Essay on Ghosts

[Type text]

In literature, the archetype of the mother is constituted by two contrasting images: the ideal mother, “associated with Virgin-identified self-sacrifice,”1 who “bear[s] pain with patience and nurture[s] selflessly,”1 and the wicked, evil mother, jealous of her offspring and filled with “pain, anger, frustration.”1 Both sides of the archetype can be clearly seen in fairy stories, such as the story of Cinderella, in which the fairy godmother is portrayed as an “ideal mother” who nurtures Cinderella, providing her with magical gifts and the chance to meet and marry the prince; the “bad” mother is present in Cinderella´s cruel step-mother, who neglects and abuses her. In August Strindberg’s The Father (1887), Strindberg evokes the negative side of the maternal archetype in portraying Laura as a “bad” mother who has a negative impact on Bertha´s life; in Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (1881), Ibsen evokes the positive side of the maternal archetype in portraying Mrs. Alving as a “good” mother, who cares about her son, nurtures him and is prepared to suffer on his behalf.

In The Father, Laura is depicted as an extremely bad mother who manipulates her daughter, Bertha, to get revenge on her husband, Captain Adolf. Though Captain Adolf selflessly wants Bertha “to be a teacher,”(581) so “she can support herself”(581) and be independent, in fact, “if she gets married she can use what she learned to educate her own children.”(581) Laura wants to make “an artist out of [Bertha],”(581) not so much because Bertha has artistic talent but as a way of fulfilling Laura’s own frustrated ambitions, despite the fact that Captain Adolf insists that being an artist is a “man’s profession, which would take years of study. And all that education would be absolutely wasted if she decided to get married.”(581) Thus, even though Captain Adolf “showed some samples of her work to a well-known painter who said it was ordinary,” (581)Laura prefers to believe a “young whippersnapper, with all the answers” (581)who said Bertha had “colossal talent,” (581) simply because to believe this is to vicariously fulfill her own dreams while frustrating her husband at the same time. Laura also wants to keep Bertha in the house, as the Captain complains that she “won’t let [their] child leave,” (581) even though the atmosphere in the house is very negative, “filled with women” (581) who influence Bertha negatively, towards spiritualism or relgious extremism. Her grandmother frightens Bertha by an experiment with automatic writing, “she says the spirits will write;” (585) while “the governess wants her to be a Methodist; old Margaret steers her to the Baptists; and the kitchen help want her to join the Salvation Army.”(581) Though Captain Alving wants to “get her out of this house”(581) into a healthier atmosphere, wanting her to have a normal life, Laura’s machinations prevent this from ever happening. By the end of the play, they all succeed in driving the Captain mad, even Bertha turns against him, considering him mad. Bertha asks him if he is sick, and then questions her father’s role, as in “you can’t be my father if you talk like that!” (594)This is the final straw for Captain Alving, who finally collapses. Thus leaving Bertha in her mother’s claws, to be brought up as her mother wishes, and in the image of her mother; Laura’s final cry “my child. My own child,”(596) announces the upbringing of Bertha in Laura’s own way. As the captain’s nurse says, “there’s no good fairy watching over this house.” (588) Suggesting that Laura is no good fairy, that she is far from the good fairy godmother of Cinderella, that she is the archetype of the evil stepmother.

