Ghosts (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays) Paperback – July 11, 1997

I read this today, October 5, 2018.This is how I know we’re going backwards as a society. I’m reading things that were written over 100 years ago (on the other side of the world), and they could have been written yesterday (here in the U.S.).This play is oddly relevant today. Ironically, it’s not relevant because this is October, a month in which I like to read ghost stories.It’s about a (white) dude who does all this bad stuff, and about the women he did it to who have to bear all the consequences. And no one can talk about it because they’re the ones that will look bad by besmirching his name. And in the end, the women are blamed - and blame themselves for it.Here’s what’s crazy: Wikipedia says “Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality”. Huh. It’s also a scathing commentary on 21st-century morality.May we all be free of the ghosts of those that went before us.Google it if you want to find a free copy to read (or listen to).

I liked the story of the mother and son in the story.

Another will written play short story by Henrik Ibsen. It was not what I expected but interesting. I would say give it a try it may work. Enjoy the adventure of novels 👍🔰 and books 📚. 2022

"As snug as a yolk in an egg" meaning "being comfortable in a house" is an example of beautiful expressions used by the venerable and brilliant playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ghosts was highly controversial during Ibsen's time because of the disturbing themes in this edgy play. Themes like cohabitation, although common as garden variety vegetables today in Norway, challenged the social mores of Norway 150 years ago. Even the then Norwegian king found the play distasteful. The central figure in the play was the poor long suffering Mrs Alvin. Both her late husband and her son were afflicted with the "Benjamin Button's" disease with her son's condition surfacing only when he turned 16, devastating the poor mother. Despite Mrs Alvin's extensive combative measures to shield her son from her husband's sins, we once again witness that man is never master of his destiny. Like hereditary diseases, the sins of the fathers will be felt by the children and their children.

Mr. Ibsen's work is generally a lot deeper than the average playwright, and this is no exception. While regularly listed as one of his greats, it is a bit harder to love than most, largely owing to his more cold and didactic approach, which he spared his readers in later works. In spite of this, and his melodramatic mise en scene, the humanity of the play breathes out, allowing the patient readers, and the attentive audience members a moment to realise, as in Brand, that Ibsen is a God of love, in this case, of compassion.

I'm a big fan of Ibsen's prescience in writing about issues that are still very current. "Ghosts" is one that explores the sexual secrets in families. The play was considered scandalous in the early 1880s when it first appeared, and the subject matter is scandalous still today.

I admit it took me awhile to understand what was going on this story due to the older dialect, but once I did, I felt that the story went by way too fast. It was rushed. Then before I knew it, the book was over.

First play I ever read by Ibsen and I found it entertaining. It's hilarious with darkness between the lines and with a twisted end. Recommended.

Ghosts was written in 1881 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The plot works it's way around Helen Alving, widow, who appears a woman of generous spirit and some wealth.As events move along Mrs Alving's relationship with her husband comes under close scrutiny. It was far from a happy marriage. So bad that Mrs Alving 'hides the evil' from her marriage beneath an orphanage in order to save her son, Oswald, from his father's corruption.There follows a host of unexpected twists and turns. Far from burying her 'husband's evil' events force Mrs Alving to face up to his past in no uncertain terms. Ibsen created a masterpiece of high drama and one I would love to see revived for television.The themes set around the rights of women at the time, the intervention, or not!, of the Church through the hapless Pastor Manders and the dreadful consequences of promiscuity with it's risk of disease are still relevant.Considering 'Ghosts' is so short it has much to say. Classic piece of writing with a dark and tragic heart. Packs a punch even now.

Written towards the end of the nineteenth century, Ibsen's Ghosts was originally seen as a shocking and immoral play that deeply offended bourgeois sensibilities. By deconstructing the way in which sexual corruption was endemic across society, not least because it was covered up and implicitly normalised, Ibsen was part of a movement concerned with the idea of what we now call `sexuality' but which was only just emerging as a concept thanks to the work of people like Kraft-Ebbing in his Pychopathia Sexualis and, of course, Freud.For readers today, this is still a play that provokes, even though we're now used to the rather clichéd idea of what went on beneath the surface of the nineteenth century which valorised `family values' across Europe. This exposure of corruption, abuse, incest and other forms of psychic sickness seems very of its time, especially to the extent that it plays into `degeneration' discourses which were endemic at this period, but is still an angry and potent work which indicts bourgeois moralities.

Not Ibsen's best play but it is nevertheless good and easy to read. Interesting to read a play rather than watch someone's interpretation. So much is unsaid in the play. Ibsen had a sympathetic attitude towards women and that is clear in Ghosts. After reading this I'd like to see it performed and find out more about the characters. Syphilis, not mentioned by name, is why it was considered shocking when first performed I presume. Homosexuality is there I think too but by reading rather than seeing it on stage one can have a more personal view.

A thought provoking classic. I enjoyed reading a play for a change but the story left me feeling very uncomfortable. A timeless classic.

The work of a real master playwright, beautifully constructed and slowly teasing out the plot, little by little and character by character.