GHOSTS

The social and revolutionary significance of Henrik Ibsen is brought

out with even greater force in "Ghosts" than in his preceding works.

Not only does this pioneer of modern dramatic art undermine in "Ghosts"

the Social Lie and the paralyzing effect of Duty, but the uselessness

and evil of Sacrifice, the dreary Lack of Joy and of Purpose in Work are

brought to light as most pernicious and destructive elements in life.

_Mrs. Alving_, having made what her family called a most admirable

match, discovers shortly after her marriage that her husband is a

drunkard and a _roué_. In her despair she flees to her young friend, the

divinity student _Manders_. But he, preparing to save souls, even though

they be encased in rotten bodies, sends _Mrs. Alving_ back to her

husband and her duties toward her home.

_Helen Alving_ is young and immature. Besides, she loves young

_Manders_; his command is law to her. She returns home, and for

twenty-five years suffers all the misery and torture of the damned. That

she survives is due mainly to her passionate love for the child born of

that horrible relationship--her boy _Oswald_, her all in life. He must

be saved at any cost. To do that, she had sacrificed her great yearning

for him and sent him away from the poisonous atmosphere of her home.

And now he has returned, fine and free, much to the disgust of _Pastor

Manders_, whose limited vision cannot conceive that out in the large

world free men and women can live a decent and creative life.

_Manders._ But how is it possible that a--a young man or young woman

with any decent principles can endure to live in that way?--in the

eyes of all the world!

_Oswald._ What are they to do? A poor young artist--a poor girl. It

costs a lot of money to get married. What are they to do?

_Manders._ What are they to do? Let me tell you, Mr. Alving, what

they ought to do. They ought to exercise self-restraint from the

first; that's what they ought to do.

_Oswald._ Such talk as that won't go far with warm-blooded young

people, over head and ears in love.

_Mrs. Alving._ No, it wouldn't go far.

_Manders._ How can the authorities tolerate such things? Allow it to

go on in the light of day? (_To Mrs. Alving._) Had I not cause to be

deeply concerned about your son? In circles where open immorality

prevails, and has even a sort of prestige----!

_Oswald._ Let me tell you, sir, that I have been a constant

Sunday-guest in one or two such irregular homes----

_Manders._ On Sunday of all days!

_Oswald._ Isn't that the day to enjoy one's self? Well, never have I

heard an offensive word, and still less have I ever witnessed

anything that could be called immoral. No; do you know when and

where I have found immorality in artistic circles?

_Manders._ No! Thank heaven, I don't!

_Oswald._ Well, then, allow me to inform you. I have met with it

when one or other of our pattern husbands and fathers has come to

Paris to have a look around on his own account, and has done the

artists the honor of visiting their humble haunts. _They_ knew what

was what. These gentlemen could tell us all about places and things

we had never dreamt of.

_Manders._ What? Do you mean to say that respectable men from home

here would----?

_Oswald._ Have you never heard these respectable men, when they got

home again, talking about the way in which immorality was running

rampant abroad?

_Manders_. Yes, of course.

_Mrs. Alving._ I have, too.

_Oswald._ Well, you may take their word for it. They know what they

are talking about! Oh! that that great, free, glorious life out

there should be defiled in such a way!

_Pastor Manders_ is outraged, and when _Oswald_ leaves, he delivers

himself of a tirade against _Mrs. Alving_ for her "irresponsible

proclivities to shirk her duty."

_Manders._ It is only the spirit of rebellion that craves for

happiness in this life. What right have we human beings to

happiness? No, we have to do our duty! And your duty was to hold

firmly to the man you had once chosen and to whom you were bound by

a holy tie.... It was your duty to bear with humility the cross

which a Higher Power had, for your own good, laid upon you. But

instead of that you rebelliously cast away the cross.... I was but a

poor instrument in a Higher Hand. And what a blessing has it not

been to you all the days of your life, that I got you to resume the

yoke of duty and obedience!

The price _Mrs. Alving_ had to pay for her yoke, her duty and obedience,

staggers even _Dr. Manders_, when she reveals to him the martyrdom she

had endured those long years.

_Mrs. Alving._ You have now spoken out, Pastor Manders; and

to-morrow you are to speak publicly in memory of my husband. I

shall not speak to-morrow. But now I will speak out a little to you,

as you have spoken to me.... I want you to know that after nineteen

years of marriage my husband remained as dissolute in his desires as

he was when you married us. After Oswald's birth, I thought Alving

seemed to be a little better. But it did not last long. And then I

had to struggle twice as hard, fighting for life or death, so that

nobody should know what sort of a man my child's father was. I had

my little son to bear it for. 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 upper hand in the house--the whole

control over him and over everything else. For now I had a weapon

against him, you see; he dared not oppose me. It was then that

Oswald was sent from home. He was in his seventh year, and was

beginning to observe and ask questions, as children do. That I could

not bear. I thought the child must get poisoned by merely breathing

the air in this polluted home. That was why I placed him out. And

now you can see, too, why he was never allowed to set foot inside

his home so long as his father lived. No one knows what it has cost

me.... From the day after to-morrow it shall be for me as though he

who is dead had never lived in this house. No one shall be here but

my boy and his mother. (_From within the dining-room comes the noise

of a chair overturned, and at the same moment is heard:_)

_Regina (sharply, but whispering)._ Oswald! take care! are you mad?

let me go!

