Summary
Act One
The setting is in Norway in a spacious garden room on a rainy day. Regina, the maid, is warning Engstrand not to come in any further for fear of getting water in the room. She does not want to be seen talking to him even though he is her father, but he insists.
Engstrand says he knows he has fallen prey to the wiles of drink before, but tomorrow, at the dedication of the orphan asylum, he will not do so. Pastor Manders will be in town, and Engstrand won’t give him or anyone else cause to speak ill of him.
Regina wonders what he’s trying to trick Manders into, which Engstrand scoffs at. He does explain, though, that he is going home and wants Regina to come with him and keep house for him. She knows she is better than that because she has been brought up by Mrs. Alving, a chamberlain’s wife. Engstrand curses her and mutters that her mother always thought she was also so important on account of being part of the Chamberlain’s household as a maid.
Regina bitterly retorts that he drove her mother to her death. After a moment, she asks why he even wants her to come with him. Engstrand tries to give her piffle about wanting his daughter, and he begins to explain his plan: he wants to open a very nice place for seamen in the town—the good ones like mates and captains—and having his daughter around would be good because there have to be women around for entertainment and companionship. Besides, he adds, nothing will come of Regina here: working in the orphanage when it opens is useless.
Engstrand asks if she will come and she refuses to do so, even when he suggests that she might luck out and find a nice captain to marry. Regina doesn’t want to marry one, but he says that just being with one might pay off as well. She lunges at him to push him out, telling him not to wake young Mr. Alving or to let Pastor Manders see him.
Engstrand turns to leave, but he tells her to talk to the Pastor; he’ll set her straight in regard to her duty towards her father.
After he is gone, Regina straightens herself up before Pastor Manders enters. They exchange pleasantries and talk about the weather. Talk then turns to the orphanage being opened tomorrow and Osvald Alving being home.
The Pastor settles himself down and compliments Regina on how she has “grown” since he last saw her, which she corrects to “filled out"; yes, she shrugs, she has. He asks about her father and states that he does not have a very strong personality and needs a guiding hand. He suggests that her duty might be to him, but she says she can never leave Mrs. Alving, and she doesn’t think it’s appropriate for her to tend house for a single man, even if he is her father. She asks if the Pastor has any situation he might know of for her. He demurs and asks for Mrs. Alving.
Mrs. Alving enters the room and they greet each other. She wants to get right down to business, but they talk for a few moments about how thrilled she is that Osvald is home from Paris and still seems to have “a place in his heart for his mother” (74).
Manders takes a sheaf of papers out of his bag in preparation, and he asks Mrs. Alving about the books he noticed in her room. He is surprised she reads this sort of thing; she says simply that she does, and that she has no problem confronting things others don’t want to. She thinks it’s silly for him to condemn books he’s never read. He thinks that there is fascination, yes, but that one must rely on the opinions of others sometimes and conclude that they are wrong ideas. He tries to counsel her that she has to be wary of sharing ideas, especially since she is opening this children’s home.
They turn to the deeds now. Manders reads off the properties and titles, saying that he chose “Captain” instead of “Chamberlain” for the “Captain Alving Memorial” home. He asks her if they should be insured and she says yes, of course, but he stops her and asks her to reconsider. He says that the Memorial is consecrated to a higher purpose and that insuring the buildings suggests that they do not have faith in God. It also might damage the Pastor’s reputation in town.
Mrs. Alving agrees, even though not insuring the buildings mean that nothing could be done if something happened to the property. Manders is assured that they have luck on their side and are making the right choice.
Mrs. Alving does muse that it’s a bit interesting he’s brought this up: there was a small fire yesterday in the carpenter’s shop where Engstrand works. He is careless with matches, she comments. Manders admits that Engstrand has a lot on his mind, but he is confident that Engstrand is committed to now leading an irreproachable life. He tells Mrs. Alving of how vulnerable and humble Engstrand seemed when he came to him asking for Regina to live with him. At this, Mrs. Alving starts and says there is no way Regina will go with him. She absolutely refuses to send the girl.
A moment later, her face lights up because Osvald is coming downstairs. He enters, wearing a light overcoat and smoking a pipe. He greets the Pastor. Mrs. Alving ruefully remembers the Pastor saying Osvald shouldn’t be a painter because they live licentious lives, and Manders protests that not all do.
Mrs. Alving is proud of her son, and Manders admits that he has read a lot of good press about Osvald in the papers, at least until recently because there isn’t much anymore. Osvald says he has not been painting as much.
