Modern European Drama 1

Roushan Kumar Singh

Professor Kasturi Chaudhary

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14th April 2020

“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.”

Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts

George Steiner while discussing Ibsen say that, “with Ibsen the history of drama begins anew”, he also

points out that, in the hands of Henrik Ibsen, drama has undergone a significant change in form and

content. Hence, it is clear why Ibsen is considered as the father of the modern drama.

In Ghosts, Ibsen gives a strong message about the dynamics of the relationship between the individual

and society. He talks about the strange mechanisms of society which forces people to live up to other

people’s expectations, that leads to severe consequences in the play. For instance, despite the fact that

the late Captain Alving was a philandering alcoholic. Still, Mrs. Alving. refrained herself from

confessing that her husband was morally corrupt, as she wants to maintain the family’s image. The

pressure of maintaining a certain image in society can be far more harmful to one’s life than actually

telling the truth. This pressure eventually destroys lives in Ghosts.

Ibsen demonstrates that people leading immoral lives often still have untarnished reputations and Mr.

Alving epitomizes it. He discusses the hypocrisy of society and the play embodies of the hollowness

and falsity of conventional morality, particularly the hollowness of conventional Bourgeois marriage

and family life. Ibsen employs realism and symbols to reveal this dark side of the society and in his
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pursuit of truth he unmasks the hypocrisy and filth underlying the notions of morality, outdated social

mores and ideals, which makes Ghosts the most criticized work of Ibsen. Since, no other play earned

Ibsen such titles as a 'crazy-cranky being", 'Norwegian raven emerging from the rocks with insatiable

appetite for decayed flesh', 'outrageous and heretical individualist' and a 'writer fallen into sheer

delirium'. No other play was described in such derogatory invectives as a 'piece of pugnacious

propaganda', 'morally hideous', 'blasphemous', 'revoltingly suggestive' and was even denounced by the

leading newspapers. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ labeled it as "an open drain: of a loathsome sore

unbandaged; of a dirty act done publically; or of a lazar house with all its doors and windows open."

‘The Daily News’ stated that the play may put forward the excuse that it exposes social hypocrisy and

moral cowardice and it illustrates the evil results of the subjection of women and the slavish addiction

of men to outworn creeds and ethical standards, yet it is "naked loathsomeness."

Michael Meyer dwells at length on the hostilities, violent commotions and hysterical outcries against

this play and opines that Ibsen's contemporaries saw Ghosts primarily as a play about physical illness.

He laments that "with few exceptions, they failed to realize that the true subject of Ghosts is the

devitalizing effect of a dumb acceptance of convention." Meyer here agrees with Halvdan Koht

(Norwegian Historian) that Oswald is branded with disease not because his father was a beast but

because Mrs. Alving had obeyed the immoral ethics of society. He opines: "... In other words. Ghosts is

a play about ethical, not physical debility. The importance of waging war against past, the need for

each individual to find his or her own freedom, the danger of renouncing love in the name of duty—

these are the real themes of Ghosts."

F. L. Lucas argues that, "The central theme is the clash between moral courage and convention,

between respectability and happiness." He highlights some objections to this play. To begin with, he

finds that there is too much coincidence in the burning of the orphanage just when it was to be opened.

Secondly, there are certain medical objections like if Oswald was infected with his father's disease,
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how could Mrs. Alving escape? Again, if Oswald was infected, how could Regina escape? Yet again,

the play suffers from a certain air of pugnacious propaganda which is artistically dangerous.

G. Wilson Knight finds the title of the play very significant because in it not only the past events are

revealed and heredity comes out as a grim agent but there is also a reading of traditional valuations as

dead and yet cogent forces constricting life. Hans Heiberg (Norwegian Journalist) sweeping aside the

traditional viewpoints argues that the play is neither about venereal disease nor is Oswald the central

character but it is about one of society's worst cancers. In the play, "He (Ibsen) had exposed not only

man's sacred right to a double code of morality but also whole taboo world, which everyone knew

about and whispered about in corners but no one dared mention about." He highlights the point that

most people thought that Ibsen, through Mrs. Alving, wanted to legalise incest and advocates sexual

license and nihilism which lead to heavy denunciation of Ghosts.

Francis Ferguson finds a slot for the play in the theatre of modern realism and makes certain brilliant

observations. For him, the play is a thesis-thriller, plotted as a series of debates on conventional

morality. The play is an exposition of double standard of morality adopted by church and its

custodians. A particularly blatant example of the double standard is found in Ghosts, where Pastor

Manders expresses moral censure for the Alving's former servant Johanna as a fallen woman but scoffs

at Mrs. Alving's characterization of her deceased husband as a fallen man. When Mrs. Alving confides

in Pastor Manders that her husband was “debauched.” Manders’ reaction to the news suggests that he

cares more about how people present themselves than how they actually behave. Ironically, Pastor

Manders insists that Mrs. Alving did her husband a “great wrong” by trying to leave him. Pastor

Manders’s obsession with appearances is the exact mindset that long discouraged Mrs. Alving from

publicizing her husband’s infedility in the first place. As she finally explains that she fought an

“endless battle” to hold her life and family together, Manders is astonished and disturbed, responding,
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“Am I to believe that your entire married life…all those years together with your husband…were

nothing but a façade.” In this moment, he begins to realize that it’s so foolish to judge people based on

their outward appearances and finally recognizing that it’s possible for people to construct “façades”

that keep their vices hidden. However, Manders’ unswerving adherence to principle had already ruined

Mrs. Alving’s life by sending her back to the dissolute Captain Alving.

Bjorn Hemmer, the author of ‘Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen’, in his article 'Ibsen and the realistic

problem drama', looks at the play as a fine illustration of double-barreled phrase 'truth and freedom',

which Ibsen uses as a rallying cry. For him the play is a family drama in which liberty of the spirit,

liberty of thought and liberty of human condition is at stake due to oppressive social values. In his

opinion, “In Ghosts Ibsen directs a blistering criticism at society and its annihilating forces.

authorities.” Ibsen warns audiences against the dangers of overvaluing reputation, which not only keeps

people from addressing immorality, but also diminishes their happiness. Throughout the play, Ibsen

underlines the extent to which people invest themselves in keeping up appearances and the destruction

to interpersonal relationships this can cause, highlighting the harmful obsession with reputation that

was characteristic of 19th-century society which is embodied in Pastor Manders. This gap between

Manders’s rosy view of Mr. Alving and the actual way he lived his life underscores that a person’s

public image can be misleading. Ibsen implies that reputations and appearances can be quite deceiving,

giving people like Pastor Manders the false impression that they know their peers better than they

actually do. However, Manders wasn’t completely unknown of Captain Alving’s immoral ways, but

assumed Alving only misbehaved that way in his young age. Pastor Mandors hance is the embodiment

of the hypocrite society and which Ibsen unmasked in his pursuit of truth and shattered the façade and

sham established under the notions of morality.