Chasing the Ghosts of Past: A Re-Reading of Ibsen's Ghosts

  • Unique Paper ID: 176089
  • PageNo: 4922-4925
  • Abstract:
  • Past never passes. It can follow like a dream or haunt like ghosts. Henrik Ibsen jostled the world with his publication of Ghosts in 1881 where he talked about the issues of extramarital affair, illegitimate child, euthanasia, incest and the inevitability of past. His play created uproar in the times of strict moral standards and unmoving familial responsibilities. The paper centres on the false notions of duty and reputation of typical Norwegian bourgeois society as represented in the play, and the disasters it leads to. It reiterates how difficult it is to evade one’s past and its multifaceted impact on future generations. It discusses the theories surrounding hereditary and genetics and discusses Ghosts as a typical naturalist play. It delineates the term ghosts on various levels and also represents Mrs. Alving as what Sarah Grand calls a ‘New Woman’. Published after A Doll’s House where the protagonist was criticized for leaving her toxic husband, Ibsen in the play sketches a woman who is stuck in a worse marriage and still chooses to stay, leaving it for the readers to decide what is better: to live in a bad marriage covering up for the husband and letting the ghosts of guilt chase, or leaving it for once and for all?

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{176089,
        author = {Dr. Manu Bharti},
        title = {Chasing the Ghosts of Past: A Re-Reading of Ibsen's Ghosts},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {11},
        number = {11},
        pages = {4922-4925},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=176089},
        abstract = {Past never passes. It can follow like a dream or haunt like ghosts. Henrik Ibsen jostled the world with his publication of Ghosts in 1881 where he talked about the issues of extramarital affair, illegitimate child, euthanasia, incest and the inevitability of past. His play created uproar in the times of strict moral standards and unmoving familial responsibilities. The paper centres on the false notions of duty and reputation of typical Norwegian bourgeois society as represented in the play, and the disasters it leads to. It reiterates how difficult it is to evade one’s past and its multifaceted impact on future generations. It discusses the theories surrounding hereditary and genetics and discusses Ghosts as a typical naturalist play. It delineates the term ghosts on various levels and also represents Mrs. Alving as what Sarah Grand calls a ‘New Woman’. Published after A Doll’s House where the protagonist was criticized for leaving her toxic husband, Ibsen in the play sketches a woman who is stuck in a worse marriage and still chooses to stay, leaving it for the readers to decide what is better: to live in a bad marriage covering up for the husband and letting the ghosts of guilt chase, or leaving it for once and for all?},
        keywords = {Ghosts, heredity, genetics, Naturalism, New Woman},
        month = {April},
        }

Cite This Article

Bharti, D. M. (2025). Chasing the Ghosts of Past: A Re-Reading of Ibsen's Ghosts. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 11(11), 4922–4925.

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