ABSTRACT
The chapter conducts a reading of Ghosts focusing on the causes and consequences of Alving’s degeneracy. The issue of raising children lies at the heart of the play. Alving has failed both his children, Osvald by failing to ensure his physical viability and Regine by depriving her of her paternity. The chapter argues that Engstrand acts as a counterbalance to bourgeois corruption through his insistence that Regine should live for her own self. Engstrand’s call for Regine to emancipate herself from the clutches of the Alving’s hints at the possibility of a broader liberation of the working class from the established order. Helene stands in opposition to Regine’s emancipation, and the chapter argues that Helene acts to perpetuate the bourgeois social order. The chapter makes the case for a reading of Helene as a female patriarch who stepped in to fill the void left by the failed patriarch Alving. Alving’s failure to ensure the viability of his intended inheritor predetermines Osvald’s fate. The chapter argues for a reading of Osvald as suffering from paternally transmitted congenital syphilis, a condition that has compromised his vitality and ultimately leads to the extinction of the Alving line.
