Ghosts (play) - Objectives

Objectives

There were many lines in A Doll's House which might be taken as indication of what Ibsen's new play would be. Instead of the general query, “Did Nora return to her children?”, Ibsen put the stress on the problem of what would have happened to Nora's children had she and Helmer persisted in living the life they were accustomed to — a life of lies and subterfuges. The moral rottenness of Oswald Alving, his degenerate relationship with Regina, the serving maid, who proves to be in the end his half-sister, are the direct product of the moral unsavoriness of Captain Alving, whose past life has been covered through the moral smugness of his wife, acting under the advice of the conventional minister, Pastor Manders. If Dr. Rank, in A Doll's House, was suffering from the sins of his fathers, Oswald Alving is the product of the moral degeneracy of his father and the moral weakness of his mother. Thus, Ibsen's Ghosts becomes an answer to the question whether Nora had a right to leave her children when she did.

Ibsen sought to show the gradual development of Mrs. Alving to that point where she reacts against the spiritual conventionality of Manders, and refuses any longer to respect or protect the memory of her husband, whose life was to have such an evil effect upon Oswald's physical and moral character. When, finally, in a revolting scene between Oswald and Regina, suggesting in its degeneracy what must have taken place between Captain Alving and Regina's mother, we at last get the awakening of Mrs. Alving to the unsound foundation upon which her family life had been resting all these years, Mrs. Alving's regeneration, we know, has come too late. The canker worm eats inwardly and undermines the whole physical side of Oswald.