Ghosts BD14870_.GIF (420 bytes) 1881

Ghosts
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MANDERS.
That I commanded you, saying: “Woman, go home to your lawful husband”, when you came to me wildly and cried, “Here I am, take me;” – was that a crime!

MRS. ALVING.
Yes, I think so.

MANDERS.
We two don’t understand each other.

MRS. ALVING.
We no longer do so now, at any rate.

MANDERS.
Never, never once, in my most secret thoughts, have I regarded you otherwise than as another’s wife.

MRS. ALVING.
Oh, really?

MANDERS.
Helen!

MRS. ALVING.
People so easily pass from their own memories.

MRS. ALVING.
It has been a dreadful fancy of yours, Osvald. Nothing but fancy. You have not been able to bear all that harrowing story. But now you shall rest a bit, at home with your own mother, my own darling boy. Everything you point to you shall have, just as when you were a little boy.

Transl. by Frances Lord.

Mrs Helene Alving and her accountant and old house friend, the Reverend Manders, have built an orphanage for the money she inherited from her husband; mostly in order to exorcise the memories of an unhappy marriage. Her son Osvald who has only vague memories of his lecherous father, has just come home from Paris where he has become a painter. The maid Regine and Osvald are infatuated with each other, but only Mrs Alving knows the truth about Regine. She is a illegitimate child, born by the maid they had when Mr Alving was alive. The night before the orphanage is to be opened, there is a fire, obviously set by Regine’s foster father, carpenter Engstrand. Osvald reveals to his mother that he suffers from syphilis and asks her to help him die when the disease reaches his brain. Regine goes away when she learns that Osvald is both her half brother and seriously ill. In the end Osvald has an attack and Mrs Alving faces the final, fateful decision.

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