Originally Posted by
Yami
The light and sun constantly referred to by both Oswald and her mother are symbolic of freedom in a way...
Not simply freedom, but rather an integrity, a love for others and for life that sees through the shabby veneer of social respectability and norms. A veneer that in time turns idealistic, joy-filled youths into self-righteous hypocrites like Pastor Manders and Chamberlain Alving.
OSWALD. No, mother, I assure you I didn't dream it. For—don't you remember this?—you came and carried me out into the nursery. Then I was sick, and I saw that you were crying.—Did father often play such practical jokes?
MANDERS. In his youth he overflowed with the joy of life—
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MRS. ALVING: Sit down. (REGINA sits down on a chair near the dining-room door, still holding the glass in her hand.) Oswald, what was it you were saying about the joy of life?
OSWALD: Ah, mother--the joy of life! You don’t know very much about that at home here. I shall never realise it here.
MRS. ALVING: Not even when you are with me?
OSWALD: Never at home. But you can’t understand that.
MRS. ALVING: Yes, indeed I almost think I do understand you now.
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OSWALD: --then I realised that my salvation lay in her, for I saw the joy of life in her!
MRS. ALVING: (starting back) The joy of life--? Is there salvation in that?
Originally Posted by
Yami
"Doubting her selfless loyalty to her husband"...i am not clear here... could you plz explicate it...
Read this about the philandering Captain in the context of his girl friend and, later, young wife:
MRS. ALVING: Yes, now I can, Oswald. A little while ago you were talking about the joy of life, and what you said seemed to shed a new light upon everything in my whole life.
OSWALD: (shaking his head). I don’t in the least understand what you mean.
MRS. ALVING: You should have known your father in his young days in the army. He was full of the joy of life, I can tell you.
OSWALD: Yes, I know.
MRS. ALVING: It gave me a holiday feeling only to look at him, full of irrepressible energy and exuberant spirits.
OSWALD: What then?
MRS. ALVING: Well, then this boy, full of the joy of life--for he was just like a boy, then--had to make his home in a second-rate town which had none of the joy of life to offer him, but only dissipations. He had to come out here and live an aimless life; he had only an official post. He had no work worth devoting his whole mind to; he had nothing more than official routine to attend to. He had not a single companion capable of appreciating what the joy of life meant; nothing but idlers and tipplers...
OSWALD: Mother--!
MRS. ALVING: And so the inevitable happened!
OSWALD: What was the inevitable?
MRS. ALVING: You said yourself this evening what would happen in your case if you stayed at home.
OSWALD: Do you mean by that, that father--?
MRS. ALVING: Your poor father never found any outlet for the overmastering joy of life that was in him. And I brought no holiday spirit into his home, either.
OSWALD: You didn’t, either?
MRS. ALVING: I had been taught about duty, and the sort of thing that I believed in so long here. Everything seemed to turn upon duty--my duty, or his duty--and I am afraid I made your poor father’s home unbearable to him, Oswald.