.

At first, as the dawn breaks she thinks she has helped him over the worst part until he seems to sink into
his chair and tonelessly asks her to give him the sun. As she watches him, she begins to hysterically look
for the pills. But, she can't find them as his voice comes from his vacant face asking for the sun as she
screams.

Characters Analysis

Mrs. Helene Alving - widow of Captain (and Chamberlain) Alving for the last ten years. She lives in a large
house in the Norwegian countryside. She has lived a very unhappy life. She married the then Lieutenant
Alving on the advice of her relative. But, her husband was an alcoholic and unfaithful. After she caught
him seducing the housemaid she tried to leave him and go to the pastor who she had an affection for.
When he sent her back to her husband, she discovered the maid was pregnant. She paid her three
hundred dollars and sent her out. Mrs. Alving endured his debauchery, but when her son was seven
years old and she felt she could no longer protect her son from finding out his father's depravity, she
sent him away to school. Then she wrote carefully worded letters to him praising his father, so he never
actually knew him. She also covered for his inadequacies with the town by doing the work. She took care
of the businesses and their home while her husband got all the praise.
Mrs. Alving has taken all the money her husband was paid to marry her and used it to start an
orphanage in his name. She wanted to protect the good name she built and maintained for him, but she
has been reading radical books for the time and starts to question the hypocrisy she sees around her.
She begins to think she should tell her son the truth about his father.

Oswald Alving - the son of Mr. and Mrs. Alving. He is an artist and has come home to spend the winter
with his mother. He suffers from great depression and doesn't know the basis for his feelings of unease.
He blames himself since his father was such a wonderful man. When he finds out his father was a
horrible and depressed man, himself he begins to see it is not his fault.

While in Italy he took up a more bohemian lifestyle and began to drink heavily. The Pastor is quick to
blame his mother for allowing him to live such a wild life. Oswald has begun to show interest in Regine,
the housemaid. Although pursuing the housemaid makes him seem more like his father, what he doesn't
know is that she is his half-sister.

Pastor Manders - a hypocritical man who is quick to pass judgment on members of his parish. He thinks
Mrs. Alving was wrong to allow her son to live in Paris and work as an artist. Even though he was aware
of the debauchery of Captain Alving he sent Mrs. Alving back to him when she tried to leave him. He is
quick to make allowances for the lack of morality of men but not in women. He is also quickly moved by
public opinion. He is naive and believes Engstrand when he tells him he is opening a "home for sailors"
where they will be cared for, instead of the saloon it will be.

Henrik Johan Ibsen Biography

Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, Grenland, Norway in 1828. He is known as the father of modern
drama. His plays deal with psychological and social problems. His parents were Knud Ibsen and
Marichen Attenburg. They were both from some of the few most well to do merchant families in the
small port town of Skien. The close familial relationship of his parents and others in his town was a
subject he included in a few of his plays.

When his father's finances took a turn for the worse when Henrik was seven years old, they moved to
the country and lived in more reduces circumstances. This was another subject he brought into his
writings. His plays often dealt with financial difficulties as well as moral conflicts. The characters in his
plays would often be based on people in his life, including the long-suffering woman. This helped
women watching the plays to identify with them.

Ibsen briefly assisted an apothecary and began medical studies before changing into a lifetime
association with the theater. He started as a stage manager and playwright at the National Theater at
Bergen from 1851 to 1857 and then became director of the theater at Christiania (which is now Oslo)
from 1857 to 1862. During this time he wrote his first plays.

From 1863 to 1891 Ibsen lived in Italy and Germany chiefly. He had married Suzannah Thoresen in June
of 1858, and they had their only child, Sigurd in December of 1859. Their financial circumstances were
so poor they quickly became unhappy with Norway, and that is what prompted the relocation. When he
finally returned to Norway, it was twenty-seven years later, and he was a famous if controversial
playwright. In 1873 Henrik Ibsen was knighted, then in 1892 he received the Grand Cross of the Danish
Order of the Dannebrog, and the Grand Cross of the Swedish Order of the Polar Star, and he was also
given the Knight, First Class of the Order of Vasa.

On the one-hundredth anniversary of his death in 2006, the Norwegian government pulled out all the
honors for a world wide celebration honoring this great playwright. They organized the Ibsen Year.
Several prizes were awarded in his name including, the International Ibsen Award, honoring an
individual, institution or organization that had brought a new artistic dimension to drama or theater.
There was also the Norwegian Ibsen Award, an award given only to playwrights to promote Norwegian
drama. It has been given every year since 1986 by the town Ibsen grew up in, Skien.

