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Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen Essay

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No individual has the perfect life and while some people have long given up trying to lead the perfect life, others such as Regina Engstrom and Helen Alving in Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, stay in pursuit of the perfect life and have their own individual visions of what they believe to be the ideal life based on their personal experiences and desires. Helen Alving uses the return of her son as well as worldly, unconventional forms of literature in order to form beliefs of what she views to be the perfect life full of happiness after her husband’s death. She uses the literature and the hope of a better life for her son in order to cope with the trials that she went through while she was with her husband. Meanwhile, Regina relies on her hope for …show more content…

Also, Regina’s upbringing is not one that is cultured and sophisticated such as that of Mrs. Alving’s. Therefore, Regina is even further shunned in the gentry class and noble society where she secretly desires to be a part of. Regina’s idealized notion of a perfect life involves her marriage to Oswald Alving. Oswald remembers a time when he once dismissed her thoughts and her presence because of her working class status, but towards the end of the novel he comes to the realization that her simplicity is just what he needs to restart and refresh his life when he is feeling down and sick. He learns that she desires to join him some day to go to Paris and explore the world with him and while he did not take her very seriously, it was evident that “she had taken the thing seriously, and had been thinking about me [Oswald] all the time, and had set herself to learn French” in order to be with him (Ibsen 44). Naturally, her discovery as Oswald Alving’s half sister proves that not only was she a lower class

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