Let’s Talk About the S Word

While the first act of Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts strikes as though it were leading towards a strong social commentary on feminism and gender issues, Ibsen abruptly shows us that his play is far more complicated. Far beyond a commentary on gendered realities, Ghosts is a chaotic, perhaps even irreverent, tale of incest, excess and debauchery, adultery, lies, and ultimately, disease.

Throughout his play, it’s as though Ibsen were consciously manipulating readers’ sympathies towards his characters. Whereas in the first act, it seems that Ibsen’s gearing our sympathies towards the women of the play and towards Oswald — who escaped the conventionalism of his town in order to study the frowned upon pathway of art — as soon as the second act begins, we’re meant to lose our trust in him, since he appears to be following his father’s steps in sexually harassing Regina, the maid. At one point, Ibsen has us vouching for Mrs. Alving, but towards the end she becomes a character we can very well resent.

How does Ibsen play around with our sympathies and for what purpose? Ultimately, who does he want us to sympathize with the most? Are we meant to sympathize more with one character than another? Or is the message actually that we can’t judge people based on the sympathies we hold in one moment?

There is so much chaos in the play, that it’s easy to get lost. What is ultimately the most essential message in the play? Is it that lying always leads to chaos? Is it that living a life primarily concerned with external opinions is a one-way-ticket to misery? Is it a critique to extremely conventional religiosity/Catholicism?

For Pastor Manders, the only reason not to insure the orphanage was that if people found out, they would certainly turn against him. His obsessive concern with others views leads the orphanage to become an irreparable loss after it’s burnt. Mr. Alving’s debauchery led his marriage to be a disaster, but convinced by Pastor Manders, Mrs. Alving decided to stay with him for as long as he lived, so as to prevent gossip in town. She was willing to let go of her 7-year old Oswald just to prevent gossip! Besides Johanna and Mr. Alving, no other names are mentioned in the play. Why are Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders so concerned with how others see them if these others are so irrelevant that they don’t even have names?

And lastly, the narrative of venereal disease. It’s only in the final pages that we discover that Oswald suffers of a venereal disease. Contrary to the other pieces we’ve read, where our narrators and main characters are merely witnesses of disease, in Ghosts, we’re exposed to disease first-hand. We’re inside one of the infected homes and we see what it means for Oswald to be sick. One by one, characters start leaving the house: first Pastor Manders and Engstrand, finally Regina. But the only characters that remain are the diseased and his mother. Such is his suffering that Oswald urges his mother to assist him in suicide/kill him.

Never in the play does Ibsen specify Syphilis, making it clear to the audience and readers that the topic is a taboo. Ibsen is bringing up STDs without specifically saying it. Regardless, when the play was first published and performed it received very negative critiques. Why do people consciously choose to shut off discussion upon pressing topics that deal with contagion and sex? Why is contagion a taboo, instead of something people can freely talk about? Isn’t this only leading towards a more diseased society, instead of one that can possibly be cured?

Listen to this song because it’s hilarious (and all the more irreverent) (and it does exactly the opposite from keeping sex and disease taboo):

 

6 Comments

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  1. “Why do people consciously choose to shut off discussion upon pressing topics that deal with contagion and sex? Why is contagion a taboo, instead of something people can freely talk about? Isn’t this only leading towards a more diseased society, instead of one that can possibly be cured?”

    Shutting off discussion around contagion and taboo subjects poses larger harm than benefit to society. This is clearly illustrated by the reaction to Ibsen’s work, “Ghosts”, where sexual abuse of women and STDs are denoted. The initial reaction of the Victorian 19th-century society was fairly horrendous, as the subjects were taboo. However centuries later we see a new Europe more vibrant and open in discussing issues, hence resolving and advancing as a society. Such topics are taboo because societal expectations hold that by silencing the thought of it, it’ll eradicate its existence. The contrast is seen and is the authorial intent of Ibsen, who understands it is just going to keep growing in silence because it eliminates all chances of open dialogue that helps to assess the problem. Masking societal problems won’t resolve them, and hence are the intent of Ibsen’s work to attempt and raise the important issues.

  2. Ghosts indeed juggles our sympathy from one character to the other a lot, perhaps because all the characters are undeniably flawed. Yet, by the end of the play, I caught myself leaning towards Oswald as a person that I sympathize most with.

    First of all, he is the victim of his father’s transmittable disease, the ‘ghost’ that manifests the debauchery of Captain Alving. Sure, his action to touch Regine is revolting, but could he be held fully responsible if his physical and mental diseases are simply an inheritance? Besides, at the end of the play, we can see how he relapses and has some sort of brain degeneration that impedes his thinking and slowly reduces his existence. Could he still be held responsible if he is the one to bear these consequences?

    Besides, I sympathize most with him also because he is an outsider to the society in the play. His argument against Manders’ about the wickedness behind sham marriages in Italy shows how he is still unaffected by the glorified public opinion that Manders and Mrs. Alving are limited by. His ability to see through the lens of a foreigner allows him to pinpoint the hypocrisy and self-centeredness of the Norwegians society. Throughout the play, he constantly compares the dim sky in Norway and bright sun abroad as a metaphor to portray how the Norwegian society needs an enlightenment. This sound judgement and open-mindedness he has definitely wins my sympathy.

