Mrs Alving in Ghosts by Ibsen Essay Example for Free

Mrs Alving in Ghosts by Ibsen Essay Through excessive parallelism and constant reference to â€Å"ghosts,† Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen portrays a view on the rewards of duty that clashes sharply with the accepted views of the time. In his native country of Norway, and indeed all around the world in the year 1881, ‘duty’ was seen as a powerful motivator in both religion and society. The abstract concept of duty was what constrained society into ‘acceptable’ boundaries, and people without a sense of duty were often shunned and rejected by their fellow citizens. Henrik Ibsen was well-known for his somewhat controversial plays. Just before writing Ghosts, â€Å"Ghosts† he wrote A Doll’s House about a young woman seeking to escape the bonds of duty. While the classic feminist story in A Doll’s House has a hint of hope for Nora Helmer, who decides to speak up for her own rights as a woman and as a human being, Ghosts seems to me to be the gloomy alternative, as Mrs Alving overcomes years of subordination to her immoral (and now deceased) husband. The woman, Nora, desires to free herself intellectually by breaking out of a marriage. Ghosts, in many ways, is an extension of â€Å"A Doll’s House†, with the main character Mrs. Alving acting as a future Nora. They are similar in some ways, but obviously they are both uniquely diverse. They play many of the same roles in their plays, and are probably the most similar two characters between Ghosts and A Dolls House. As literary critic Edward Boyer puts it, â€Å"In many ways Mrs. Alving is an older and more mature Nora, freer yet at the same time more bound. She too wanted to break out of a marriage once, but was sent back to her ‘duties’ by Pastor Manders, who thereby awakened the first doubts in her mind about transmitted doctrine. Ibsen focused his pieces on commenting on the often hypocritical sense of duty that people of his time supported. In his own words, â€Å"Ghosts had to be written; I could not let â€Å"the doll’s house† be my last word; after Nora, Mrs. Alving had to come. † Duty prompted her to create a life of lies, as she hid her husband’s alcoholism and other immoral acts. Duty prompted her to hide her husband’s pregnant mistress, and again to raise his daughter as her own. Even the names Ibsen gives the two women show the difference of hope in the two plays. In A Doll’s House, Nora is given a first name, and in fact she is listed by her first name in the written script whenever she speaks. In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving is seldom called by her first name (it is Helen), and rather is referred to as Mrs. Alving in the script when she has a line to say. She is regarded only as a wife, even ten years after her husband’s death. Ibsen utilizes many parallels between situations and characters in order to portray the desired results of duty and the actual results. Mrs. Alving can be compared to Mr. Engstrand, a hobbling old carpenter, and supposed father of Regina. Mrs. Alving is, obliged by her sense of duty, trying to gain control of her son Oswald upon his return home, while Engstrand attempts to evoke his daughter’s sense of duty so that she will come to work for him. According to George Meyer, â€Å"This parallel is†¦important because in the one case a father is trying to gain control of his daughter; in the other a mother, of her son. † Both characters also experienced a ‘commercial marriage’ in that Mrs. Alving married Captain Alving â€Å"for the sum of his fortune,† and Engstrand married his wife Johanna for a hefty bribe. Nora is a unique character, a kind not usually seen in most plays. She swings her mood often; she is either very happy or very depressed, comfortable or desperate, wise or naive. At the beginning of the play, Nora still plays a child in many ways, listening at doors and eating forbidden sweets behind her husbands back. She has gone straight from her fathers house to her husbands, bringing along her nursemaid which tells us that she hasnt really grown up. She also doesnt have much of an own opinion. She has always accepted her fathers and her husbands opinions. Shes aware that Torvald would have no use for a wife who was equal to him. But like many children, Nora knows how to manipulate Torvald by pouting or by performing for him. In the end, it is the truth about her marriage that awakens Nora. Although she may suspect that Torvald is a weak, petty man, she believes that he is strong, that hell protect her from the consequences of her actions. Then, at the moment of truth, he abandons her completely. She is shocked into reality and sees how fake their relationship has been. She realizes that her father and her husband have seen her as a doll, a toy to be played with, a figure without opinion or will of her own. She also realizes that she is treating her children the same way. Her whole life has been based on illusion rather than reality. Although she tried to escape from her marriage, the young Mrs. Alving apparently did not have a sudden moment of realization of her duties to herself, her own honor, or her own pride. If she did, we are not told hem; she continued to live as her husband and as society expected her to. By the end of Ghosts, however, when the effects of her husband’s life of duplicity are clear, the older and wiser Mrs. Alving has obviously come to regret her silence. Boyer states, â€Å"She sees now that it was the limiting conditions, the lack of true joy, a goal in life, and meaningful work which destroyed the best in her husband. She sees too that she h erself was the immediate cause of his ruin, because she had made life intolerable for him with her conventional morality of duty. Mrs. Alving can’t be blamed for staying in her marriage though. In A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer had a place to escape to. Her friend Mrs Linde would eagerly provide a place to stay and her best friend Doctor Rank had invited her company, and expressed his love for her. The conclusion drawn up by the end is this: the embracing and enforcing of a corrupt sense of duty and false pride by the collection of characters has led to the successful projects-chaos and dismay. This symbolizes Ibsen’s conception of duty and double standard for men and women in the society. He believes that mankind has ‘taken it too far,’ and duty has degenerated love into a purchasable commodity as illustrated by not only the brothel but by Mrs. Alving’s and Engstrand’s commercial marriages. The free-thinking duty-free artists of Paris live happy lives in wholesome homes, while the duty-supporting end up in broken homes where hypocrisy and immorality run rampant.

