Mrs.

Alving is the representative of the 19th century Scandinavian feminism; she is one of
the most powerful women of his plays. Through her, Ibsen has exposed the unexpected truth
of the then Bourgeois culture and community. The playwright has also focused on the silent
mystery of all characters. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Alving is the round character. In this way, we
may guess the underlying significance of the whole domestic tragedy of the Alving Heritage
through the dialogue between Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders. Mrs. Alving has securely
locked up all the repressive mental suppressions and conflicts. Instead of getting rid of the
exorcism. She, following the advice of Pastor Manders, the personification of false,
conventional stupid respectability, sends her son Oswald to school away from him, and has
assiduously nurtured the myth of her husband as a noble and worthy figure, presumably
suffering all the while in silence bitter agonies of shame and frustration. But now, on her
husband‘s death, she wants to free herself of the past in all its forms. She wants to set up an
orphanage with the Captain‘s money, on the one hand to pacify any rumors, there may be of
her husband‘s immoral, sinful life. Mrs. Alving sees the stranglehold of her ―dissolute‖
husband on herself even after his death in Oswald‘s preference for unconventional joys of
life. However, she gets rid of her superstitions regarding Duty and Decency and braces
herself to make a new beginning only to be crushed by the terrible denouement that her son
has contracted venereal disease ―Syphilis‖ as an inheritance from his father. Mrs. Alving
seems to find explanation and confirmation of all sorts of things. She has been thinking of in
those books. Pastor Manders, on the other hand, considers such books improper reading, and
condemns them unread, having perused only something, enough in his opinions, of what has
been written about. And, he glibly justifies his action by saying: ―My dear ...there are many
occasions in life when one must rely upon others. Things are so ordered in this world; and it
is well that they are‖ (Ibsen 1989: p. 14). However, his hypocritical nature is made explicitly
when a second or two later he adds that as long as Mrs. Alving does not talk about those
books or act according to their principles there is no harm in her reading them privately. Mrs.
Alving, tired of all this cant and hypocrisy, bursts out at one point, ―Oh! That perpetual law
and order! I often think that what all the mischief do here in this world‖ (Ibsen 1989: p. 37).
She hankers for a life of freedom. She wants to break the shackles of all constraints and
cowardice imposed on the home of ideals. Therefore, her anguished cry, ―Oh! Ideals!
Ideals! If only I weren‘t such a coward!‖(Ibsen 1989: p.5) Mrs. Alving‘s growth and
development constitutes one of the strongest appeals of ghosts. We know her identity when
she is a middle aged woman; her heart battered and lacerated, tries desperately to face the
truth without any false trammels. She discovers in less than a year of married life that her
husband was a rake and a libertine. She, then, fled from him, took refuge with the clergyman
and intimate family friend, Pastor Manders and refuted to go back to Captain Alving. But, the
Pastor sent her back to her husband, telling her, ―... a wife is not to be her husband‘s judge.
It is your duty to bear with humility the cross which a Higher Power has, for your own good,
laid upon you.‖ (Ibsen 1989: p.26) Mrs. Alving goes back and keeps home for about two
decades for a ―dissolute‖ husband, persuaded by Manders to shoulder the yoke, of what he
calls Duty and Obligation. But, now twenty years later, she confesses to Manders that her
whole soul has rebelled against that as something ―loathsome.‖ Her appreciation of the role
of joy in one‘s life sets her apart from the stereotyped character of a harassed, duped wife.
Mrs. Alving‘s quest for life and joy adds an extra dimension to her character and lifts her
from merely being a vehicle for the debunking of traditional values. From Belseyian point of
view, we may say that Captain Alving had imposed power and domination on Johanna, and
had excluded her from social right and responsibility. Finding no other alternative way,
Johanna had been compelled to follow the path of prostitution. The dramatist has focused on
female sexual bondage and subordination of his contemporary situations through portraying
the two neglecting charcaters- Johanna and Regina. In Act II, Mrs. Alving tells Manders that
she must work her way out to freedom. She regrets her past cowardice and would like to be
free of her ―superstitions awe for Duty and Decency.‖ And, here at this point Ibsen links the
theme of ―the joy of life‖ with the incestuous relationship. Mrs. Alving sees that Oswald is
attracted by Regina, who, unbeknown to him, happens to be his half-sister. She feels that joy
is an important creed of life and she longs to say to her son: ―Marry her, or make what
arrangement you please, only let us have nothing understand about it‖ (Ibsen 1989: p. 38).
Clearly, she has traveled a long way mentally from her earlier stage of blindly and docilely
adhering to hypocritical canons of conventional morality, but in actual life she is still unable
to say those words to her son. She is still ―pitiful coward‖, and she, unerringly, diagnoses the
reason for her cowardliness. She is timid because she cannot get rid of the ghosts that haunt
her. And, in one of the most moving, important, theoretically effective and revealing
speeches of the play. Mrs. Alving elaborates in answer to a query of Pastor Manders:

Ghosts! When I hear Regina and Oswald in there, I seem to see Ghosts before me. I almost
think, we‟re all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our
father and mother that „walk‟ in us. It‟s all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, but
they cling to us all the same; and we can‟t get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I
seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as
thick as the sand of the sea. And, then, we are one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light
(Ibsen 1989: p. 39).

Mrs. Alving sees this but too clearly when she discovers that though she does not want
Oswald to inherit a single penny from the purchase money Captain Alving had paid for her,
all her sacrifice does not save Oswald from the poisoned heritage of his father. She learns
soon enough that her beloved boy has inherited a terrible disease from his father, as a result
of which he will never again be able to work. She also finds out that, for all her freedom, she
has remained in the clutches of Ghosts, and that she has fostered in Oswald‘s mind an ideal
of his father, the more terrible because of her own loathing for the man. She realizes her fatal
mistake. Indeed, a crime on which the sacred institution is built, and for which thousands of
innocent children must pay with their happiness and life, while their mothers continue to the
very end without ever learning how hideously criminal their life is. Mrs. Alving who works
herself out of to the truth; even to the height of understanding the dissolute life of the father
of her child, who lives in cramped provincial surroundings, and finds no purpose in life, no
outlet for his exuberance. It is through Oswald, that all this becomes illumed to her. Mrs.
Alving struggles and suffers mightily and in her travail affirms the greatness of the human
sprit. In this regard, Northam (1971) comment on Mrs. Alving may be mentioned:

Mrs. Alving at last has been freed from the gloom of ignorance induced by convention. She
sees with dreadful clarity the consequences of her subservience to public opinion. Her
freedom is cheerless, but, she is at last aware of stark reality, even though her awareness is
achieved through tragedy... Mrs. Alving imagines herself to be enlightened enough to
exorcise the Ghosts of the past actions; but, she comes at length to know the complete
irrevocability of deeds done long ago (p. 73 quoted in Chowdhury 1978: p. 12).

