Status
Call number
Genres
Publication
Description
Drama. Fiction. HTML: Fearing rejection by her community, Helene Alving stayed with her philandering husband up until his death. She finds out that her son Osvald not only has congenital syphilis, but is in love with the maid without knowing she is his half-sister. Eventually Mrs. Alving must face the cruel choice of euthanizing her own son as he descends into a syphilitic madness. As with Ibsen's A Doll's House, Ghosts was an intentionally controversial work, through rather than being seen as a bold look at a forbidden topic, it was seen by many as merely shocking and indecent, with one critic describing it as "a dirty deed done in public." At the time, the mere mention of venereal disease was scandalous, but to inflict it upon a character who abides by the moral code of society was inconceivable..… (more)
User reviews
MANDERS. Just as you once disowned a wife's duty, so you have since
disowned a mother's.
MRS. ALVING. Ah--!
MANDERS. You have been all your life under the dominion of
pestilent spirit of self-will. The whole bias of your mind has been
towards insubordination and lawlessness. You have never known how to
endure any bond. Everything that has weighed upon you in life you
have cast away without care or conscience, like a burden you were
free to throw off at will. It did not please you to be a wife any
longer, and you left your husband. You found it troublesome to be a
mother, and you sent your child forth among strangers.
MRS. ALVING. Yes, that is true. I did so.
MANDERS. And thus you have become a stranger to him.
MRS. ALVING. No! no! I am not.
after this conversation,Mrs. Alving was forced to tell the truth that she had kept hidden.that Captain Alving was an awful man who was unfaithful throughout his life....
there are many symbols in this play....
the ghosts which are MRS. ALVING thoughts....lies about the past and her fear to say the truth,that should be told....
Oswald last wish before dying is to see the sun light ,he kept crying out for the sun. which symbolize for the joy of life which he always seeks....
The fire that destroys the orphanage which she was naming after her husband name....that destroyed the whole building,and eliminated all the deception.....
MANDERS. And it is to this man that you raise a memorial?
MRS. ALVING. There you see the power of an evil conscience.
MANDERS. Evil--? What do you mean?
MRS. ALVING. It always seemed to me impossible but that the truth
must come out and be believed. So the Orphanage was to deaden all
rumours and set every doubt at rest.