Ghosts – Henrik Ibsen

“I’m inclined to think that we are all ghosts, 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…It’s not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them.”

Like Ibsen’s most famous play A Doll’s House, Ghosts is yet another brilliant exploration of the negative impact the moral and social conventions can have on individual lives. Through the play, Ibsen emphasizes the importance of bringing socially taboo topics into the open, demonstrating the negative consequences that their suppression could have on the individuals.

Henrik Ibsen is considered an important figure in the European realist movement. As a realist, he exposed social issues of which society kept mute. By focusing on the inane social conventions and the hypocritical stance of the institutions and individuals who clung to them, he forced his audience to see an ugly truth. He showed how the past “ghosts” destroy the present and stagnate the forward progress of society.

Thematically, the play exposes how maintaining reputation, duty, and self-sacrifice at the expense of truth destroys the families. By helping to maintain a false reputation of her late husband, Captain Alving, an alcoholic philanderer, Mrs. Alving faces distressing consequences of her own foolish self-sacrifice, making her question a woman’s duty in marriage. The suppression of truth cost her, her son. When she comes to realize the social lie she’d lived in, she also questions the soundness of social judgment and the advice of her Pastor, seeing the latter’s hypocritical moral stance.

Ghosts proved to be one of Ibsen’s most powerful and most controversial works. Its initial reception was poor. People felt scandalized and offended. Only a few copies of the book form were sold and theatre companies shied from producing the play. With time, it earned popularity and alongside his other realistic plays, made a deep social impact.

Rating: 4/5

About the author

Piyangie Jay Ediriwickrema is an Attorney-at-Law by profession. Her devotion to literature has taken shape in reading and reviewing books of various genres set in different periods of time. She dabs at a little poetry and fiction of her own and hopes to share her work with the readers in the future.