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Literary Criticism : Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
Through excessive?? parallelism and constant reference to “ghosts,” Norwegian
playwright Henrik Ibsen portrays a view on the rewards of duty that clashes sharply with the
accepted views of the time. In his native country of Norway, and indeed all around the world in
the year 1881, ‘duty’ was seen as a powerful motivator in both religion and society. The
abstract concept of duty was what constrained society into ‘acceptable’ boundaries, and people
without a sense of duty were often shunned and rejected by their fellow citizens.
Henrik Ibsen was well-known for his somewhat controversial plays. Just before writing
Ghosts, “Ghosts”he wrote A Doll’s House about a young woman seeking to escape the bonds of
duty. The woman, Nora, desires to free herself intellectually by breaking out of a marriage.
Ghosts, in many ways, is an extension of “A Doll’s House”, with the main character Mrs. Alving
acting as a future Nora. As literary critic Edvard Boyer puts it, “In many ways Mrs. Alving is an
older and more mature Nora, freer yet at the same time more bound. She too wanted to break
out of a marriage once, but was sent back to her ‘duties’ by Pastor Manders, who thereby
awakened the first doubts in her mind about transmitted doctrine (Boyer 123).” Ibsen focused
his pieces on commenting on the often hypocritical sense of duty that people of his time
supported. In his own words, “’Ghosts had to be written; I could not let “the doll’s house” be
my last word; after Nora, Mrs. Alving had to come (Boyer 123).’” Analyze the quote (its is not
usually a good idea to end a paragraph with a quote
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Ibsen utilizes many parallels between situations and characters in order to portray the
desired results of duty and the actual results. Mrs. Alving can be compared to Mr. Engstrand, a
hobbling old carpenter, and supposed (but not actual) father of Regina. Mrs. Alving is, obliged
by her sense of duty, trying to gain control of her son Osvald upon his return home, while
Engstrand attempts to evoke his daughter’s sense of duty so that she will come to work for him.
As stated REWORDby Georg Meyer, “This parallel is…important because in the one case a
father is trying to gain control of his daughter; in the other a mother, of her son (Meyer 65).”
Both characters also experienced a ‘commercial marriage’ in that Mrs. Alving married Captain
Alving “for the sum of his fortune,” and Engstrand married his wife Johanna (housemaid of the
Alvings, impregnated by Mr. Alving) for a hefty bribe.
Mrs. A – It was the money with which he bought me.
Manders – I would never have believed this of Jacob
Engstrand. Well, I’ll have a word with him now, I can
tell you. It’s so sordid. To enter a matrimony for
money. How much did you give her?
Mrs. A – Twelve hundred kroner. CITE
Both lives are based on lies, each character supporting a lie to keep themselves content. The
main difference between Engstrand and Mrs. Alving lies in that Mrs. Alving acts on her sense of
duty, whereas Engstrand does no such thing and relies on deceit to gain his ends. As Meyer
states, “The actions of others turn into self-betrayal because they hide their endeavors behind a
façade of duties and moral pretexts. Engstrand, by contrast, deliberately and methodically sets
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out to deceive them (Meyer 66).” Engstrand is the instrument by which immorality is bred from
duty, as he attempts to use a daughter’s duty to her father to convince Regina to take up
prostitution at his future brothel, ironically called the “Chancellor Alving Home.”
In an act of ultimate irony, Ibsen utilizes a priest to portray the ultimate downfall of
duty. Pastor Manders, a naïve man with good intentions, often raises CHOOSE ANOTHER WORD
up duty to justify his decisions and motivations. In many ways he influences Mrs. Alving to be
untrue to herself and to uphold her duties, though they support immorality. “Both Helene and
Manders invoke duty or sense of duty whenever they need to motivate or justify modes of
behavior incompatible with an innate sense of values (Meyer 60).” In just the first act, Pastor
Manders finds himself lecturing Mrs. Alving on her morality, and ends his speech with the line:
Manders – It is my duty to tell you this.CITE
When Mrs. Alving first fled from her husband, expressing the only true act of freedom in the
entire play, it was Manders who convinced her to return to him and began her life of misery.
Duty prompted her to create a life of lies, as she hid her husband’s alcoholism and other
immoral acts. Duty prompted her to hide her husband’s pregnant mistress, and again to raise
his daughter as her own. As the preacher of duty, Pastor Manders is the origin of the grief that
is prevalent throughout the play. His blind urging causes the rampant degeneration of morality.
Unknowingly, he encouraged Mrs. Alving to return to her cheating husband and thus condone
his behavior. Ignorantly, he encouraged Regina to become a prostitute.
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Act I, pg.19
Manders – But a daughter’s duty is to her father, my
child…
The enforcement of duty led to nothing but immorality and lies. ELABORATE
Before translation, the original title of ‘Ghosts’ was ‘Gengangere’, which literally
translated means “The Returners.” Ibsen invokes repetition of the past throughout the play to
represent the immorality that ultimately prevails with obedience and duty. The first appearance
of these ghosts occurs when Mrs. Alving overhears Osvald and Regina in the observatory.
Act I, pg. 45-46
Regina – Osvald, are you crazy? Let me go.
Mrs. A – Ah.
Manders – What is all this, Mrs. Alving? What is it?
Mrs. A – Ghosts! Those two in the conservatory.
Ghosts come back to haunt me.
Osvald’s father, whom Mrs. Alving has worked so hard to bury, lives on in her beloved son. As
Boyer says, “Then it emerges that the man with whom she thought was finally finished ‘has
lived on as a ghost,’ and in Oswald who was to be exempt from all inheritance from his father.”
Just as Captain Alving is drawn to Johanna, Osvald is drawn to her daughter Regina. In Mrs.
Alving’s fulfillment of duty by keeping her husband’s sins a secret, she has never informed
Osvald of his relation to Regina. During the tragic progression of the play, Osvald says
something that causes Mrs. Alving to realize that duty was the cause of all of her husband’s
moral strife.
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Act III, pg.89
Mrs. A – All my life people had pushed the idea of
duty down my throat and I’d believed them.
Everything was duty… my duty… his duty… and your
poor father… I made his home an impossible place to
live, I’m afraid.
Boyer states, “She sees now that it was the limiting conditions, the lack of true joy, a goal in life,
and meaningful work which destroyed the best in him. She sees too that she herself was the
immediate cause of his ruin, because she had made life intolerable for him with her
conventional morality of duty (Boyer 125).”
The conclusion drawn up by the end of the play is this: the embracing and enforcing of a
corrupt sense of duty by the collection of characters has led to one successful project, that is, a
brothel. This symbolizes Ibsen’s conception of duty. He believes that mankind has ‘taken it too
far,’ and duty has degenerated love into a purchasable commodity as illustrated by not only the
brothel but by Mrs. Alving’s and Engstrand’s commercial marriages. The free-thinking duty-free
artists of Paris live happy lives in wholesome homes, while the duty-supporting end up in
broken homes where hypocrisy and immorality run rampant.
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Works Cited
Beyer, Edvard. Ibsen : The Man and His Work. New York City: Taplinger Publishing Co., Inc.,
1978. Print.
Goldman, Emma. "Ghosts - A Play by Henrik Ibsen." Theatre Database. 1914. 29 May 2009
<http://www.theatredatabase.com/19th_century/henrik_ibsen_011.html>.
Ibsen, Henrik. "Henrik Ibsen-Ghosts-toc." Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, A Family Tragedy in Three Acts.
1881. Marxist Internet Archive. 27 May 2009
<http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/fiction/ibsen/ghosts/>.
Meyer, Hans George. Henrik Ibsen. Velber: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., Inc., 1972. Print.