_Mrs. Alving (starts in terror)._ Ah! (_She stares wildly toward

the half-opened door. Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside.)_

_Manders (excited)._ What in the world is the matter? What is it,

Mrs. Alving?

_Mrs. Alving (hoarsely)._ Ghosts! The couple from the conservatory

has risen again!

Ghosts, indeed! _Mrs. Alving_ sees this but too clearly when she

discovers that though she did not want _Oswald_ to inherit a single

penny from the purchase money _Captain Alving_ had paid for her, all her

sacrifice did not save _Oswald_ from the poisoned heritage of his

father. She learns soon enough that her beloved boy had 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. Too late she realizes her fatal mistake:

_Mrs. Alving._ I ought never to have concealed the facts of Alving's

life. But ... in my superstitious awe for Duty and Decency I lied to

my boy, year after year. Oh! what a coward, what a coward I have

been!... Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as

though I saw the Ghosts before me. But I almost think we are all of

us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited

from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is 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.... 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.... When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty

and Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole

soul rebelled against, as something loathsome. It was then that I

began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick

at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing

ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn....

It was a crime against us both.

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.

Not so _Mrs. Alving_ who, though at a terrible price, works herself out

to the truth; aye, even to the height of understanding the dissolute

life of the father of her child, who had lived in cramped provincial

surroundings, and could find no purpose in life, no outlet for his

exuberance. It is through her child, through _Oswald_, that all this

becomes illumed to her.

_Oswald._ Ah, the joy of life, mother; that's a thing you don't know

much about in these parts. I have never felt it here.... And then,

too, the joy of work. At bottom, it's the same thing. But that too

you know nothing about.... Here people are brought up to believe

that work is a curse and a punishment for sin, and that life is

something miserable, something we want to be done with, the sooner

the better.... Have you noticed that everything I have painted has

turned upon the joy of life? always, always upon the joy of

life?--light and sunshine and glorious air, and faces radiant with

happiness? That is why I am afraid of remaining at home with you.

_Mrs. Alving._ Oswald, you spoke of the joy of life; and at that

word a new light burst for me over my life and all it has

contained.... You ought to have known your father when he was a

young lieutenant. He was brimming over with the joy of life!... He

had no object in life, but only an official position. He had no work

into which he could throw himself heart and soul; he had only

business. He had not a single comrade that knew what the joy of life

meant--only loafers and boon companions----.... So that happened

which was sure to happen.... Oswald, my dear boy; has it shaken you

very much?

_Oswald._ Of course it came upon me as a great surprise, but, after

all, it can't matter much to me.

_Mrs. Alving._ Can't matter! That your father was so infinitely

miserable!

_Oswald._ Of course I can pity him as I would anybody else; but----

_Mrs. Alving._ Nothing more? Your own father!

_Oswald._ Oh, there! "Father," "father"! I never knew anything of

father. I don't remember anything about him except--that he once

made me sick.

_Mrs. Alving._ That's a terrible way to speak! Should not a son love

his father, all the same?

_Oswald._ When a son has nothing to thank his father for? has never

known him? Do you really cling to the old superstition?--you who are

so enlightened in other ways?

_Mrs. Alving._ Is that only a superstition?

In truth, a superstition--one that is kept like the sword of Damocles

over the child who does not ask to be given life, and is yet tied with a

thousand chains to those who bring him into a cheerless, joyless, and

wretched world.

* * * * *

The voice of Henrik Ibsen in "Ghosts" sounds like the trumpets before

the walls of Jericho. Into the remotest nooks and corners reaches his

voice, with its thundering indictment of our moral cancers, our social

poisons, our hideous crimes against unborn and born victims. Verily a

more revolutionary condemnation has never been uttered in dramatic form

before or since the great Henrik Ibsen.

We need, therefore, not be surprised at the vile abuse and denunciation

heaped upon Ibsen's head by the Church, the State, and other moral

eunuchs. But the spirit of Henrik Ibsen could not be daunted. It

asserted itself with even greater defiance in "An Enemy of Society,"--a

powerful arraignment of the political and economic Lie,--Ibsen's own

confession of faith.