Ghosts: Act One Summary & Analysis

Regine’s unwillingness to welcome her father into Mrs. Alving’s house reveals her desire to transform herself and distance herself from Engstrand. The fact that Mrs. Alving has a maid and has ordered the construction of an orphanage in her husband’s name shows the audience that she is a rich woman—the kind of person Regine likely wants to become. Because of this desire to be like Mrs. Alving, then, Regine doesn’t want to be seen with her father, whose reputation she clearly wants nothing to do with. In this regard, Ibsen spotlights the ways in which people covet wealth and outward appearances, even at the expense of family relationships.

As Regine and Engstrand continue their conversation, it becomes even clearer that Regine is eager to distance herself from her father. This, it seems, might have to do with the fact that Engstrand is a heavy drinker who doesn’t even trust himself to be around alcohol. When Regine ridicules his wish to avoid temptation, she implies that Engstrand has tried and failed many times before to keep his vices at bay. She, on the other hand, is devoted to cultivating a refined image of herself, as evidenced by her haughty use of French even when such phrases add nothing but a sense of superiority to her interaction with her father.  

Once again, Regine is unwilling to associate with her father. In fact, she completely dismisses the mere idea of returning to town with him, since this would interfere with her plans to build a reputation as a distinguished woman in Mrs. Alving’s wealthy circles. In this moment, the audience sees just how committed she is to using her relationship with Mrs. Alving to her own benefit, a practice she seems to have inherited from her father, who she suspects wants to manipulate Pastor Manders into doing something.

Engstrand’s sudden anger unearths his belief that children have no right to go against their parents. When he calls Regine a “little bitch” for disrespecting him, he implies that she is obligated to do whatever he wants. Nevertheless, Regine is too focused on gaining upward mobility to care what Engstrand expects of her, though she can’t help but become angry when he disparages her mother. After all, by calling Regine’s mother a snob, Engstrand simultaneously criticizes Regine herself, who clearly shares her mother’s desire to benefit from her associations with rich people like the Alvings.

It’s worth paying attention to what Engstrand says to Regine in this moment, since it’s clear that he’s trying to manipulate her into feeling sorry for him. First, he suggests that a father has a right to be with his child, implying that children are more or less obligated to do what their parents want. Moving on, he reminds her that he’s a lonely widower, quite obviously trying to make her feel bad for him. By saying this, he hopes to capitalize on her sympathy, prefacing what he’s about to tell her about his new idea with this emotionally calculated attempt to control her.

It's clear that Engstrand knows what Regine wants to hear, as he tries to appeal to her desire to associate with well-respected society members. To convince her to do what he wants, he frames his hotel for sailors as a classy establishment that would only accommodate respectable people. And though this might seem like an attractive option to Regine, it quickly becomes clear that the hotel Engstrand really has in mind will be little more than a brothel, as made evident when he says that he and the patrons will want to have “a bit of fun in the evenings,” something he says in relation to the prospect of having a woman work at the hotel. In this way, he tries to convince his daughter to do what he wants by manipulatively preying on her aspirations while simultaneously having no intention of actually fulfilling his promises.

As Engstrand tries to persuade Regine to help him found his hotel for sailors, he disparages her efforts to become a civilized and refined young woman. To do this, he underlines just how futile it is for her to stay with Mrs. Alving, since her time working for the woman has resulted in nothing tangible. Although she has gained an education from her time with the Alvings, she is still destined to do little more than work in an orphanage as a maid. And though Regine remains steadfast in her decision to stay, it’s worth noting that she seems to soften a bit to the idea of leaving when Engstrand intimates that coming with him will actually help her climb the social ladder—a fact that once again proves her determination to rise through society. 

Engstrand’s parting words once again suggest that children are somehow indebted to their parents. Furthermore, his strange insistence that he is her father (and his willingness to prove this) indicates that he’s worried for some reason that she’ll doubt his parental authority. Given that Ghosts is a play about family history and what family members owe one another, this is an important moment, since Engstrand is apparently unsure if Regine will respect the terms of their father-daughter relationship. 