This is a preview of the whole essay

In contrast to Laura, in Ibsen’s Ghosts Mrs. Alving is portrayed as the “good” self- sacrificing mother, who cares for her son, Oswald, and is determined to help him no matter what it costs her. Mrs. Alving had sacrificed all her life, since her son was born, to “prevent anybody from knowing what sort of person my child’s father was,” (118) she had to “put up with a lot in this house,” (118) she had to join Captain Alving “in secret drinking orgies up in his room,” (118) even when her husband “had his way with the girl,”(118) here hinting to Regine’s mother. Captain Alving had in fact had “his way” with Regine’s mother, and from that very affair, Regine was born. But She hit the truth from Oswald so he would have a good image of his father, and hid it from society, so that no one would ever speak badly of the Captian to Oswald. Mrs. Alving “had to bear it for the sake of [her] little boy.” (118) Finally she had to sacrifice her son, for his own good, and “that was the time Oswald was sent away.” (118) Oswald blames her for sending him away, and mentions that it “shouldn’t have” “made much difference to [her] if [he] was around or not.” (136)However, she doesn’t care for this blame, since she knows she did the right thing by sending him away, if not he would be “poisoned simply by breathing the foul air” (118) of the house. Especially after she had learned that his father has an affair with Regine’s mother, “[her] own servant girl.”(118) Finally being made aware of all this, even Pastor Manders describes Mrs. Alving’s suffering for her son as an “ordeal.” Mrs. Alving openly states how devoted she is to her son, crying out, “Oh Oswald, my own boy! The thing I have in all the world. The one thing I care anything at all about.” Moreover, she also proves this to be true as even when Oswald tells his mother how sick he is, she assures him he will “have his mother to look after him.” In the end, we see how much she is ready to sacrifice for her son, she is willing to even kill him at his own request, to stop his suffering, “if it becomes necessary” (162) she will give him this last “helping hand.” (162) Thus we see the extraordinary sacrifices she had to make for her son, and how in the end she agrees to do one last enormous sacrifice for him, in order to save him from a miserable life as an invalid. So, we see in Ghosts how Mrs. Alving appears to be the dutiful and self-sacrificing mother, that all mothers are expected to be; thus she is not a ‘bad fairy’ like Laura but a ‘good fairy,’ watching over Oswald and trying to do everything to save and help him.

To heighten the central image of the “bad” mother, Laura, as presented in The Father, Strindberg also uses references to other “bad” mothers. Laura’s mother appears to be the same as Laura, she wants Bertha to “be a spiritualist,”(581) disregarding the thoughts of any other person in the household. Thus, with disregards to others, she teaches Bertha spiritualism, and tries to bring her up the same way she brought up Laura. This has a very negative effect on Bertha, since she is being turned against her father, believing more her grandmother and mother then her father. In fact, if the Captain tries to defy Laura and her mother’s will, Bertha rather believes them, since “grandma wouldn’t tell a lie.” (585) Laura’s mother also appears to have brought up Laura badly, thus reflecting her childhood on her future as a mother to Bertha. This can indicate, that Laura’s mother has in fact also been a “bad” mother towards her daughter; in fact she has made her spoiled. In fact when Laura was a child “she would lie stiff and still playing dead until she got what she wanted. And when she got it, she gave it back, saying it wasn’t the thing that she wanted so much, she just wanted to have her own way.” (581) Thus we see this character reflected now in Laura’s behaviour towards the captain and Bertha; and all this because Laura’s mother had been a “bad” mother, not educating Laura properly. Another example of “bad” mothers in this play is the Captain’s mother, as he mentions that his “mother and father did not want [him],” (591) what kind of a mother does not want her child? “She deprived [his] first cells of nourishment, stunting and crippling [him] before [he] was born.” (591)Thus we see, how this play clearly wants to emphasize how bad the mother’s role in society is, and how mothers destroy their children’s life.

On the other hand, Regine’s mother portrays the “self sacrificing,” good mother. Regine’s mother gave up her work at Captain Alving’s house, so she could dedicate her life to raising her child. In Ibsen’s A Doll House , Nora´s old nurse has given up her illegitimate child to be able to stay in employment as a domestic servant, and so the child is given up for adoption. This is not the case with Regine’s mother, who “left at once” (122) and sacrificed her employment for the child. Mrs. Alving wanted to hush up the matter for the good of the family, and so Regine’s mother “was given quite a fair amount”(122) of money to “keep her mouth shut;”(122) the money is intended as a dowry, to induce some man to marry her. She marries Jacob Engstrand so the child will have a father, even though Engstrand only marries her for the money after Regine had “dropped a few hints about how much money she had, and told him a tale about some foreigner.”(122) She remains in the marriage for the sake of her child even though Engstrand almost “drove her to death the way [he] tormented her,” (93) and, in fact, Regine´s mother does die, though we do not know from what. Thus Ibsen, in Regine´s mother, presents another image of a self-sacrificing mother, paralleling the central image of Mrs. Alving.

In Ghosts, Ibsen portrays mothers as heroines who sacrifice their lives for their offspring; in The Father, Strindberg portrays mothers as evil creatures who manipulate and destroy their children´s lives. Ibsen portrays mothers in this way as he wants to stand up for women’s rights, and stop the oppression of women in the patriarchal society of 19th century Norway. Strindberg, who was responding to Ibsen’s advocation of women´s rights, wants to prove that giving women rights is dangerous, because once women gain power they will use it destructively, as Laura does.