Since 2008 the city of Delhi, India hosts an annual Delhi Ibsen Festival. They coordinate with the
Norwegian Embassy in India. They perform plays by Ibsen, and the artist represents various parts of the
world and varied languages and styles. In 1906, at the age of seventy-eight, Ibsen died after suffering a
series of strokes. When a visitor asked his nurse about his health, she said he was doing better. To which
he replied, "On the contrary."
Asteroid number 5696 was named Ibsen in his memory in the year 1995.

Summary

Ghosts begins on a rainy day in a remote part of Norway on the estate of Mrs. Helene Alving, a widow of
some fortune. The household is preparing for the opening of an orphanage built by Mrs. Alving in honor
of her late husband, Captain Alving. Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving's maid, has a strained conversation
with her father, Engstrand, a carpenter with negative attitudes and a malformed leg that causes him to
hobble. They argue about her future and her role in his shady business plan for a sailors' hotel that will
be nothing more than a house of prostitution.

As Regina shoos her father away, Pastor Manders arrives. A longtime family friend, Pastor Manders
handles business transactions related to the orphanage, and he has come to review final details with
Mrs. Alving. But before he and Mrs. Alving conduct their meeting, he chastises her for reading books he
sees that he considers inappropriate. She informs him that her reading mirrors what she has often
thought and what most people believe. But, she says, "most people don't like to face these things, or
what they imply." Pastor Manders considers this position of hers on free love and progressive behavior
immoral.

Their conversation widens to include Mrs. Alving's son, Osvald Alving, who is ill and has now returned
from Europe to attend the opening of the orphanage. Osvald is an artist, and Pastor Manders is again
scandalized when Osvald describes his friends, whose lifestyle Pastor Manders rejects: "But you're
talking about illicit relations! About plain, irresponsible free love!" the pastor exclaims. Osvald politely
tells the pastor he disagrees with his moral outrage, because his friends are good people.

Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders continue the conversation alone. She reveals details about her
relationship with her late husband that come as a surprise to her friend. Captain Alving's affairs and
drinking and Mrs. Alving's disgust with her marriage shock Pastor Manders. Osvald is overheard making
inappropriate advances toward Regina, and Pastor Manders and Mrs. Alving fear the past is repeating
itself from father to son.

As the story unfolds, Mrs. Alving tells Pastor Manders more about her marriage and the lies she has
constructed to preserve Captain Alving's reputation. Among other sordid details, she reveals Regina is
Captain Alving's illegitimate child. Pastor Manders now better understands Mrs. Alving's desire to leave
her husband early in her marriage, although based on Pastor Manders's faith, he thinks it was Mrs.
Alving's duty to stay with her husband regardless of his behavior.

As the evening wears on, Osvald and Mrs. Alving discuss the potential causes for his ill health. He
explains that underlying unhappiness in his family and community causes his inability to work: "Here,"
Osvald says to his mother, "everyone's brought up to believe that work is a curse and a punishment, and
that life is a miserable thing that we're best off to be out of as soon as possible." Mrs. Alving agrees and
begins to see that her lifelong devotion to "duty" has killed the joy in her own life.

As an antidote to his emotional and physical decline, Osvald makes it clear he intends to marry the
vivacious Regina, perhaps to reclaim his "joy of life." But just as Osvald reveals his intention, the family
sees with horror that the orphanage is on fire. The next morning everyone's plans have shifted
drastically. Mrs. Alving cares little for the destroyed orphanage, a sham monument to a husband she
despised. Engstrand blackmails Pastor Manders into funding his disreputable hotel. Mrs. Alving reveals
that Osvald and Regina are half-siblings, thereby ending Osvald's path to happiness with her and
Regina's respectable future. Regina leaves, her plans now uncertain.

The disintegration of the Alving family continues as Osvald's health worsens. Mrs. Alving and Osvald are
left alone with each other. Osvald finally clarifies the source of his illness to his mother: syphilis, which
he inherited from his father, according to the play. As Mrs. Alving processes this devastating news,
Osvald asks her to help him end his life when he becomes debilitated. At first she refuses in horror, but
as Osvald slumps into a vegetative state, the unthinkable choice of whether to kill her son is thrust upon
her.