Mrs. Alving, like a true tragic protagonist, perceives truth at last through the irreparable
wreck of her present life. As her world, finally, collapses, she becomes aware of the utter
superficiality of her earlier view that she might some day live as though the past had never
been. It is through her abandonment of all hopes that she, finally, comes to terms with life.
When she first notices the physical change in Oswald, she shrieks, but soon she controls her
shrieks and stares at the horrible scene in complete silence. She accepts the inevitable.
Moreover, sexual relationship between Pastor Manders and Mrs. Alving before her marriage
is also manifested through their dialogue. Mrs. Alving had a sexual relation with Pastor
Manders that we can realize through their dialogue:

Mrs. Alving: Oh, how can you say that? Oswald takes after me.

Manders: Yes, but there‟s an expression at the corner of his mouth, something about his
lips,that reminds me so vividly of Alving at any rate now then he‟s smoking.

Mrs.Alving: How can you say that? Oswald has much more the mouth of a clergyman, I
think.

Manders: True, True. Some of my colleagues have a similar expression. (Ibsen 1989: p. 21)

From their conversation, it is, apparently, proved that a sexual relationship is deeply grown
up between Mrs. Alving and Pastors Manders that we may realize while expressing at the
corner of Oswald‘s mouth and his lips. Ibsen, with subtle knowledge, has highlighted the
physical attraction between Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders while they were talking about
the physical appearance, especially mouth and lips of Oswald.

Engstrand‟s Filthy Personality

Engstrand is the greedy character in the play, Ghosts. He is the main culprit, traitor and
hypocrite. His physical deformity symbolizes psychological crookedness. He is selfish,
shrewd, cheat. He is detrimental to society. Unlike Pastor Manders, he knows his business
very well how to intrigue people around him. He conspires with the help of Pastor Manders
to burn the orphanage of the Alving Heritage. Though he has no institutional background, he
is adroit in conversation and an adept in the artistic simulation. He has more audacity and
intelligence than Pastor Manders whom he can easily blackmail. With his collected money,
Engstrand hits upon a plan to establish ―a kind of hostelry for the sailors‖ like the ―captains
and officers and the tip-top people‖ (Ibsen 1989: p. 6). He reveals his sinister design to Pastor
Manders of whom he feels the necessity for the establishment of the brothel. For this,
Engstrand persuades Regina to get indulged in the prostitution with a view to earning money
in the most unfair means. He never hesitates to earn money in the most unfair means. It is
observed in the last scene of the play that both Engstrand and Pastor Manders succeed in
burning the orphanage of Captain Alving and in establishing the ―Sailor‘s Home.‖ In this
regard, we can accept the statement of Francis Fergusson (1954) that embodies of the
personality of Pastor Manders and Engstrand:

Ibsen brings all the elements of this composition together in their highest symbolic vacancy.
The orphanage has burned to the ground; the Pastor has promised Engstrand money to his
sailors‟ Home which he plans as a brothel; Regina departs to follow her mother in search for
pleasure and money (p.170 quoted in Selina 2006: p. 246).

Pastor Manders persuades Engstrand to blackmail Mrs. Alving, and to establish prostitution
with a view to earning money in a dishonest and immoral way. Thus, Ibsen has created
melancholic and dirty atmosphere, where both Johanna and Regina fall victim to sexual
bondage where they find themselves in the clutches of patriarchal power and domination.
Both of the two female characters bear the testimony of the 19th century Scandinavian
Bourgeois society. In this way an obvious and explicit theme of the play is the exposure of
the hollowness and falsity of hypocritical cannons of conventional morality, particularly the
hollowness of conventional Bourgeois marriage and familial conflicts, patriarchal power and
female sexual bondage and oppression, incestuous relationship between half -brother and half
-sister , a secret plan to establish prostitution and persuade women to get involved in it for
livelihood, struggle for self- identity and self – respectability and so on. This is done through
a series of debates between Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders, between the Pastor and Oswald,
between Oswald and Mrs. Alving, but, especially, through the debates between Pastor
Manders and Mrs. Alving.

New

Mrs. Alving's entire life is nothing but an existential protest against those forces that
tend to curb human freedom and reduce inner realities of mind to insignificant
proportions. In all actions of the play, existential motifs such as choice, anxiety,
dread, anguish, absurdity, freedom and revolt are easily discernible The entire play
turns out to be a clash between two modes of life i.e being-in-itself and being-for-
itself. The lives of Mrs. Alving, Pastor Manders, Oswald and even Regina can be
seen as different reactions against rationalisation of different systems that have been
valuing reasons and imposing social norms and standards upon man right through
the ages up to the present times. Since existentialism, be that of theistic

Kierkegaard or atheistic Sartre, always focuses on the distinctive qualities of the

individual person as a concrete human being and not of man in the abstract,
therefore Mrs. Alving's life turns out to be a very intense form of quest for authentic
selfhood vis-a-vis Pastor's attempts to hide himself under the shell of inauthentic
selfhood.

To begin with Mrs. Alving's search for freedom, being fatheress, the responsibility of
her bringing up falls upon the shoulders of her mother and two aunts, who in turn
transfer their responsibility to the father-figure Pastor Manders. In their opinion,
Pastor is the most suitable person because he stands for all the religious and
spiritual strength one requires in life. As a child, Helen is deprived of all that free-play
of spontaneous expression of creativity and curiosity which are very essential for
development of what Gordon Allport calls 'Proprium.'^^ Instead, she is throvwi like a
doll into the world of Pastor Manders which appears to be well lit v^th the wisdom of
sermons and gospels but which in reality is a dungeon of darkness. Pastor is pre-
occupied with the concepts of 'order', 'perfection' and 'austerity' to teach mankind the
significance of bounden duties, morality, religion, divine protection, divine will, strict
social

codes, faith and self-edification. His is a narrow, shrunken and closed world in which
there is no room for cultivating one's intellectual potential or for giving free play to
one's imaginative cravings. It is a world of do's and don'ts disapprovals, castigations
and condemnations. In it, human beings are treated as born sinners and as such
they have no right to human happiness, joy or sunshine. There is no scope for using
one's faculties of mind to sift good from the bad. Pastor's teachings revolve around
maintaining outward form in the whole gamut of relationships, even if they lack
coherence, meaning and depth.

Going with public opinion is the watch world for Pastor. And any attempt in the
direction of becoming oneself is labelled as an act of imprudence. There is no place
for art or artistic expressions as art is something which deadens human affections. In
Pastor's wisdom, hot blooded young boys and girls are supposed to keep away from
each other from the beginning and suppress their biological urges and instinctual
expressions. In this world there is no room for what Walt Whitman advocates in
respect of teacher who teaches his pupils, "You shall not look through, mine eyes
either, nor take things from me.

In other words, Pastor's world is a den of blind and servile obedience to the tenets
which have become dogmas due to their orthodox applications. More-over in this
world false entries are made in Church registers under the pretext of contrition and
confession. It is a heartless world in which children are taught to honour and respect
the parents and elders even it they do not contribute anything in their growth, due to
their debauch or lewd ways of life. It is a world in which judgements are passed on
the basis of rumours and gossip without verifying the facts on the basis of first hand
knowledge. Above all, it is a split world because there is a yav^ing gap between what
Pastor preaches and what it actually comes to when it has to confront reality. It is in
this world that Pastor begins the task of indoctrinating her with heavy doses of
puritanical ideas, beliefs and principles which in turn go deep into her psyche with an
ambulance load of Christianity.

