Helene Alving in Sodom and Gomorrah

In struggling to get an overview of 'Ghosts', I realised that Mrs. Alving is the only character who behaves throughout with integrity, who does her duty, in this latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah.

Captain Alving and Pastor Manders, idealists as young men, soon become tainted like other corrupt and dissolute 'pillars of society'. The drunkard Engstrand and his wife, Johanna, live a lie. On returning from Paris, Oswald is worn down by living in this joyless and wicked society. Regine loses hope and will drown like her father before her.

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Genesis 19:24____Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;

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Finally fire and brimstone begins to fall as it did on those two 'cities of the plain': the orphanage is gone and Manders and Engstrand with it. Young Oswald and Regine have fallen into despair like their common father. The lone survivor of the conflagration is Mrs. Alving - the one righteous person.

Oswald. Everything will be burned up; nothing will be left that is in memory of my father. Here am I being burned up, too.

(REGINA looks at him [her half brother] in alarm.)

If all this isn't bad enough, the righteous Mrs Alving has one last and terrible burden to bear. She, like Abraham, is asked to sacrifice her only son, her one hope for the future.

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Genesis 22:2____And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering...

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But will the angel of the LORD also call unto Helene out of heaven, saying, "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him"?

With this epithet the spokesmen of the people - the 'pillars of society', the democrats - label Dr. Peter Stockmann in "An Enemy of the People", a play written (in a few weeks!) soon after the crushing reviews of 'Ghosts'. Dr. Stockmann, a scientist and man of integrity, is isolated and vilified for voicing the truth about contaminated tourist baths in the town. "An Enemy of the People" is the only Ibsen play impossible to misconstrue.

Helene Alving is a subtle and muted version of that blatant witness to the truth, the persecuted Dr. Stockmann. I suspect Ibsen saw her as the righteous person, standing alone, resisting iniquity like Abraham, Lot and Noah of the Genesis narrative. So Pastor Manders in Act I vilifies Mrs Alving.

Manders. You have been overmastered all your life by a disastrous spirit of wilfulness. All your impulses have led you towards what is undisciplined and lawless. You have never been willing to submit to any restraint. Anything in life that has seemed irksome to you, you have thrown aside recklessly and unscrupulously, as if it were a burden that you were free to rid yourself of if you would. It did not please you to be a wife any longer, and so you left your husband. Your duties as a mother were irksome to you, so you sent your child away among strangers.

Mrs. Alving. Yes, that is true; I did that.

Ibsen was ever a scathing critic of the hypocrisy of society in Norway, but in 'Ghosts' his critique is extreme.

"There is in me something Ghostlike from which I can never free myself"
Can we infer something about Mrs. Alving's character from this statement...
Plz rply asap...need it:)
A new member here and this is my 1st post...

As there are many English translations of Ibsen's Ghosts, your single-line quote is insufficient to establish the passage, or even the act, from which your brief quote has been taken. Can you please provide more information?

Yes these lines are spoken by her in the first half of second act while she is talking to Manders...after these lines she also says that when she saw Regina and Oswald in the dinning room it was as if she saw ghosts... also these lines are spoken few speeches after this one-"if only i weren't such an abject coward, i'd say to him : 'marry her,or make what arrangements you please.As long as you are honest and open about it-' "
hope it helps u to some extent
Thank you :)

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Originally Posted by Yami

"There is in me something Ghostlike from which I can never free myself"
Can we infer something about Mrs. Alving's character from this statement...

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Gutenburg translates this as:

MRS. ALVING. Let me tell you what I mean. I am timid and faint-hearted because of the ghosts that hang about me, and that I can never quite shake off.

Mrs Alving has, with the arguable exception of her brief flight to Manders long ago, has carried out her duty as wife and mother impeccably. While society in Norway would thoroughly vindicate her, Mrs Alving (like Ibsen himself fleeing to Italy for 27 years) has begun to lose faith in society with its superficial moral rectitude. She is seriously doubting the wisdom of her past actions on several fronts. Mrs Alving is haunted by the ghosts of her husband infidelity with the maid but, more importantly, is doubting both her selfless loyalty to her husband and her dispatch of her son to distant moral safety. Her son's overt flirting with Regina reminds her on all these counts - and she, unlike Oswald, is well aware of incest possibilities.

There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.

Mrs Alving has always put duty first, even in her early sexual relations with the Captain. And in the ending, of course, Oswald reinforces her many long-held concerns (warming himself by the light of the burning Captain Alving Orphanage), and all these ghosts and more ultimately overwhelm her with the blackest, unbridled horror.

OSWALD. [Sits motionless as before and says.] The sun.—The sun.

What do you think?

Thanx for replying...much appreciated :)

Yes you are right and in the process of carrying out her duties Mrs. Alving has silently suffered a lot...

The light and sun constantly reffered to by both Oswald and her mother are symbolic of freedom in a way...

"Doubting her selfless loyalty to her husband"...i am not clear here... could you plz explicate it...i mean if u could substantiate this point of yours...

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Originally Posted by Yami

The light and sun constantly referred to by both Oswald and her mother are symbolic of freedom in a way...

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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?

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Originally Posted by Yami

"Doubting her selfless loyalty to her husband"...i am not clear here... could you plz explicate it...

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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.

Yes true...Thanx again...

Happy to help with Ibsen, any time. I adore him.

Let me know, some time, what you make of this marvellous play and its razor sharp ending. :)

Oh yes sure Gladys :) actually this play is a part of my course this year...thanx God i got this Forum...and someone lyk u...will surely ask you if I face some other problem...

Yes I will share my views too :)