Manders says Osvald looks so much like his father. Mrs. Alving doesn’t really agree. She turns to her son and asks him to put his pipe out. He agrees immediately and says that he only smoked it because he did it once as a child: his father forced him to until he coughed and got sick. Mrs. Alving doesn’t remember that. Osvald wonders if his father always played jokes like that, and the Pastor replies that “as a young man he was so full of the joy of life” (81). Osvald remarks on how much his father accomplished.
Osvald says goodbye to the two adults, and Mrs. Alving beams at him, happy he is home indefinitely. Before he exits, the Pastor wonders if he went out in the world a little too early. Osvald actually agrees with him that a home is the right place for a child to be, but he startles the Pastor when he says that he saw perfectly respectable homes among the artists even if they weren’t married. The Pastor is stunned and wonders how the authorities tolerated such blatant immorality, but Osvald shrugs that Manders doesn’t seem to understand how much marriage costs, nor how abstaining from sex is impossible.
Osvald continues, explaining that, ironically, he saw real immorality when he saw so-called respectable husbands and fathers come down into the world of the artists. They see these things firsthand, indulge in them, and then rail about them.
Osvald breaks off and says he is tired and will go for a walk now. He exits. Manders is surprised to hear Mrs. Alving say she agrees with her son’s sentiments, and he calls her pitiable. He says he will speak to her not as a business advisor, nor as an executor, but rather as a friend—as the same person who stood before her in her most desperate hour. His counsel is that tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of her husband’s death and the unveiling of the memorial, which he will speak at, but now he will speak to her. He asks if she remembers when she fled her husband and came to him before she was barely married a year, how she refused to go back, and how she was not doing her duty.
Mrs. Alving replies that he knows what Alving was like in those days—the debauched life he led. Manders agrees that he knew of the rumors, but a wife is not the judge of a husband. Her job was to bear her husband’s flaws, but instead, she cast away the cross and the weak and put her name and reputation, as well as others', at risk.
Mrs. Alving insinuates that it was just one other’s name and reputation that she risked: his. He grimly says he is glad he had the necessary firmness to turn her away and back to her husband. He was the instrument of a higher power and foretold that Alving would turn away from his errings and live blamelessly. That is what he obviously did, Manders concludes; Alving was a pillar of his community and a benefactor in the district. Actually, he adds, Mrs. Alving is the one who has failed. She has always had a rebellious spirit and was drawn to the lawless. She did not want to be a wife, so she left her husband; it was hard to be a mother, so she sent her son away and made him a stranger. Now Osvald is back and changed for the worse. There is still time to save him if she hurries, Manders exhorts her.
Mrs. Alving calmly and measuredly responds that she wishes to speak to him now, adding bluntly that everything he just said is wrong. He never set foot in their house because it was too sensitive, so it meant that he never got to see anything. He is passing judgment without knowing anything, without knowing that “the truth is that my husband died just as debauched as he lived his whole life” (87).
Utterly stunned, Manders fumbles for a chair. Mrs. Alving continues. Alving was just as debauched in his proclivities, was dissipated according to the doctor. She thought he was getting better when they had Osvald, but that did not last long. Alving fooled everyone with his charm, but not her. Her breaking point was when he started carrying on with their own maid and had a child by her. Mrs. Alving had to endure so much: drunkenness, obscene talk, and having to drink with him and drag him to bed. She endured it all until he starting acting like that in their own house with their child nearby, at which point she sent Osvald away so his father wouldn’t influence him. The only reasons she has survived is her work, which was all hers, in fact: Alving did nothing. She has felt haunted by the idea that the truth would come out, so she has put all Alving’s money toward the orphanage and she and Osvald will live on only her money.
Osvald comes back in, excited for dinner. At the same time, Regina says there is a package for Mrs. Alving.
Manders and Mrs. Alving are standing together. He is trying to come to terms with what he’s heard and knows there can’t be a scandal. She firmly agrees and says she wants to put Alving away for good.
They both hear Regina sharply whispering to Osvald to let her go. Mrs. Alving starts and whispers hoarsely that the ghosts from the greenhouse are walking again. She leads Manders into the dining room.
Analysis
Ghosts is a relatively short but complex and (at the time it was written and first staged) controversial play. Ibsen fills his work with incest, euthanasia, adultery, syphilis, and anti-religious sentiment, shocking audiences with his frank treatment and uncompromising convictions. At the same time, the play also possesses a degree of humor, particularly in the caddish way Engstrand is portrayed, as well as the grimly absurd hypocrisy of Pastor Manders. Amid the controversial material and the dark humor, Ibsen interweaves themes of self-knowledge, suffering, freedom of expression, and family.