Therefore it is in this world that she develops her first personal, pre- emptive and
constellatory constructs. It is a different matter that she is unable to verbalize these
constructs.

In Helen's case, Pastor Manders becomes her impermeable super ordinate construct
and his judgements about various things stand as canons in forming subordinate
personal constructs. But it must be said at the very outset that the constructs she
develops, remain inappropriate and inadequate because Pastor's world is a very
closed world allowing no scope for circumstances or any testing. Since childhood is
the most impressionable age, it is but natural for her to follow what Pastor ordains for
her.

Kell y states that however mute one may be due to inability to verbalize one's inner
urges and perceptions, yet one is never passively related to one's environment. In
Kelly's opinion, we are not passive organisms. Instead, we actively relate to
environment often in a creative way. Therefore when she is married off to Captain
Alving by the combined decision of her aunts, mother and Pastor, she becomes a
helpless scapegoat. Far from pursuing his own doctrines about Christian austerity,
edification and spiritual strength, Pastor takes resort to what we call Pirandello's
morality that all a girl requires in life is a good house without economic worries.

Instead of consulting her in any way, "The three of them settled the v\/hole matter for
me" (GS.pp. 130-31). On the other hand they make her believe that it v^ll be a sheer
folly to reject such an offer. The guiding principles before them were his status,
power and fortune. They saw in Captain a beaming exterior, attractive manner and a
pleasant disposition. Such outward traits were enough for them to think good of him
as he was one of those men whose mode of life seems to have no effect on their
reputations.

They turned a blind eye to the question of aniaysing the totally different world in
which the Captain was born, groomed and brought up. They just could not think that
the world of Captain Alving was poles apart from that of Helen. While Helen has
grown up amidst strict discipline and austerity, shunning all joys of life, Captain's
world is founded on the very enjoyment of life. It is a world in v\4iich the mere fact
that one is alive is a cause of joy and celebration. Metaphorically speaking, it is a
den of darkness in which there is no warmth of primary or secondary bonds which
are essential for bringing harmony in life. Instead tertiary bonds are valued in
Captain's world in so far as they help in adding joys of physical nature. There are no
edifying precepts or sublimating principles because, it is based on show off,
ostentation and glitter. In reality, it is a world of debaucheries, depravities and
degradations which bring life to sub-human level. 'Present mirth has present
laughter' (to borrow an expression from Shakespeare) is the only principle which
serves as the scale to evaluate human relationships. For Captain, a woman can't be
envisioned as a mother or daughter but only as a toy to be played with. The sanctity
and decorum of human relationships does not exist for him. He can very easily and
without any remorse or repentance molest and even impregnate with consequences
his servant and that too within the precincts of his ho e which for Helen is a holy and
sacred place. In Pastor's world, everything was supposed to be worth-emulation but
in her new world children do not have the privilege of emulating their fathers as there
are no such deeds worth emulating. On the contrary in this new world sins of the
parents are visited upon children. Therefore children do not grow up like healthy
flowerlike individuals but as cursed with diseases like 'softening of the brain' due to
hereditary genetic disorders. It is into this world that the girl who has become dead
from the waist below due to her mental conditioning at the hands of Pastor Manders
is hurled. But in their decision to choose the Captain for her destiny, they erred a
great deal. In this entirely new world, she finds her husband as a young man with
irrepressible energy and exuberant spirits who had spent his youth in the army
tasting fuller joys of life.

In psychological terms, she stands sandwiched between the world of Ethos and the
world of Eros in strict Freudian sense. In existential framework, she finds herself
standing on the precipice between two worlds, one that of Descartes who said, "I
think, therefore I am", and the other of Jean Paul Sartre who said, "I am, therefore I
think". From Pastor's world of 'essence precedes existence' to Captain's world in
which 'existence precedes essence' is a long and arduous journey but she has been
asked to cover it in no time.

Refusing to entertain any of Captain's requests and entreaties, she quits Captain's
house and runs away to her transferential figure Pastor Manders with the words,
"Here I am, take me"

In existential parlance, it is an act of bad faith because existentialists believe that

when the cnsis comes, one has to turn to the palpitating core of reality rather than
turning to authority figures. If one turns to others one has to experience
abandonment and anguish is the natural result. Instead of depending upon others,
filtering has to be done by one self. But in Kelly's perspective going back to and
behaving according to invalid constructs is a sign of a sick person because each
individual has himself an innate potential to define and elaborate his construct
system continuously. Each individual is capable of changing and replacing his
present interpretation of events. Mrs. Aviing could very easily go in for 'constructive
alternativism.'^ Going back to Pastor is an inauthentic decision because instead of
exploring new choices, she hands over her reigns of life to some one else, in this
case Pastor Manders. Therefore it is bound to result in despair. More over she goes
to Pastor as a child who always feels secure holding the finger of her father. Little
does she realise that she is no more a helpless child 'Helen' but she has already
become Mrs. Captain Alving and therefore she does not foresee that Pastor is not
going to accept her. Far from receiving a loving and affectionate welcome, she
receives a shocking treatment at the hands of the Pastor who chides her for having
deserted her lawful husband. He reminds her of the

values of restraint, 'bounden duties' and dubs her action of running away from her
husband as an 'outrageous intention'

Far from presenting himself as an affectionate lover, which she had expected him to
be, he stands before her as a humble instrument of higher power, preaching that
under the yoke of duty and obedience lie the seeds of rich blessings for the rest of
life. Therefore he advises her to stop leading a lawless, an indisciplined,
unscrupulous and reckless life, overmastered by a disastrous spirit of willfulness.

According to a famous Indian psychologist Sudhir Kakkar, the first trauma which a
woman faces in her life is at the time of her marriage when she has to shed all props
of security in the house of her parents. But in this case, Pastor's refusal to accept

her and send back to Captain Alving is a trauma upon trauma because her very
being, her existence is in danger. While Captain Alving is not the man who can
become her dream husband. Pastor, too, deserts her at a time when she has taken a
bold and significant plunge to encounter her life.

No doubt the decision to quit Alving's house is existential yet when Pastor reminds
her of her bounden duties towards her husband and sends her back to the Captain, it
becomes quasi- existential. Instead of coming back to Captain, she could very well
take a leap of faith. She could very well reject Pastor's advice. She was free. She
could act the way Nora did.

Mrs. Alving could go in for elaboration of her construct system, instead of taking
refuge in her old construct. It is but natural then for her to encounter a series of bad
faiths from now onwards. While the locus of valuing different choices is entirely
within her yet tragically enough, Mrs. Alving has become an extension and a
continuation of Pastor Mander's Weltanchuuang and in the process, she becomes a
pastiche and a parody there. She is a pastiche because she has accepted to be cast
in the mould that Pastor Menders has given to her. She accepts his arranging her
marriage, even though she feels disillusioned and disgusted. She continues with him
for a long time without the courage to become herself. Courage to become oneself
requires breaking away from old patterns, to stand alone and to stand on one's own.
The problem of choice and responsibility becomes an agonising burden as finding a
satisfying value is a difficult matter. Therefore the bid for freedom becomes quasi-
existential.

