Ghosts

play by Ibsen

Also known as: “Gengangere”

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Article History

Ghosts, a drama in three acts by Henrik Ibsen, published in 1881 in Norwegian as Gengangere and performed the following year. The play is an attack on conventional morality and on the results of hypocrisy.

Ostensibly a discussion of congenital venereal disease, Ghosts also deals with the power of ingrained moral contamination to undermine the most determined idealism. Although the lecherous Captain Alving is in his grave, his ghost will not be laid to rest. The memorial that Helen, his conventionally minded widow, has erected to his memory burns down even as his son Oswald goes insane from inherited syphilis and his illegitimate daughter slips inexorably toward her destiny in a brothel.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.