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A Companion to the American Short Story

Page 90

by Alfred Bendixen


  material life ” (41). Much as in Irving ’ s “ The Tale of the German Student, ” ontological

  uncertainty – the question, what world is this, and are there others? – is at the heart

  of Poe ’ s supernaturally themed stories, among them “ Ligeia, ” “ Morella, ” “ Metzenger-

  stein, ” “ A Tale of the Ragged Mountains, ” “ The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, ”

  “ The Man of the Crowd, ” and “ The Fall of the House of Usher. ” We will deal briefl y

  with “ Ligeia ” here – arguably the closest Poe comes to an actual ghost story.

  In “ Ligeia, ” the narrator ’ s beautiful, accomplished, and mysterious bride, Ligeia,

  sickens and dies, but not before cryptically communicating her belief that strength

  of will can overcome death. The melancholic narrator remarries and his second wife,

  Rowena, similarly falls ill. Attending to her, the narrator, who admits to having taken

  opium, senses a presence in the room with him and Rowena, and sees – or thinks he

  sees – strange drops of a ruby - colored liquid fall into Rowena ’ s cup of wine. There-

  after, she fails and dies – only seemingly to revive. This happens multiple times until

  Rowena arises and approaches him and the narrator discovers she apparently has grown

  taller, her hair has turned from fair to black, and Ligeia ’ s eyes are staring back at him.

  For Ringe, there is “ little doubt that we are intended to take literally the revivifi ca-

  tion of Rowena ’ s corpse by the soul of Ligeia ” (135). While I ’ m a bit more circumspect

  than Ringe – the narrator ’ s melancholic and drug - addled state seem to license doubt

  – I do think “ Ligeia, ” like “ The Tale of the German Student, ” can be interpreted as

  either foregrounding the irrational components of human psychology and thereby

  critiquing our abilities to assess perceptual data objectively or as demonstrating the

  insuffi ciency of science and logic to account for the strangeness of the universe – or

  both. Either the narrator is hallucinating due to grief, madness, and drugs or “ Ligeia ”

  returns fi rst as a ghost and then in the form of the possessed Rowena. In either case,

  Age of Enlightenment presumptions about rationality and logic are undermined.

  In contrast to Poe, the ghosts in the short fi ction of Nathaniel Hawthorne do not

  so much challenge conventional epistemological frameworks as represent either the

  world of the imagination or the grip of the past upon the present. Famously in the

  “ Custom - House ” introduction to The Scarlet Letter , Hawthorne discusses the condi-

  tions under which the imaginative faculties of the Romance writer are best stimulated

  – moonlight transforms the familiar into a “ neutral territory, somewhere between the

  real world and fairy - land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet ” (1372) and

  it is here that ghosts enter as the author ’ s creative juices get fl owing.

  In much of Hawthorne ’ s fi ction, however, ghosts, rather than representing the

  liberation of the mind, stand for the skeletal reach of the past intruding into the

  The Ghost Story

  415

  present, sometimes for good, mostly for evil. Both these poles are represented by two

  inclusions in Hawthorne ’ s Twice - Told Tales : “ The Gray Champion ” and “ The White

  Old Maid. ” In “ The Gray Champion, ” an old man perceived by many to be a ghost

  emerges to challenge the tyrannical Sir Edmund Andros and possesses what seems to

  be prophetic knowledge of the abdication from the throne of King James I. Described

  as “ the type of new England ’ s hereditary spirit, ” he is the embodiment of liberty

  incarnate who materializes to challenge domestic tyranny “ whenever the descendants

  of the Puritans … show the spirit of their sires ” (8).

  In the vast majority of Hawthorne ’ s work, the supernatural is presented hesitantly,

  as one possibility among several. In the most famous example, Young Goodman

  Brown in the story of the same name may have a rendezvous with the devil or he may

  simply have dreamed the whole occurrence. Similarly, in “ Old Esther Dudley ” , Esther

  – a living symbol of the past – is rumored to be able to call up images and fi gures of

  days gone by in the blurred mirror of the Province House, but this rumor is never

  substantiated. In “ Graves and Goblins ” (a magazine sketch generally attributed to

  Hawthorne), however, Hawthorne offers a straightforwardly supernatural tale that

  combines the themes of the ghosts as fi gurations of creative spirit and ghosts as rep-

  resentations of the persistence of the past. Narrated from beyond the grave, the story

  begins by asserting that all authors are haunted:

  Sprites, that were poets once, and are now all poetry, hover round the dreaming bard, and

  become his inspiration; buried statesmen lend their wisdom, gathered on earth and mel-

  lowed in the grave, to the historian; and when the preacher rises nearest to the level of

  his mighty subject, it is because the prophets of old days have communed with him. Who

  has not been conscious of mysteries within his mind, mysteries of truth and reality, which

  will not wear the chains of language? Mortal, then the dead were with you! (para. 1)

  After this introduction, the ghostly narrator discusses the unhappy ghosts that inhabit

  his graveyard, chained to events in their pasts, and his own fascination with the ghost

  of a pure young maiden who spends only a short time on earth before ascending to

  heaven.