If after meeting Pastor Manders, she hits the road to perilous freedom, her choice
can be considered existential. Instead, whipped, she comes back to Captain Alving
and begins her second stage of un-freedom. Unlike Nora, who breaks away from her
husband's world as a free-being, as pure power, Mrs. Alving becomes a parody of
Captain Alving.

She considers it imperative to act according to his wishes and the clusters around
which the traditional relationship between husband and wife exists. She starts
leading a totally self-consuming life by participating in

Captain's drinking bouts, offering herself in all ways to his satisfaction, standing
silent in the face of debaucheries and permit him to do whatever he likes or dislikes.
Desmond MacCarthy states in this contexts that, "She manages to keep him at
home by sharing little make-believe orgies." ^ The implication is that she pretends to
be some other woman before him so that he does not find her lacking in anyway.

Her participation in his perversions opens her womb and she becomes pregnant and
gives birth to a son. Just as earlier she lived for the Pastor, now she lives for Captain
but with a difference in that she now wants to shape him by using the child as a tool.
But that never happens because as and v^en he goes out of his house, he indulges
in long sprees of his drinking and sexual bouts. In existential parlance, her decision
to give birth to a child turns out to be an act of bad faith because it is born out of
blind adherence to the convention that birth of a child may bring some change in her
husband. It is out of her conventional morality that by giving birth to a child, she at
least wants to satisfy her instinct of motherhood. Women in Ibsen's world were duty
bound to carry on the name of the clan through progeny.

Sexual Relationship between Captain Alving and Johanna

An analysis of the play, Ghosts supports Belsey’s idea that patriarchy has imposed control over female sexuality, and
has excluded women from state power and has made their position in the family “inconsistent” [5]. The other
common theme that runs through the play is the silencing of female sexual individualism to guarantee patriarchy the
power it desperately seeks. Power and sexuality [6] are inextricably connected in the play, Ghosts introduces a
female character where Johanna is not appeared on the stage. She is pronounced through the dramatic dialogue
between Pastor Manders and Mrs. Alving. Mrs. Alving, the protagonist, mentions about Johanna while disclosing her
husband’s immoral activities to Pastor Menders. Mrs. Alving states that her husband had a strong physical attraction
towards women in the society. Johanna, working as a maid servant at the Alving Heritage, fell victim to sexual
bondage and found herself in the clutches of Captain Alving. She tells Pastor Manders about her husband’s unsocial
behavior that she would live with Captain Alving despite his masochism. Mrs. Alving saw on the sly that he was
greatly attracted towards Johanna. One day she observed the illicit sexual affair from the dining room. At that time
she was working very nearly. Standing at the door, she heard her own servant whisper: “Stop it, Mr. Alving! Let me
go!” [7] She felt very much pain on hearing their conversation. In this way, their physical relationship began to
develop slowly. At one stage his physical union with Johanna got deepened. Johanna had no power to protest against
her master where she was subjected to sexual exploitation. She did not get rid of his immoral deeds. Actually, Johanna
has been shown as a disenfranchised woman of her age, and did not get any help from society, where she was
confined to the cocoon. She had been totally victim of the aggressive nature of Captain Alving and inhumanly
exploited and tormented through sexual violence and rape. We can realize about the sexual behavior and immoral
deeds of Captain Alving through Johanna’s voice: “Let me go, Engstrand! Stop it! I’ve been in service for three years
with Chamberlain Alving at Rosenvold, and don’t you forget it

It is crystal apparent that Johanna had been acting both as a mistress and a maid- servant in the Alving Heritage. She
never forgot that Captain Alving had made a chamberlain when she had been working for him. Captain Alving
succeeded in having incestuous relationship with the maid servant. When she became pregnant, Mrs. Alving
persuaded Engstrand to get married Johanna by giving him three hundred dollars due to social humiliation, and
Engstrand also accepted the chance albeit it was a hideous crime from the social point of view. But Mrs. Alving
conceals the sinful acts of her husband so that her only son Oswald cannot fall victim of dreadful circumstances. In
this play, Johanna has been mentioned as a “degenerate” [7] character. This female character has been presented in
front of us with a view to focusing on the inner faults and vices of Mr. Alving’s personality. In this way, we can be able
to realize the forbidden attractions between the master and the maid servant through Ibsen’s creating the off stage
scenes and characters [8].

Mackinnon argues that sexuality constitutes gender. In other words, there is no alienation between the concepts of
gender and sexuality; male and female do not exist outside of the eroticization of dominance and subordination.

If we consider the fatal circumstances of poor Johanna, we can acknowledge that this is a powerful argument.
Sexuality is viewed as a primary form of oppression of women, or just one form of oppression among others. Thus,
the sexual dominance of Captain Alving and the sexual submission of Johanna may be applied by the judgments of
Mackinnon. It is, however, agreed by many feminists that women need far greater control over their own bodies and
their sexuality. Moreover, Ibsen has unveiled the conflict and struggle for existence of his contemporary feminism.

In the play, Ghosts, we do not see Captain Alving on the stage. But, we can realize about his nature and behavior from
the dialogue of Mrs. Alving while commenting his immoral and sinful character with

Pastor Manders. Mrs. Alving’s view of her husband can be explained also by following Belsey’s idea that the
manifestation of female sexuality is considered as a threat to the masculine social order. Certainly, Ibsen wants to
show Captain Alving as a careless person, with no great love for his family. He showed no concern for his wife.
Though “society would consider him as one of its pillars”; he is, in fact, “a dissolute” [7], a drunkard, a libertine and a
rakish. Even he did not hesitate to seduce his maid-servant. He was a violator of social law and order. He had no
shame of the family. He was a masochistic type of person. From social point of view, we sense that no sensible being
can tolerate such types of immoral activities and forbidden attractions of Captain Alving in any civilized manner. In
fact, Ibsen has exposed the social realities of day’s custom and manner. Through the character of Mr. Alving, Ibsen has
exposed the 19th century Scandinavian life structure, culture, community, and society. If anyone attends to the
deeper ideas and thoughts of his filthy personality, I think, he would, undoubtedly, realize the inner truth why
Captain Alving had got involved into the sexual activities with the maid servant. Then the mystery might be
conceptualized in the inner psychology. The physical demand what Captain Alving had expected from Mrs. Alving was
not satisfactory. Actually, his wife failed to fulfill the physical and mental attraction of her husband. Therefore, we
may sense that such types of unexpected incidence might happen in any human society. Even though Captain Alving
is condemned from the social and moral perspective, but I think, Mrs. Alving is no less responsible for the sexual
relationship between Captain Alving and Johanna. In accordance with the balance of Justice, both husband and wife
may be equally punished. Regarding the character of Captain Alving, Mrs. Alving also tells Pastor Manders:

I had to fight a double battle, fight with all my strength to prevent anyone knowing what kind of a man my child’s
father was. And, you know what a winning personality Alving had. No one could believe anything but good of him. He
was one of those people whose reputations remain untarnished by the way they live

Captain Alving’s dirty personality is revealed through Mrs. Alving`s dialogue. We can assume that Captain Alving is
the embodiment of the 19th century Norwegian bourgeois patriarchy through whom Ibsen has unveiled the
corrupted aspects of hereditary disease, syphilis. In fact, Captain Alving faces a victim of venereal disease, syphilis
due to making a sexual relation with his maid-servant, Johanna for which he has to lose his life prematurely [8].

