‘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.”