Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers

This examination of thirty-two ghost stories by twenty-one Victorian women writers defines a new genre, feminist Gothic, that utilizes the Gothic structure and its uncanny atmosphere of ambiguity to deploy competing narratives that seek to undermine patriarchy by simultaneously upholding and subverting its dominant myths. While the surface reading of these tales interprets the outer, public, overt voice that is often one of patriarchal appeasement, a second reading uncovers an inner, private, covert voice that undermines the first. By focusing exclusively on women's stories and by examining Victorian ghost stories by lesser known women writers alongside of those that have been disseminated and discussed more widely, this study aims to establish a definition of feminist Gothic that transcends the binaries of horror/terror, physical/psychological, intrusive/liminal and encompasses the issues that haunt the Victorian female literary imagination and the techniques women writers employ to incarnate and exorcise those revenants. Aimed at scholars of feminist literary criticism, Victorian literature, and the Gothic genre, this study combines close readings of primary sources with current scholarship, arranged thematically in chapters that examine women's issues including marriage, children, and property ownership.