In the play, Ghosts Ibsen has linked the theme of “the Joy of Life” [7] with that of incestuous relationship between
men and women of his age. In fact, the playwright has hinted at the male domination and female bondage of the
society and an illegitimate birth through hereditary guilt. He does not attack mankind, but, the behavior of man lacks
in reason and morality. Man often wears the cloth of reason and morality but, when he gives up that garb, he is
nothing but a brute. Thus, the researcher sheds a new light over brutality, immorality, irrationality, hypocrisy and
above all, sexual oppression and bondage in the light of hereditary genetics.

Sexual Relationship between Oswald and Regina

In the play, Ghosts Regina is minor female character. Although she seems to be trivial in comparison with the main
female character, Mrs. Alving, but Regina is not at all negligible under the over-all consideration of many critics and
scholars. The complex sexual relationship in the play, Ghosts can be seen in the incidents through getting involved
Oswald and Regina. In the first part of Act I, We find Regina who seems to be around 23 years old, appear as a
physically and psychologically strong young woman, determined and optimistic, high ambitious, and convinces that
she has a stay in Paris ahead together with Oswald, the son in the Alving Heritage where she herself has been brought
up [10]. In fact, she is an illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving. The Captain had a sexual relationship with a maid
servant of his wife, and this Regina is the product of illicit affair. But, she does not know her own mysterious truth.
She knows that she is the daughter of lazy, inactive, inferior minded carpenter Engstrand, and whom she scorns
through words like. “Alright, now, get out of here. I’m not going to stand around, having rendezvous with you” [7]. In
the first act of the play, Mrs. Alving sees that Regina is very much attracted towards Oswald. She is not at all hesitated
to connive at him. Mrs. Alving sees the presence of both of them in the dining room. Oswald tries to grasp Regina.
From the dining room, she hears the crash of a chair being knocked over. At the same time, Regina says sharply, but
keeping her low voice: “Oswald! Are you mad? Let me go!” [7] Regina starts distraughtly at the half open door.
Oswald coughs, and begins to hum. Mrs. Alving thrills in fear. She observes the prenatal existence of her own
husband’s and Regina’s mother in the relationship between Oswald and Regina. At one stage, Mrs. Alving supports
this profound sexual relationship by breaking all sorts of conventional reformation. Oswald feels that his salvation
lies in Regina’s physical glamour which is full of vitality and joy of life. He wants to go away from home taking Regina
with him. He would like to work again with a new lease of life and fresh energy painting: “Light and sunshine and
holiday – and shining, contented faces” [7]. He is afraid of remaining at home with his mother, where all his instincts
should be warped into ugliness. But, when Regina understands her true relation with Oswald, She decides to leave
the Alving Heritage. She, apparently, declares that there can never be anything serious between them. She is not
going to stay out at the Alving’s home in the country and wear herself out looking after invalids. Regina feels the
awakening of joy of life in her, but, it is the joy of her mother’s kind, a sullied joy. The values which are deeply rooted
for so long in her soft heart, is now devastated like a turbulent storm of heredity. In this regard, Regina says: “If
Oswald takes after his father, I should not be surprised but what I’ll take after my mother” [7]. She decides to go to
the “Sailor’s Home” a euphemism for a brothel. Obviously, Ibsen seems to suggest that Regina has no option but to
succumb to the combined forces of hypocritical, moral codes and heredity which act as her fate. “What must be must
be,” [7] what she says in a bitter-sweet resigned speech. We see that Regina’s struggle for freedom from sexual
bondage does not succeed in any true sense. Ibsen wants to hint at the shining and existing unsubstantial false
trammels, social values and the impact of heredity jointly on which Regina’s fate is controlled. The physical
relationship between Regina and Oswald may be supported because they did not know their secret siblings. In fact,
Oswald wants to get rid of his venereal attack through Regina’s love and mental satisfaction is contained in her love,
affection and physical relation. But in the long run, Oswald does not save himself from hereditary guilt. Regina is a
victim of cruel fate. For her livelihood, she is compelled to follow her mother’s business. Thus, the researcher focuses
on the sexual relationship between Oswald and Regina by applying the biological theory of hereditary genetics as
stated above

