Ghosts
By Henrik Ibsen
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
About this ebook
The innovative dramas of Henrik Ibsen created a sensation among 19th-century audiences with their mordant attacks on social conventions. Among the finest of these ground-breaking works was Ghosts, first performed in 1881. In it, the playwright assailed the hypocrisy of moral codes, offering a daring treatment of such then-taboo issues as infidelity, venereal disease, and illegitimacy. Ibsen substituted the modern scientific idea of heredity for the ancient Greek concept of fate, exposing hidden sins of the past as the roots of corruption.
The sins of the past are at the heart of the play, whose haunted heroine, Mrs. Helen Alving, has accepted her pastor's counsel and endured her husband's many infidelities in silence. Ten years after Alving's death, she is to dedicate an orphanage in his memory. Her son Oswald, kept innocent of his father's profligacy, returns home for the dedication. Oswald's attraction to the housemaid — in reality, his half-sister — conjures up the ghost of his parents' unhappy marriage. This disastrous romance, along with Oswald's increasing symptoms of the venereal disease inherited from his father, force Mrs. Alving to confront her own "ghosts."
A powerful and engrossing psychological drama, Ghosts serves as an excellent entrée to Ibsen's other works and helps confirm his status as "the father of modern drama."
Henrik Ibsen
Born in 1828, Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and poet, often associated with the early Modernist movement in theatre. Determined to become a playwright from a young age, Ibsen began writing while working as an apprentice pharmacist to help support his family. Though his early plays were largely unsuccessful, Ibsen was able to take employment at a theatre where he worked as a writer, director, and producer. Ibsen’s first success came with Brand and Peter Gynt, and with later plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and The Master Builder he became one of the most performed playwrights in the world, second only to William Shakespeare. Ibsen died in his home in Norway in 1906 at the age of 78.
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Reviews for Ghosts
144 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ibsen's plays really take you to the end of 19th century - and make youfeel the anxiety caused by social pressures and hypocrisy and seek the power to break free from the rules and conventions and reach for something real.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5a play about Mrs. Alving a widow,who was accused by Pastor Manders,of failing in providing enough moral guidance to her son Oswald....
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 a
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. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Excellently written, dark, controversial at time and now drama about all kinds of unpleasantries that affect peoples lives from 'dissipated lives' to euthanasia and using morphine to commit suicide cos of VD. I will explore Ibsens Ouvre.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dilemma’s: -erfelijkheid (Oswald)-hypocrisie en burgerlijke moraal:Manders-vrouwenplicht: mrs Alving-respect voor ouders: Regina (weer erg engelachtig)-euthanasie: Oswaldniet helemaal geslaagd!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A powerful, controversial play (like most of his), he conveys a less than sterling relationship between mother and son that disintegrates when the truth comes out and the son's mind deteriorates. The truth will always out.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hey, Whoopi Goldberg isn't in this...I found the play interesting, but Oswald's hysterics were melodramatic and bordered on comical. For a better play about a dysfunctional family, read Tennessee Williams.