Right away, Pastor Manders makes it clear that he believes in the notion of familial duty, saying that daughters have to meet certain expectations and fulfill various responsibilities when it comes to their relationships with their fathers. Unsurprisingly, Regine doesn’t like the sound of this, but she admits that she would leave Mrs. Alving’s employment if she were to find a good husband—yet another indication that she is interested first and foremost in securing upward mobility. How exactly this happens doesn’t matter to her, as long as she manages to rise through the ranks of society; it seems that her relationships with both Engstrand and Mrs. Alving pale in comparison to this goal.

Although Ibsen doesn’t specify what Mrs. Alving has been reading, what’s important is that Pastor Manders disapproves of her books because they espouse ideas that apparently go against his beliefs. Considering that he’s a pastor, it’s likely that the books are actively against religion or, at the very least, set forth worldviews that have nothing to do with God or piety. When Manders criticizes Mrs. Alving for reading this material, his commitment to traditional belief systems comes to the forefront of the play. However, Mrs. Alving stands up for herself by pointing out that Manders has no experience outside of his own narrow perspective, ultimately suggesting that it’s foolish to write something off simply because it doesn’t perfectly align with one’s own way of seeing the world. By saying this, she reveals her desire to explore new viewpoints that don’t necessarily fit into her surrounding community.

Pastor Manders has a very sheltered view of the world, believing that new ways of thinking do nothing but threaten the previously established structures of thought to which he has already committed himself. As a pastor, he dislikes anything that might contradict the life he’s built in the church. Here he also reveals his dedication to keeping up appearances, since it’s not really Mrs. Irving’s reading that upsets him; it’s the fact that she doesn’t do a better job of hiding it.

During this exchange, audience members see just how concerned Pastor Manders is about his reputation. As a pastor, he thinks people will judge him if he advises Mrs. Alving to purchase insurance. What’s interesting, though, is that he seems aware of the fact that it’s a risky decision to leave the building uninsured—the thing that convinces him to go forth with this plan isn’t his belief that God will protect the orphanage (though he does mention this), but rather his fear that people will think poorly of him if he doesn’t appear to have this belief. By spotlighting this dynamic, Ibsen shows the audience that Manders is a man who cares primarily about how he appears to others. 

When Pastor Manders asks Mrs. Alving if she would be able to pay for damages should something happen to the orphanage, he once again reveals that he’s aware of how unwise it is to leave the building uninsured. Although he wants to maintain his public image as a man who unconditionally trusts God to protect charitable institutions, he can’t help but worry that he’s steering Mrs. Alving in the wrong direction. He clearly hopes that she will ease his worries by saying that she has plenty of money to put toward the orphanage in the event of an accident. However, she’s unable to put his mind at ease in this regard. In fact, she makes him even more worried by telling him that Engstrand accidentally started a fire in the orphanage just one day earlier. The fact that Manders still sticks to his original plan despite all this worry illustrates just how much he cares about maintaining his reputation.

Pastor Manders’s attempt to convince Mrs. Alving to release Regine from her duties once again underlines his belief that children have a duty to care for their parents. According to him, Mrs. Alving is interfering in Engstrand and Regine’s relationship.

The fact that Oswald thinks that Pastor Manders disapproves of his lifestyle is further evidence that Manders is a judgmental person. A man devoted to the traditional ways of the church, he sees young artists as a representation of all the ways that the world is changing. And though Manders insists that he doesn’t condemn Oswald in particular, it seems likely that he does have reservations about the way Oswald leads his life.

Mrs. Alving’s insistence that Oswald looks like a clergyman indicates that she shares some of Manders’s views regarding respectability and reputation. Wanting her son to seem like a distinguished and well-regarded member of society, she tries to frame him as a pious man of God. This is worth noting, since so far everyone seems to respect the memory of Captain Alving, making it rather odd that Mrs. Alving wouldn’t take delight in the idea of her son looking like her husband. In this way, Ibsen prepares the audience to examine the true nature of Mrs. Alving’s relationship with her late husband.

Again, Pastor Manders’s strong and traditional beliefs come to the forefront of the play, as he underhandedly criticizes Mrs. Alving for letting Oswald leave home as a child. Ibsen has already shown the audience that Manders has strong feelings about familial relationships, as evidenced by his insistence that Regine should return home to live with her father. Now, though, Oswald challenges the pastor’s conventional views, suggesting that it’s possible to have a good upbringing without living in a standard domestic setting. 