Ghosts (1881) The play, Ghosts (1881) is actually Ibsen’s reply to the objections raised
against his preceding play A Doll’s House (1879) which met a very unfavourable criticism
for Nora who at the end of the play deserted her husband, children and home, and went away
in search of her self identity. Ibsen wrote to the Swedish Feminist Sophie Andlesparre that
“After Nora Mrs. Alving had to come.”15 But the play’s popularity does not stem from its
being a befitting reply to the European objections to A Doll’s House. It has been approached
from different angles such as children born out of wedlock or a defence of free thinking or
existential attitude to sex and society, incest, infidelity, euthanasia, the venereal disease, a
nightmarish evocation of spiritual degeneration in civilisation and the marginalised condition
of a woman due to the gender dichotomy etc. The play presents various aspects of the then
marriage system imposed upon women against their will by the family and society, and its
harmful consequences upon them. Its devastating consequences are discerned in the life of
Mrs. Alving, the protagonist of the play, who, after her marriage with a man against her will,
realises that she can no longer remain with a dissolute man whom she does not love. Initially
she does desert him and his home and goes to the man, whom she loved prior to their
marriage, but she is forced to go back to her lawful husband and live with him as a dutiful
wife without making any complaint against him and against the situation she was likely to be
put in by her husband. Another female character, a girl, who is a maid servant in the
household of the Alvings, also undergoes the marginalised situation created by the gender-
based dichotomy. It is in this context that the play is studied and analysed in the present
study. As in A Doll’s House, in Ghosts also, Ibsen is seen as the champion of women’s lib in
his vehement critical approach to the contemporary marital morality and in dealing with the
socio-domestic problems that condemn the women folk within the four walls. Thus the play
is a sequel to A Doll’s House where Ibsen has shown that if Nora had remained in obedience
of the current marital morality and other dead conventions and failed to get rid of her
despotic husband, she must have to suffer like Mrs. Alving. The contemporary as well as the
late 19th , and the early 20th century critics were indignant with Ibsen’s attack on the
Victorian moral complacency. The play met a very gruesome criticism. It was called, “An
open drain; a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly; a lazar-house with all its
doors and windows open.” 16 Ibsen touched the current social ideals which, despite having
devastating effect, were being followed and respected slavishly. The devitalising effect of the
old conventions of morality and respect and the lack of courage on the part of man, especially
women to protest against them are the discernible strands in the play. Thus the play is the
depiction of Mrs. Alving’s struggle for the happiness in the face of insurmountable and
malignant forces of the patriarchal system that blow down her efforts at every step. She
appears to be a pygmy and helpless in the face of these giant forces. The play mainly deals
with Mrs. Alving’s decision to stay back with her so called lawful but actually dissolute and
debouche husband who was sexually a moral wreck, leading the family to its downfall and
the unfortunate consequences, born out of her cowardly obedience to the conventional social
morality, defined through the patriarchal point of view. The crux of the matter is that Mrs.
Alving struggled intermittently to shake off the constricting social forces but her efforts were
thwarted at every step. The play is set in Mrs. Alving’s lonely country house by a large fjord.
“A glimpse of a gloomy fjord-landscape, veiled by steady rain”17 reinforces the gloom inside
the house and also serves to enclose us in a dark and anxious world. The play opens with the
appearance of Engstrand, a carpenter, whose left leg is deformed. His external deformity is
the indicative of his inner depravity. He forces a dialogue with Regina whom he claims his
daughter. He proposed her to go back home with him and co-operate him in his new business,
a kind of prostitution. But she rejects the idea with contempt. Mrs. Alving, now a widow, has
built an orphanage where she plans to employ Regina permanently because she has brought
up and educated her with some care. Ten years after her husband’s death she is going to
dedicate an orphanage to his memory. Pastor Manders has come to the country side to
participate in its inaugural ceremony. Oswald, Mrs. Alving’s son has come back home from
Paris where he was studying since his childhood. Oswald has been kept unaware of his
father’s debauchery and profligacy. He was attracted to Regina, his half-sister; his action
conjures up the ghosts of their parents’ unhappy marriage. Oswald’s free nature surprises
Pastor Manders. After his disappearance, Manders reprimands Mrs. Alving for her past lapses
in performing her duty as a true and faithful wife and now for her failure in conducting her
son to the path of righteousness which resulted in his belief in the life of free thinking. Pastor
Manders is further shocked when even Mrs. Alving, who has been under his thumb, also
shows her agreement with her son’s views of free thinking. In their conversation we come to
know through Pastor Manders that within one year after her marriage with Captain Alving
she left her husband and went away to Pastor Manders with whom she had a love affair
before her marriage with Captain Alving. But pastor Manders, deeply rooted in patriarchal
conventions, sent her back to the path of matrimonial duty by reminding her that it was her
duty as a wife to remain with her lawful husband, no matter how much cruel and morally
depraved he is. Mrs. Alving returned to her husband and since then she suffered the
consequences of her cowardice. She undergoes a very miserable and wretched life to keep up
the show of social respectability of her husband who was an unrelenting moral wretch, a
lecher and an abominable debauch. She tried her best to keep him away from the immoral
indulgences and shameful lecherous deeds: I had borne a great deal in this house. To keep
him at home in the evenings_____and at night_____I had to make myself his boon
companion in his secret orgies up in his room. There I had to sit alone with him, to clink
glasses and drink with him, and to listen to his ribald, silly talk. I have had to fight with him
to get him dragged to bed______18 But Mrs. Alving remained helpless when Captain
Alving’s debauchery started to happen under his very nose. The Captain’s adultery with her
maid servant had its consequences in the form of Regina. Mrs. Alving’s intolerable and
humiliating sufferings and endurance reflects women’s pathetic condition. All these ignoble
conjugal sufferings of Mrs. Alving are due to a male, Pastor Manders whom she blames of
destroying her whole life when she says, “you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and
Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against it as
something loathsome.” 19 Actually Mrs. Alving’s sufferings started from her father’s home
where she was forced to accept Captain Alving’s marriage proposal against her consent. She
lived with him in spite of her loveless marriage, very common phenomenon in the bourgeois
homes of Europe and bears a son expecting that with her son the things might improve and
the wheel of her fortune might come back to the right track leading her to an active
participation in mainstream society but the condition of her home further deteriorated. When
she observed her husband’s debauchery with the maid servant, she was horrified to think lest
her son should be contaminated in touch with the contaminated father. So to keep him away
from the contaminated and unwholesome atmosphere of the house, she sent him away to
Paris for study at a very young age so that he might not inherit the bad habits of his lecherous
father. Since her husband was least concerned with anything in the household, she took the
responsibility of supervising the estate and handling the money by herself. He was always
busy in drinking and sitting idle and had an illegitimate daughter Regina who was unaware of
her real paternity and lived in his house as a maid servant. After the death of his father
Oswald returned home from Paris for the dedication of the Orphanage established in his
memory. He thought that his father was a very respectable man in the city. Everything was
kept secret from him. Mrs. Alving thinks that with the inauguration of the Orphanage every
trace of her husband in the household will be obliterated. Very hopefully she says: This long,
hateful comedy will be ended. From the day after to-morrow it shall be for me as though he
who is dead had never lived in the house. No one shall be here but my boy and his mother.20
But when, later in the play, she witnesses the lecherous pursuit of Regina by her son as did
his father in the same conservatory, she thinks that the past cannot be obliterated. All her
struggle, sacrifices and life-long sufferings, prove futile. In the final act of the play Mrs.
Alving has to receive the disastrous consequences of her guilt of substituting a sense of duty
and responsibility for the joy of life. Her decision first to marry Captain Alving against the
violation of her will and then to return to him to preserve the sanctity of marriage and its
ancient social respectability and decorum, destroy the creative mind of her artist son Oswald
and Regina’s blooming womanhood. The ghosts of the past reappeared, the dead man,
Captain Alving, returned through his son’s unwitting repetition of his father’s activities—the
scrape of overturned chair, in the pop of wine cork, the squeal of a maid-servant in the same
conservatory surprised by her master’s amatory embrace and finally Oswald’s suffering from
syphilis, after which Regina deserts him and adopts the career of prostitute in a brothel. Mrs.
Alving’s optimistic edifice of happy and free life with her son crashes down upon her when
Oswald illness recurs and he cries with agony for “the sun”. She is almost paralysed with
shock and hopelessness. She remains standing, “a few steps from him with her hands twisted
in her hair and stairs at him in speechless terror.”21 The curtain falls with the depressing and
agonising cry for “the sun.” The rays of the sun are seen falling on the house which had
remained gloomy throughout the play. Throughout the play Mrs. Alving reflects dual
personality. Theoretically she appears to be an emerging and emancipated woman but
practically she represents the figure of an agonised and cornered woman, whose meagre
endeavours at disentangling herself from the web of conventional matrimonial intricacies and
sufferings are thwarted at every step. In other words she represents the women who submit to
the marginalised position prescribed to them by the male dominated system of the society.
Such types of women are readily accepted in a conventional and orthodox society. Hence
Alving’s submission and sacrifice for the old and conventional conjugal sanctity, and
respectability bring about nothing but misfortune for her, in the form of miserable lives of her
son and Regina. Once she is trapped in a marriage of convenience compelled by her parents,
she suffers a lot throughout her life. Although Pastor Manders forced her to return to her
lawful husband but he didn’t look back to the condition in which she might have been living
with such a dissolute husband who always remained indulged in all kinds of wild oats,
irregularities and wild excesses. She has suffered all alone but her suffering didn’t devitalise
her energy instead it stimulated her to develop into a more confident personality. Her life
which has been “a vale of tears” strengthens her probity and dignity. Although she has been
baffled and battered throughout her life yet she remained optimistic throughout the play to
have victory over life with a certain assurance. She does not lose courage and continues her
struggle up to the last
That has been my ceaseless struggle, day after day. After Oswald’s birth, I thought Alving
seemed to be a little better. But it didn’t last long. And then I had to struggle twice hard,
fighting for life or death, so that nobody should know what sort of a man my child’s father
was . . . I had gone on bearing with, although I knew very well the secret of his life out of
doors.22 She left no stone unturned to bring her husband back to the right track but being a
man and especially her husband, it was against his manly self-respect and