An abrasive interaction between (faux) father and daughter—Engstrand and Regina—begins the play. Several salient aspects of their personalities are revealed right away. Regina is proud of her somewhat lofty station working for the Alvings and looks down upon her father, clearly believing that she deserves something better in life for herself. Engstrand is manipulative and wily; he has a problem with starting fires (foreshadowing his role in the burning of the orphanage); he pretends he is a reformed man, but he has no qualms opening a brothel or suggesting his daughter come work there. Ibsen, as many critics note, also suggests Engstrand’s devilish behavior in his language and physical appearance. He has what is essentially a cloven foot like the Devil does, and, as Errol Durbach writes, he is a “fiendish tempter” whose language “[demands] attention—not only the euphemisms which render sinister the tones of family concern, nor the oaths of damnation, but these sudden shifts of linguistic gear from the colloquial to a pedantic, polysyllabic officialese.” He uses the latter to try to appeal to Regina’s “moral sensibility” and impose upon her a sense of duty, but this inversion of formal language for nefarious purposes indicates how twisted Engstrand actually is.
The encounter between Pastor Manders and Mrs. Alving is even more loaded with consequence. The audience learns that they were once in love with each other and that Mrs. Alving fled to Manders within a year of marrying Alving, but the pastor encouraged her to do her duty and return to her husband. She was miserable in the marriage but did not leave her “debauched” husband again, putting up with his drunkenness and adulterous relationships. She is proud of herself for taking action to deal with him, though, which consisted of sending Osvald away, diverting Alving’s money to the Memorial, and setting aside her own money for herself and her son to live off of. She is also proud of her free-spirited thinking, as indicated by the books she reads and the way she has raised her son.
Unfortunately for Mrs. Alving, she isn’t as perspicacious about her past, her motivations, and her placement of guilt and blame as she ought to be. She has an overweening sense of duty because she was brought up by religious parents and thus could not bring any joy to her marriage due to the weight of prejudice and tradition. She was in love with the pious Pastor but swallowed that love and turned back to her distasteful marriage. She has lied and kept the truth about Captain Alving from her son—not to mention from the world as a whole. Ultimately, Robert Corrigan explains, “Every significant choice that Mrs. Alving has ever made and the resultant action of such a decision is determined by the ghosts of the past rather than by intellectual deliberation”; she is prone to making decisions based on “an emotional response determined by her inheritance of respectability.”
At the end of this first act, Mrs. Alving is only starting to realize that she, Sprinchorn notes, “brought no joyousness to her own marriage, that her puritanism drove her dashing young husband back to the brothels and taverns.”
Helene Alving is placing all of her hopes in the orphanage as a way to expiate her complex feelings of guilt, seeing it as the main way to come to terms with the past. If all comes to pass as she wishes, Joan Templeton explains, “The orphanage, the ultimate falsehood in Mrs. Alving’s life, will be a final seal on the sordid past and cover up the truth once and for all.” The dead will not walk her house anymore.
Osvald appears to very much be his father’s son even before the audience learns that he contracted syphilis from his father. Indeed, Manders is shocked at how like his father the boy looks, gasping, “That’s extraordinary!” (79.) Osvald is full of “the joy of life” and advocates for the sorts of relationships between people that his father no doubt wished he could have openly entertained. He smokes a pipe like his father did, though the pipe is connected to a negative memory of the man. When Mrs. Alving proclaims, “My son will get everything from me, and me alone” (89), the dramatic irony is that Osvald is not only like his father but, with the “sins of the father” embodied in hereditary disease, Osvald is actually getting quite a bit from his father.
One of the motifs of the play is the weather/time. It is rainy and cold for the entire play until the very end when the sun comes up; it is around noon when the play begins and moves through the evening to the dawn. Osvald complains about how bleak Norway is and often uses words of fire and light imagery to suggest where he feels most comfortable; tellingly, Captain Alving is also discussed in terms of light and life force. The dark and the rain represent the obfuscation of the truth in all its permutations, as well as the inability to find self-awareness. Evert Sprinchorn writes, “the rain suggests the oppressiveness of social and moral codes. It is associated with both Pastor Manders and Engstrand, the former the embodiment of conformity, and the latter the sly exploiter of conformity.”
