Manders. Can you call it cowardice that you simply did your duty?
Have you forgotten that a child should love and honour his father and mother?
Mrs. Alving. Don't let us talk in such general terms. Suppose we say: "Ought Oswald to love and honour Mr. Alving?"Manders. You are a mother--isn't there a voice in your heart that forbids you to shatter your son's ideals?
Mrs. Alving. And what about the truth?
Manders. What about his ideals?
Mrs: Alving. Oh--ideals, ideals! If only I were not such a coward as I am!
Manders. Do not spurn ideals, Mrs. Alving--they have a way of avenging themselves cruelly. Take Oswald's own case, now. He hasn't many ideals, more's the pity. But this much I have seen, that his father is something of an ideal to him.
Mrs. Alving. You are right there.
Manders. And his conception of his father is what you inspired and encouraged by your letters.
Mrs: Alving. Yes, I was swayed by duty and consideration for others; that was why I lied to my son, year in and year out. Oh, what a coward--what a coward I have been!
Manders. You have built up a happy illusion in your son's mind, Mrs. Alving--and that is a thing you certainly ought not to undervalue.
Mrs. Alving. Ah, who knows if that is such a desirable thing after all!--But anyway I don't intend to put up with any goings on with Regina. I am not going to let him get the poor girl into trouble.
Manders. Good heavens, no--that would be a frightful thing!
Mrs. Alving. If only I knew whether he meant it seriously, and whether it would mean happiness for him.
Manders. In what way? I don't understand.
Mrs. Alving. But that is impossible; Regina is not equal to it, unfortunately.
Manders, I don't understand: What do you mean?
Mrs. Alving. If I were not such a miserable coward, I would say to him: "Marry her, or make any arrangement you like with her--only let there be no deceit in the matter."
Manders. Heaven forgive you! Are you actually suggesting anything so abominable, so unheard of, as a marriage between them!
Mrs. Alving. Unheard of, do you call it? Tell me honestly, Mr. Manders, don't you suppose there are plenty of married couples out here in the country that are just as nearly related as they are?
Manders. I am sure I don't understand you.
Mrs. Alving. Indeed you do.
Manders. I suppose you are thinking of cases where possibly--. It is only too true, unfortunately, that family life is not always as stainless as it should be. But as for the sort of thing you hint at--well, it's impossible to tell, at all events, with any certainty. Here on the other hand--for you, a mother, to be willing to allow your--Mrs. Alving. But I am not willing to allow it; I would not allow it for anything in the world; that is just what I was saying.
Manders. No, because you are a coward, as you put it. But, supposing you were not a coward--! Great heavens--such a revolting union!
Mrs. Alving. Well, for the matter of that, we are all descended from a union of that description, so we are told. And who was it that was responsible for this state of things, Mr. Manders?
Manders. I can't discuss such questions with you, Mrs. Alving;you are by no means in the right frame of mind for that. But for you to dare to say that it is cowardly of you--!
Mrs. Alving. I will tell you what I mean by that. I am frightened and timid, because I am obsessed by the presence of ghosts that Inever can get rid of, Manders. The presence of what?
Mrs. Alving. Ghosts. When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts before my eyes. I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers anal mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.
Manders. Ah!--there we have the outcome of your reading. Fine fruit it has borne--this abominable, subversive, free-thinking literature!
Mrs. Alving. You are wrong there, my friend. You are the one who made me begin to think; and I owe you my best thanks for it.
Menders. I!
Mrs. Alving. Yes, by forcing me to submit to what you called my duty and my obligations; by praising as right and lust what my whole soul revolted against, as it would against something abominable. That was what led me to examine your teachings critically. I only wanted to unravel one point in them; but as soon as I had got that unravelled, the whole fabric came to pieces. And then I realised that it was only machine-made.
Manders (softly, and with emotion). Is that all I accomplished by the hardest struggle of my life?
Mrs. Alving. Call it rather the most ignominious defeat of your life.
Manders. It was the greatest victory of my life, Helen; victory over myself.
Mrs. Alving. It was a wrong done to both of us.
Manders. A wrong?--wrong for me to entreat you as a wife to go back to your lawful husband, when you came to me half distracted and crying: "Here I am, take me!" Was that a wrong?
Mrs. Alving. I think it was.
Menders. We two do not understand one another.
Mrs. Alving. Not now, at all events.
Manders. Never--even in my most secret thoughts--have I for a moment regarded you as anything but the wife of another.
Mrs. Alving. Do you believe what you say?
Manders. Helen--!
Mrs. Alving. One so easily forgets one's own feelings. Manders.
Not I. I am the same as I always was.
Mrs. Alving. Yes, yes--don't let us talk any more about the old days. You are buried up to your eyes now in committees and all sorts of business; and I am here, fighting with ghosts both without and within me.
