The public response to ‘GHOSTS’ by Henrik Ibsen

The public response to ‘GHOSTS’ by Henrik Ibsen

• ‘Ghosts’ written in 1881, raised a lot of uproar as it dealt with controversial issues much beyond the issue of unhappy marriage, rebellion, separation and conjugal disharmony as seen in ‘A Doll’s House’ and ‘Hedda Gabler’.
• A scathing commentary on the 19-th century morality-the subject of illegitimacy, incest, venereal disease and euthanasia- raised in the play, were not so easily accessible and acceptable at the time.
• The subject of inheritance and heredity, which evidently, bore the impact of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution were sources which placed Ibsen’s play- ‘Ghosts’on a different pedestal as they bear strong allegiance to heredity and environment.
• The geographical inheritance of Norway, a frigidly cold country, without the rays of the sun for months, is shown to breed only darkness in the life of people living there.
• Set in a small town in Norway, that offered little “outlet” for the “joy of life” to bloom, the play shows how lives are cast in a destructive milieu ordained by the follies of the past- “the sins of the father.”