Everything about Ghosts Play totally explained
Ghosts (original
Norwegian title:
Gengangere) is a play by the Norwegian
playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.
Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays,
Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality.
Play Background
Ghosts was written during the autumn of 1881 and was published in December of the same year. It
was not performed in the theatre till May 1882.
Plot
Helene Alving is about to dedicate an orphanage she's built in the memory of her dead husband, Captain Alving. She reveals to her spiritual advisor, Pastor Manders, that she's hidden the evils of her marriage for its duration, and has built the orphanage to deplete her husband's wealth so that their son, Osvald, might not inherit anything from him. Pastor Manders had previously advised her to return to her husband despite his philandering, and she followed his advice in the belief that her love for her husband would eventually reform him. However her husband's philandering continued until his death, and Mrs. Alving was unable to leave him prior to that due to the constraints of 19th Century morality. During the action of the play she discovers that her son Osvald (whom she'd sent away so that he wouldn't be corrupted by his father) is suffering from congenital
syphilis, and (worse) has fallen in love with Regina Engstrand, Mrs. Alving's maid, who is revealed to be an illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving, and thereby Osvald's own half-sister.
The play concludes with Mrs. Alving deciding whether or not to euthanize her son Osvald in his developing syphillitic madness in accordance with his wishes.
Reactions
Much like
A Doll's House,
Ghosts was deliberately sensational. What most offended Ibsen's contemporaries was what they regarded as its shocking indecency, its more than frank treatment of a forbidden topic. An
English critic was later to describe it as "a dirty deed done in public," and to many it must have seemed simply shocking rather than in any profound intellectual sense revolutionary.
At the time, the mere mention of
venereal disease was scandalous, but to show that even a person who followed society's ideals of morality had no protection against it was beyond scandalous. Hers wasn't the noble life which Victorians believed would result from fulfilling one's duty rather than following one's desires. Those idealized beliefs were only the "ghosts" of the past, haunting the present.
The production of
Ghosts scandalised Norwegian society of the day and Ibsen was strongly criticised. In 1898 when Ibsen was presented to King
Oscar II of
Sweden, at a dinner in Ibsen's honour, the King told Ibsen that
Ghosts wasn't a good play. After a pause, Ibsen exploded "Your Majesty, I'd to write
Ghosts!".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ghosts Play'.
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