Reputation, Judgement, and Morality Theme Analysis

In Ghosts, a play about how people present themselves, Henrik Ibsen demonstrates that people leading immoral lives often still have untarnished reputations. In particular, the late Captain Alving is deeply revered by his community, despite the fact that he was a philandering alcoholic whose only accomplishments should be attributed to his wife, Mrs. Alving. Mrs. Alving has always wanted to confess that her husband was morally corrupt, but has refrained from doing so because she wants to maintain the family’s image. On the eve of opening an orphanage dedicated to the memory of her husband, though, she confides in Pastor Manders—a close family friend—that Captain Alving was “debauched.” Manders is beside himself when he hears this, but his initial reaction to the news suggests that he cares more about how people present themselves than how they actually behave. To that end, he takes issue not only with Captain Alving’s wretched behavior, but with his indiscretion, implying that the man’s biggest mistake was that he failed to fully hide his bad behavior from his wife. Throughout the play, Ibsen underlines the extent to which people invest themselves in keeping up appearances and the destruction to interpersonal relationships this can cause, highlighting the harmful obsession with reputation that was characteristic of 19th-century society.

Pastor Manders isn’t completely unaware of Captain Alving’s immoral ways, but he thinks Alving only misbehaved as a young man. Pastor Manders once talked Mrs. Alving out of running away from Captain Alving, insisting that Alving would surely turn over a new leaf and leave behind his unseemly ways. Now, years after Captain Alving’s death, Manders is quite proud of his advice, believing that Alving completely reformed himself. What he doesn’t know, though, is that Captain Alving continued to live an immoral life as a heavy drinker and unfaithful husband. This disconnect between Manders’s rosy view of Captain Alving and the actual way Alving lived his life underscores that a person’s public image can be misleading. Without knowing this, though, Manders reproaches Mrs. Alving for doubting her husband. The fact that he so easily condemns her decisions illustrates just how confident he is passing judgment from afar. In turn, Ibsen implies that reputations and appearances can be quite deceiving, giving people like Pastor Manders the false impression that they know their peers better than they actually do.

Rather ironically, Pastor Manders insists that Mrs. Alving did her husband a “great wrong” by trying to leave him. Furthermore, he says that she also wronged her son, Oswald, by sending him away from home at such a young age (something that, in reality, she only did to ensure that the boy wouldn’t be negatively influenced by his father). As Manders levels these claims against her, Mrs. Alving waits patiently to point out that he has no idea what he’s talking about. “None of these things you have been saying about my husband and me and our life together after you had led me back to the path of duty, as you put it—absolutely none of these things do you know from first-hand,” she says, implying that he shouldn’t pass judgment without digging beyond her family’s surface-level reputation. After all, he doesn’t actually know anything about her relationship with her husband, instead forming inaccurate ideas based on nothing but Captain Alving’s status in the community, which Mrs. Alving herself helped him sustain. In turn, Manders’s assumptions about Mrs. Alving’s married life make it even harder for her to finally stand up for herself by revealing her husband’s wretched ways. As she finally explains that she fought an “endless battle” to hold her life and family together, Manders is astonished and disturbed, responding, “Am I to believe that your entire married life…all those years together with your husband…were nothing but a façade.” In this moment, he begins to understand why it’s so foolish to judge people based on their outward appearances, finally recognizing that it’s possible for people to construct “façades” that keep their vices hidden.

To show Pastor Manders the extent of Captain Alving’s misbehavior, Mrs. Alving tells him that she heard her husband make a sexual advance on the family maid. This, she explains, took place while she was sitting in an adjacent room. This story thoroughly appalls Manders, but the nature of his outrage is rather strange, as he focuses not on Captain Alving’s infidelity, but on his failure to properly hide his urges. Reacting to this news, he calls Alving’s behavior “unseemly” and “indiscreet.” Instead of fixating on Captain Alving’s actual misdeed, then, Manders responds negatively to the man’s indiscretion, inadvertently indicating that Captain Alving’s real transgression was his inability to maintain his appearance as an upstanding man. In other words, Manders focuses not on the moral implications of Captain Alving’s infidelity, but on the related social dynamics, finding it unacceptable that he would present himself in such a socially unacceptable manner. This reaction helps Ibsen highlight the obsession with decorum that runs throughout Mrs. Alving’s community—an obsession that apparently overshadows more significant ethical concerns.

Pastor Manders’s obsession with appearances is the exact mindset that long discouraged Mrs. Alving from publicizing her husband’s wretched ways in the first place. What’s interesting, though, is that her attempt to “fight tooth and nail to prevent anybody from knowing” Captain Alving’s true nature is, in the end, what ultimately kept her from happiness. After all, if everyone had known about Captain Alving’s debauchery, it would have been easier for Mrs. Alving to leave him. By helping him maintain his public image, though, she ensured her own misery. Outlining this dynamic, Ibsen warns audiences against the dangers of overvaluing reputation, which not only keeps people from addressing immorality, but also diminishes their happiness.