dignity to be persuaded by a woman, particularly his wife. With all these efforts she was in
fact, in search of true human condition as she says: I had to bear it for my little boy’s sake.
But when the last insult was added; when my own servant-maid_____Then I swore to
myself: This shall come to an end. And so I took the reins into my hand_____the whole
control over him and everything else. For now I had a weapon against him, you see; he dared
not oppose me. It was then I sent Oswald from home.23 No doubt the light of truth does
come to Mrs. Alving but it comes too late to avoid the dire consequences of her life-long
deceit. In spite of her being derailed to futility, whether due to lack of courage on her part or
due to the pressure of maintaining social decorum and age-old conventions; she resolves that,
like her own life, her son’s life shall not be sacrificed to the ideals in vogue that are unnatural
and were not going to provide joy to him. Her unfulfilled desire and craving for participation
in the mainstream social system is quite visible in her frustrated endeavours to link her
husband to the social mainstream. G. B. Shaw rightly says: She so manages her husband’s
affairs and so shields his good name that everybody believes him to be a public-spirited
citizen of the strictest conformity to current ideals of respectability and family life.24 Besides
Mrs. Alving other female character, Regina, is also prone to the marginalised position. She is
an illegitimate girl born to Johanna, once the maidservant in the household of the Alvings.
Captain Alving, Mrs. Alving’s husband, had sexual liaison with her and Regina was the result
of this adultery. Mrs. Alving is quite aware of her husband’s debauchery and Regina’s
illegitimacy. She keeps Regina in her household as a maid-servant. Oswald, Mrs. Alving’s
son, who has returned from Paris, makes amatory advances towards her. Actually he is
suffering from syphilis, a venereal disease and he knows that he is not going to exist for a
long time. So he plans to marry Regina not out of love for her but out of his self-interest so
that she might look after him during his illness because very soon he was going to be bed-
ridden. Another reason is that he has an evil-eye over her fully developed body; graceful gait
and attractive personality as he says to his mother, “Isn’t she splendid to look at? How
beautifully she’s built! And so thoroughly healthy!”25 He was actually charmed and
fascinated by this “Fresh, lovely and splendid girl.’’26 Regina’s so called father, Jacob
Engstrand, also tries to misuse her for earning money by selling her youthful body. He has
opened a boarding house and a tavern for sailors. He wants Regina to give him a hand in his
projected business, in which he intends to cater the baser nature of the sailors. His proposed
“high class lodging house” is in reality a brothel where he wants Regina to work as a
prostitute. His intention to employ Regina as a prostitute exposes his monstrous depravity
and rottenness. Such kind of attitude on the part of Engstrand reflects the extent to which a
man can go to utilise a woman for his personal interests. This Jacob also received three
hundred dollars, given to him by his wife, who told him that one sailor had offered her for his
sexual satisfaction with her and he received the sum without any grudge. In reality Regina
remains in a marginalised position throughout her life, serving within Mrs. Alving’s home,
having no connection with the outer world. She has no influence, no importance and no role
to play except the one assigned to her by Mrs. Alving. But at last she breaks away the bond of
servitude because she does not want to lose her individuality in serving the invalid Oswald.
She leaves the house to search for her own identity. Unlike Mrs. Alving she represents the
image of an emerging woman when with the shrug of the shoulder she says, “A poor girl
must make the best of her young days, or she’ll be left out in the cold before she knows
where she is. And I, too, have the joy of life in me, Mrs. Alving.” 27 There are so many other
factors discernible in this play that contribute to the marginalisation of women in general and
the women of this play in particular. Ibsen was familiar with the situation of the period when
women were not supposed to be appropriate for education and reading books, containing
revolutionary and innovative ideas. They have been barred from the sphere of logic,
reasoning and mathematics due to the assumption that they lack the logical power. Pastor
Manders is taken aback to find the books containing the revolutionary ideas in Mrs. Alving’s
house. He himself studies such kind of books to acquire knowledge and to condemn the new
and idolbreaking ideas arising from the study of such kind of writings but he does not want
women to study them. It is clearly the violation and deprivation of the rights of women in the
field of education. It seems to be an intentionally manipulated device of patriarchy to exclude
women from the field of logic and reasoning by which they themselves dominate the women
folk. According to G.W. Knight, “Mrs. Alving is now a free thinker whose reading of
advanced books shocks the Pastor, encrusted as he is by conventional fear of scandal and
respect to the press and public influence.”28 The hypocritical nature of Manders and the
marginalised position of women in the male-dominated system of the society come to the
surface in the conversation between Manders and Mrs. Alving when Mrs. Alving asks him as
to what he finds objectionable in these books: MANDERS. Object to in them? You surely
don’t suppose that I have nothing to do but study such productions as these? Mrs. ALVING.
That is to say, you know nothing of what you are condemning. MANDERS. I have read
enough about these writings to disapprove of them. Mrs. ALVING. Yes; but your own
opinion ________ MANDERS. My dear Mrs. Alving, there are many occasions in life when
one must rely upon others. Things are so ordered in this world; and it’s well that they are.
How could society get on otherwise?29 People like Pastor Manders don’t want the women to
improve their conditions in the society lest their authority and simulation should be
challenged and exposed to public. They want to keep the patriarchal system of the society
intact so that they might maintain their superiority over the women folk. Pastor Manders is
the symbolic representative of the destructive forces of social conventions. He is, in fact,
responsible for Mrs. Alving’s wretched, tormented and marginalised condition. He is the
embodiment of patriarchal values, norms and traditions. According to him, even if people,
especially women folk, are in touch with revolutionary and intellectual movement, they
should not give outlet to their thoughts for the betterment of the society as he once remarked,
“One is certainly not bound to account to everybody for what one reads and thinks within
one’s own four walls.”30 He is a self-righteous man who cares more about public opinion
than doing what is right and beneficial for the society. Although Mrs. Alving has already got
everything insured but Manders does not let Mrs. Alving insure the Orphanage without
knowing the general feeling in the
neighbourhood so that he might remain on vantage point, safe from the public criticism. He is
not afraid of any contingency and fortuitous mishap but of the “responsible people . . . people
in such independent and influential positions that one can’t help allowing some weight to
their opinions.”31 He is not concerned with the loss or misfortune that may fall upon her but
only with his fake prestige as a clergyman. If Mrs. Alving wants to liberate herself from the
fell clutches of the patriarchal dead ideals, she must do away with such conservative and
orthodox men as Pastor Manders. But Mrs. Alving realises her real situation too late to shun
the tragic web the men like Manders have woven for women. The exploitation, domination
and subjugation of women due to their traditional roles and duties as wife and mother are
deeply rooted in the western religion and ideology. This is another factor contributing to
women’s marginalisation. The priests have prescribed the roles and duties for women as wife
and mother in the society. Pastor Manders, once Mrs. Alving’s lover and Captain Alving’s
close friend, is now her business manager and adviser in the matter of the Orphanage but
when Mrs. Alving shows agreement with the free nature of men and women, he becomes out
of control and forgets his intimacy with her and her husband. He, a priest, does not realise the
harrowing and ignoble sufferings and tortures that Mrs. Alving has been undergoing. He only