Kants Views on Humanity and Reason Essay -- Philosophy

Kant's Views on Humanity and Reason "One can regard the history of the human species, in the large, as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally, and for this purpose, also an externally perfect national constitution, as the sole state in which all of humanity's natural capacities can be developed (36)." Kant is explicit in his notion of human history: for him it is the development toward the telos, the end in which mankind finally exists in a state conducive to its proper development. Specifically, history entails a constant antagonism of man between his desire for total freedom and his need for society, between the necessity of a human master and the moral crisis it represents, and between one society and its neighbors. Personified as Nature, reason embodies the rational undercurrent of reality. Despite Kant's constant use of the feminine pronoun, Nature is not a deity; it represents the fabric of existence and is responsible not only for providing a driving purpose for mankind, but ensuring that the species is equipped to see the purpose ... Kant's Views on Humanity and Reason Essay -- Philosophy Kant's Views on Humanity and Reason "One can regard the history of the human species, in the large, as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally, and for this purpose, also an externally perfect national constitution, as the sole state in which all of humanity's natural capacities can be developed (36)." Kant is explicit in his notion of human history: for him it is the development toward the telos, the end in which mankind finally exists in a state conducive to its proper development. Specifically, history entails a constant antagonism of man between his desire for total freedom and his need for society, between the necessity of a human master and the moral crisis it represents, and between one society and its neighbors. Personified as Nature, reason embodies the rational undercurrent of reality. Despite Kant's constant use of the feminine pronoun, Nature is not a deity; it represents the fabric of existence and is responsible not only for providing a driving purpose for mankind, but ensuring that the species is equipped to see the purpose ...

Family and True Feelings

In many cases, it is often shown that in order to avoid issues such as death, people choose to keep their guard up instead of opening up to one another. Death is a topic that is usually kept unspoken of when one is not ready for another to pass. People, families especially, tend to keep quiet or set up a front enabling one from expressing their true feelings on the issue. There is struggle between letting our feelings out, and being able to act as a strong figure is often shown in literature, such as poetry.In her poem, â€Å"Legacies,† Nikki Giovanni shows how families choose to make the topic of death a â€Å"touchy† subject, instead of being open about it, which is shown through her characters, the grandmother and the granddaughter. In â€Å"Legacies,† Nikki Giovanni shows the struggle that the grandmother and the granddaughter endure when the topic of death is brought up. This struggle can be brought up when tradition is being passed down. Whether the person wants to accept it or not, the tradition is being passed down because death is in the future.The grandmother wants the granddaughter to learn how to make rolls, which is a long running family tradition. The grandmother, trying to avoid the obvious reason, does not explain why the granddaughter would have to learn how to make the rolls. Instead of reaching out to her granddaughter, the grandmother brushes it off and says, â€Å"Lord these children. † In response to the grandmothers statement about making the rolls, the granddaughter says that she does not want learn the tradition

The Slavery Of African Americans - 1695 Words

Unfortunately, inequality has not completely ceased to exist in the United States of America. As a country, we have had a long history of injustice among our people. From the enslavement of African Americans, to the mistreatment of Native Americans on the Trail of Tears, and the subtle and sometimes overt discrimination oppressing American women today, there has been a long and continuing history of discrimination and unfair action against our fellow citizens. It would be deceitful for us to think that our nation has lived up to the ideals of the words â€Å"all men are created equal† since the day the Constitution was written by the Founders. Slavery comes in many forms, and inequality has existed among many kinds of people, whether the issue†¦show more content†¦Did they intend to leave such an open-ended phrase in a time when many of them themselves owned slaves? I hope that the answer would be that equality is intended for all, but I cannot help but ask myself why the Civil Rights amendments had to be written and why the Civil War had to be fought, or why the Emancipation Proclamation had to be written. Why did minimum wage laws have to be passed and why does gender inequality still exist today? Finally, why did the thought of slavery or any type of human inequality even exist within our country if the Founding Fathers believed that the basis of our country was that â€Å"all men are created equal?† Apparently, the idea of this phrase has not meant the same thing to all Americans in the past and even now. Maybe we cannot reasonably hope that the meaning of this phrase will eventually be perfectly agreed upon, but I hope that America has a better appreciation and longing for supreme equality in the near future. American equality is purer now than in the past, but we remain responsible to ensure the elimination of any vestige of impurity from the future American concept and application of equality. In May of 1851, Sojourner Truth, an Af rican American woman, spoke about her thoughts of inequality among black women in her speech, â€Å"Ain’t I a Woman.† She talked about how men thought women should be treated