During this exchange, Oswald tries to help Pastor Manders see the hypocrisy that runs rampant throughout society. Although Manders judges young artists for living unconventional lives, Oswald insists that breaking from tradition doesn’t necessarily mean leaving behind morality. In fact, he upholds that the most unethical people he’s met are men who subscribe to the very same values as Pastor Manders. In turn, he maintains that people aren’t always what they seem, urging Manders to refrain from judging others based on surface-level appearances.

Despite Oswald’s suggestion that Pastor Manders stop judging others, Manders criticizes Mrs. Alving for shirking what he sees as her duty. Reaching back to before Oswald was born, he chastises her for prioritizing her own happiness over her marriage. In doing so, he once again demonstrates his belief that there is nothing more important than rising to meet expectations, even if this means sacrificing one’s own wellbeing. Of course, it’s worth noting that Manders only talks about duty and responsibility in the context of convincing women to submit to men, whether this means urging Regine to serve her father or persuading Mrs. Alving to stay in an unhappy marriage for the sake of her husband.

When Pastor Manders says that Mrs. Alving should have respected her duty to her husband, he claims that this responsibility was set upon her by God. In making this claim, he subjects her to both societal and religious pressures to submit to Captain Alving, framing her role as a wife as something bigger than herself—something that renders her own needs and feelings superfluous. In turn, he makes it nearly impossible for her to advocate for herself, implying that it’s a woman’s job to sacrifice her needs in order to fit into the role of a submissive wife.

By this point in Ghosts, it’s clear that Pastor Manders has no qualms passing judgment on other people. In this moment, he attacks Mrs. Alving’s life from seemingly all angles, claiming that she was not only a bad wife, but also a bad mother. To make these claims, he invests himself in the idea that people—and especially women—have certain duties and obligations that they must fulfill in their relationships with their loved ones. It is this framework of familial dependence and womanly responsibility that enables him to so mercilessly critique Mrs. Alving.  

In this moment, the audience sees how unfair it was for Pastor Manders to suggest that Mrs. Alving is a bad mother, considering that she suffered for many years to keep her family together despite Captain Alving’s wretched behavior. After all, she endured her husband’s unsavory lifestyle simply for Oswald’s sake. In turn, it becomes clear that Pastor Manders’s audacity in judging her from afar is especially unjust. Overall, the truth about Captain Alving proves that even people with fantastic reputations can be quite immoral.

It’s worth paying attention to the way Pastor Manders reacts to the story Mrs. Manders tells him about Captain Alving’s infidelity. Instead of focusing on Captain Alving’s actual behavior, the pastor fixates on the fact that Mrs. Alving’s husband failed to hide his wicked ways from his wife. Indeed, he calls Captain Alving’s actions “unseemly” and, most importantly, “indiscreet,” as if the man’s primary transgression was his inability to keep his sexual deviance a secret. In this way, he once again obsesses over outward appearances, ultimately failing to think about the actual moral implications of Captain Alving’s infidelity (and, it seems, his nonconsensual sexual aggression). 

Mrs. Alving’s use of the word “poison” is interesting, since it suggests that she believes immorality and depravity can be passed along through exposure. This makes sense, considering that Oswald would have seen and absorbed his father’s bad behavior if he had spent the entirety of his childhood and adolescence around the man. However, this word also foreshadows her later ideas about how people can inherit shameful pasts from their forebears. On another note, the fact that Mrs. Alving is responsible for Captain Alving’s accomplishments suggests that although she may not be quite as obsessed with reputation as Pastor Manders, she still cares enough about her family’s public image to help maintain her husband’s persona as a successful and beneficent man.

This exchange confirms the idea that Mrs. Alving is worried about what Oswald inherits from his father, both in a literal sense and a figurative one. Not wanting him to become like Captain Alving, she makes sure that he won’t receive any of the man’s money, since it would be a real-life representation of how his existence continues to influence Oswald’s life.

The sexual advance Oswald makes on Regine is a representation of the ways in which the past repeats itself. In this moment, it seems as if Oswald has inherited something from his father after all: his inappropriate sexual behavior. In fact, he also appears to have inherited the man’s craving for alcohol, since he wants to drink both red and white wine with dinner. When Mrs. Alving says that she has just heard the ghosts of her past, Ibsen suggests that certain painful histories don’t simply go away. Rather, they can haunt a person for the rest of her life.