knows that a wife should perform her duties and responsibilities under the conditions her
husband and the society have created for them. A wife should never question the authority of
her husband. They are naturalised to believe that their inferior position is destined upon them
by God. When Mrs. Alving complains of infinite miserable situation she has had faced while
living with her dissolute husband, he admonishes her: And your duty was to hold firmly to
the man you had once chosen and to whom you were bound by a holy tie . . . a wife is not to
be her husband’s judge. It was your duty to bear with humility the cross which a Higher
Power had, for your own good, laid upon you.32 Her independent decision of deserting her
reckless and drunkard husband, whom she was forced to marry against her consent, and her
decision of sending her son abroad for study in order to keep him away from the polluted
atmosphere of their home, have been taken as the acts of rebellion against the society, the
violation of her duties and responsibilities as a wife and as a mother. Thus her desires and
struggle for emancipation from the constricting and crushing atmosphere of her husband’s
home are persistently hampered. In spite of all ignoble sufferings, Manders accuses her of not
sincerly obeying her husband: You have been all your life under the dominion of a pestilent
spirit of self-will. All your efforts have been bent towards emancipation 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 could throw off at will.33 The
institution of marriage is another factor, contributing to the marginalisation of women. As in
his preceding plays, Ibsen has also raised the question of marriage here but with a slightly
different perspective. His broadened vision could now anticipate the possibility of a decent
and creative life for both men and women even beyond the matrimonial alliance. But he
could also perceive the limits of the patriarchal society in which the conservative people like
Pastor Manders, with their limited outlook, were not capable to imagine any relation of
young man and woman without marital bond. This is the bond that keeps a woman tied to a
man in an endless eddy within the four walls of the household. Wedlock is the lock that a
woman can’t unlock until her death. A free living relationship between men and women can
upset the complacency of the authority of the “really responsible people”34 as Pastor says,
“How can the authorities tolerate such things?”35 Unlike Mrs. Alving, who does not have the
courage to say openly due to the fear of being branded as a backslider, Oswald, her son,
exposes the hypocrisy of the so called gentlemen and higher authorities who talk highly about
morality in the public places but in reality are the regular visitors to the brothel for the
exploitation of women’s body and soul. The concept of sin and disgrace borne out of sexual
liaison is also a factor contributing to the marginalisation of women. This concept is gender-
biased. If a woman has sexual extra-marital affairs with a man before or after marriage, she is
stigmatised as a fallen woman, who does not deserve to be accepted in the society,
particularly, as a wife. On the other hand, if a man commits the same crime, his action is
considered as the natural outcome of the excesses of the youth and vitality. In the play the
extra-marital affair between Captain Alving and the maid servant, Johanna, represents this
double standard. Captain Alving made sexual exploitation of Johanna. When she became
pregnant, he gave her the sum of three hundred dollars to hush up the matter and was safe.
She went to the town and renewed her old familiarity with Engstrand and married him. This
surprises Pastor Manders who considered it impossible for any man to marry her. He says
how it was possible that Engstrand, “for a miserable three hundred dollars to go and marry a
fallen woman!”36 But he forgets that Captain Alving was also a fallen man, the guilty of the
same crime, to whom Mrs. Alving was forced by him to remain as a dutiful wife leading a
tortuous and depressing life. He never mentions that Captain Alving was also a fallen man
with whom she should not have stayed. On the other hand he is aghast at Mrs. Alving’s
proclamation of the Captain as a fallen man. A hot argument between Pastor Manders and
Mrs. Alving exposes the gender-dichotomy inherent in the society: MANDERS. There! think
of that! for a miserable three hundred dollars to go and marry a fallen woman! Mrs.
ALVING. Then what have you to say for me? I went and married a fallen man. MANDERS.
But_____good heavens!_____what are you talking about? A fallen man? Mrs. ALVING. Do
you think Alving was any purer when I went with him to the altar than Johanna was when
Engstrand married her? MANDERS. Well, but there’s a world of difference between the two
cases______ Mrs. ALVING. How can you compare the two cases? You had taken counsel
with your own heart and with your friends.37 Mrs. Alving’s sticking to duty and obligation
through a hypocritical marriage has made only a ghastly mockery of her entire life. Pastor
asserts that her marriage was totally in accordance with ‘law and order’. But who forms these
‘law and order’? They are infact made by the menfolk and are later on justified by menfolk
themselves as the natural system laid down by Higher Providence for the welfare of the
human beings. But they are implicitly, if not explicitly, for the benefit of men. Mrs. Alving
58 becomes aware of the underlying devastating effects of these laws for women when she
says, “Oh! That perpetual law and order! I often think that’s what does all the mischief here
in this world.”38 But she finds herself helpless to break away the shackles of these
constricting social factors, partly due to the discriminating dual gender-system of the society,
and partly due to her cowardice that does not let her determine her own course of life. Mrs.
Alving, brought up as a dutiful and obedient daughter, becomes a dutiful wife and mother too
because throughout her life she took for granted the outworn false social ideals that led her to
marginal situation. But the desperate circumstances compel her to reassess the blindly held
ideals and values, she was taught to maintain up to now. Bearing the tortures of her lecherous
husband, handling his business, reading “those horrible, revolutionary, free-thinking
books!”39 and thinking for herself have energised her static intellect. By the end of the play
she realises that her sanctimoniousness has only perverted Captain Alving’s joy of life into
debauchery, adultery and drunkenness. She is now fed up with all those dead ideals and she
resolves, “Well, I can’t help it; I can endure all this constraint and cowardice no longer. It’s
too much for me. I must work my way out to freedom.” 40 If she had earlier enough courage
to face public criticism against her independent and free choice, she might have broken the
shackles of marriage bond and would have led a free life, and had saved the creative life of
Oswald and the blooming youth of Regina. In an article, ‘Ghosts at the Jubilee’, G. B. Shaw
has underlined this fact: She is a typical figure of the experienced, intelligent woman who, in
passing from the first to the last quarter of the hour of history called the nineteenth century,
has discovered how appallingly opportunities were wasted, morals perverted, and instincts
corrupted, not only_____ sometimes not all_____by the vices she was taught to abhor in her
youth, but by the virtues it was her pride and uprightness to maintain.41 Actually Mrs.
Alving is entangled in a woman’s denying world where only men are expected to express
themselves aggressively and self-confidently. In spite of all her courage, determination and
struggle she is unable to make herself and her son
free from the ghosts of the past:
I almost think we’re all of us ghosts, Pastors Manders. It’s not only
what we have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us.
It’s all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They
have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can’t get rid
of them.42
The play’s theme is not the quest of the protagonist for her self-truth but rather
the dire consequences of rejecting that truth for the sake of hypocritical ideals. The
play, “exposes social hypocrisy and moral cowardice, and illustrates the evil results of
the subjection of women, and the slavish addiction of men to outworn creeds and
ethical standards.”43 John Gassner rightly says that Ibsen deplores, “Mrs. Alving’s
sacrifice of her happiness for the family respectability when she failed to leave her
husband.”