  3. Ghosts indeed juggles our sympathy from one character to the other a lot, perhaps because all the characters are undeniably flawed. Yet, by the end of the play, I caught myself leaning towards Oswald as a person that I sympathize most with.

    First of all, he is the victim of his father’s transmittable disease, the ‘ghost’ that manifests the debauchery of Captain Alving. Sure, his action to touch Regine is revolting, but could he be held fully responsible if his physical and mental diseases are simply an inheritance? Besides, at the end of the play, we can see how he relapses and has some sort of brain degeneration that impedes his thinking and slowly reduces his existence. Could he still be held responsible if he is the one to bear these consequences?

    Besides, I sympathize most with him also because he is an outsider to the society in the play. His argument against Manders’ about the wickedness behind sham marriages in Italy shows how he is still unaffected by the glorified public opinion that Manders and Mrs. Alving are limited by. His ability to see through the lens of a foreigner allows him to pinpoint the hypocrisy and self-centeredness of the Norwegians society. Throughout the play, he constantly compares the dim sky in Norway and bright sun abroad as a metaphor to portray how the Norwegian society needs an enlightenment. This sound judgement and open-mindedness he has definitely wins my sympathy.

  4. Congrats Josefina and Guillermo! I really enjoyed your post. Here are my thoughts on your post and the book in general.

    Like the both of you, I also noticed that Ibsen made attempts to sway our sympathy from one character to another. Unlike Dayin, however, who was able to sympathize with just one character at the end, I was unable to sustain sympathy for any character from the start to finish of the play. I found that characters I was sympathetic too at the start of the novel ended up losing my sympathy towards the end. For the other characters I remained either unsympathetic or indifferent from the start of the novel to the finish. I believe that the events that unfolded during this play was as a result of the society paying for their collective decision to deny issues of sexually transmitted diseases and corruption of moral and societal values. Unlike the King Oidipous play where I was drawn to sympathize with Oidipous because he had to bear the sins of all, the characters in Ibsen’s Ghosts are all paying collectively for the part they’ve played in societal damnation. In choosing not to speak on, or address the issues presented to them, their silence and inaction further contributed to the problems they faced as the play unfolded. So, to me, it seemed like they were getting what they deserved and as such, there was no need for me to offer any one of them my sympathy.

    I would also like to comment on your statement that “there is so much chaos in the play that it’s easy to get lost.” Analyzing that post and looking back on our class discussions, I sincerely agree with the point you’ve made. I’d like to add though that this chaos for me stemmed from the absence of anything concrete or explicitly stated in the novel. Ibsen, throughout the play, was intentional in withholding the characters from speaking about societal issues that would have been regarded as taboo. And as already stated, we are informed implicitly of issues such as gender bias and moral corruption. However, at numerous points in the novel, Ibsen is slowly building up to the big reveal of what’s truly going on and then some other thing happens that leads to a very bid anti-climax. So, we as the audience also feed into the chaos dramatized on stage as we are caught between the tension created by the characters on stage and our constant thirst for more explicit information.

    Please feel free to reply to my comment.

    Regards,
    Odera Chiamaka Ebeze.

  5. Great post guys! I really enjoyed the post and the video. Here are my thoughts about one of the questions in the post.

    “Why are Mrs. Alving and Pastor Manders so concerned with how others see them if these others are so irrelevant that they don’t even have names?”

    In today’s society, although the actions of our families may have a mild affect on how others perceive us, people are generally able to differentiate between your actions and your family’s actions. Nowadays we understand that we are not our families. “Ghosts” was written in the nineteenth century (1882), at these times reputation was more important than it is now. What people see one member of your family reflects on you. Not naming “others” doesn’t show that they are irrelevant but it shows that they are not one or two people but they are the whole society.

    In the nineteenth century, a family’s reputation is important because it is proportional to the power of a family. That’s why corrupt practices of a family member can destroy the family’s power. If one member is corrupted the whole family’s reputation is destroyed. Family reputation is important in the society described in Ghosts because it affects marriages, wealth, even opportunities. Not only would the reputation of a family affect an individual’s social circle, but it could also have more pronounced effects on his or her future happiness and social life.

    Please feel free to reply.

    Regards,
    Noora Almarri

    • Heeey Noora! Your comment is very interesting and it actually raises another question for me. Recently Layan Adhams published and article in The Gazelle about makeup in the Arab World. Her argument is that makeup is more than a beauty statement in the Arab world, at least in her home country Egypt. A girl’s makeup reflects her family’s social status and also defines how good of a catch she is as a potential wife. Makeup culture for Arabs is all about creating a good image for the family to maintain its reputation.
      Although makeup seems really trivial for this conversation, the fact that families like Layan’s (as she says in her article) are willing to spend sooo much money on makeup simply for reputation and increasing daughter’s chances of marriage says a lot of the Egyptian worry today with image because of family reputation.
      Words like “haram” demonstrate that a lot cannot be spoken for its inappropriateness. I’m wondering, how would a book like Ibsen’s be taken in a traditional Arab community today? In many parts of the West, the themes Ibsen deals with in Ghosts are now acceptable to be spoken of. How would it be in different parts of the Arab world?

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