  Along with Poe, Ambrose Bierce arguably was the foremost nineteenth - century

  American author of Gothic tales; unlike Poe, however, Bierce ’ s body of work is full

  of clear - cut supernatural stories which Gary Hoppenstand divides into the (occasion-

  ally overlapping) categories of Americanized traditional Victorian ghost stories, criti-

  cal dialogues about the “ evils of human avarice and the dire supernatural consequences

  of greed, ” stories that use the supernatural “ simply as a device to challenge smug

  satisfaction with an empirical understanding of reality, ” ironic twist - of - fate stories

  that employ satire to “ debunk social institutions or base human iniquities, ” proto –

  science fi ction stories built around scientifi c or quasi

  -

  scientifi c methodology, and

  stories of “ family violence ” (226 – 7). For our purposes here, we ’ ll consider two of

  Bierce ’ s family violence ghost stories – one fairly straightforward and the other excep-

  tionally devious.

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  Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

  “ The Middle Toe of the Right Foot ” is an uncomplicated but menacing tale of

  supernatural revenge. In the story, four men visit the old Manton house for the

  ostensible purpose of a duel. The now - abandoned house had been the scene of a

  gruesome murder in which Mr. Manton had cut the throats of his wife and children

  before disappearing – the reader learns almost as an aside that Mrs. Manton had

  been a charming woman, but was missing the middle toe of her right foot. When

  the candle lighting the abandoned house is extinguished, three of the men beat a

  hasty retreat. The next day, the fourth man – whom the reader discovers to be the

  returned Mr. Manton – is found dead at the scene with a look of “ unutte
rable fright ”

  on his face. Leading up to him (but not away) are three sets of footprints – two sets

  made by small children and the third set made by a woman lacking the middle toe

  of her right foot.

  Whereas “ The Middle Toe of the Right Foot ” is an effective but predictable tale

  of supernatural retribution, “ The Death of Halpin Frayser ” is much more devious –

  in large measure due to Bierce ’ s non - linear narrative. At the start of the story, we

  are introduced to the titular character who, camping in the hills of Napa Valley,

  California, has a nightmare in which he speaks the name “ Catherine Larue ” and then

  confronts “ the dead eyes of his own mother, standing white and silent in the garments

  of the grave ” (410). The story then fl ashes back to Halpin ’ s youth, in which he and

  his mother had an extremely – perhaps perversely – close relationship. The narration

  informs us that “ [t]he two were nearly inseparable, and by strangers observing their

  manner were not infrequently mistaken for lovers ” (411). Nonetheless, Halpin left

  his mother to travel west on business and was conscripted into service on a merchant

  vessel which foundered in the South Pacifi c, forcing him to spend six years on an

  island before being rescued and returned to San Francisco. Flashing forward, the story

  returns to Halpin ’ s dream in which his dead mother, “ a body without a soul, ” attacks

  him and Halpin “ dreamed that he was dead ” (412).

  In the fi nal section of this convoluted story, the reader is introduced to two bounty

  hunters who are hunting a man named Branscom who cut his wife ’ s throat and who

  have tracked him to the cemetery in which his wife (who was a widow) is buried.

  What they fi nd in the cemetery is Halpin Frayser, choked to death on the grave of a

  woman named Catherine Larue (the name Halpin speaks at the start of the story).

  Larue, it turns out, is the real name of the murderer they are after and the name of

  his wife was Frayser. Halpin thus is found dead on the grave of his mother and the

  story ends with a “ low, deliberate, soulless laugh ” that rises out of the fog – one “ so

  unhuman, so devilish, that it fi lled those hardy man - hunters with a sense of dread

  unspeakable ” (416 – 17). For the reader, privy to the backstory of Halpin ’ s relationship

  with his mother and his ominous dream, the unavoidable conclusion is that there has

  been a horrible act of supernatural violence. Halpin ’ s mother, the jilted lover, has

  returned from beyond the grave to punish the son who left her and whom she believed

  to be dead.

  While it would be convenient to jump from Bierce ’ s horrifi c tales of domestic

  violence and supernatural revenge to the works of American women that also deal

  The Ghost Story

  417

  with similar themes – although often from very different perspectives – there is still

  one more American male author of ghost stories who needs to be addressed: Henry

  James. Although James is, of course, most famous for his realist works, including The

  Portrait of a Lady , Daisy Miller , and The Wings of the Dove , he was also an accomplished

  practitioner of the ghostly tale and, in addition to the novella - length The Turn of the

  Screw , produced a fi ne body of short supernatural fi ction. In his ghost stories, includ-

  ing “ The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, ” “ The Ghostly Rental, ” and most espe-

  cially “ The Jolly Corner, ” James focuses his gaze not on malevolent specters, but on

  the psychology of his protagonists. In such fi ction “ Gothic elements are used in the

  service of realism and psychology to emphasize the impenetrable depths of human

  emotion and to highlight the strange and often frightening nature of the human

  mind ” ( “ Henry James ” 461).

  “

  The Jolly Corner

  ”

  is generally recognized by critics as among James

  ’

  s fi nest

  supernatural stories and concerns an aesthete and man of leisure named Spencer

  Brydon who confronts the ghost of himself

  –

  the manifestation of an alter ego

  refl ecting how Spencer ’ s life could have developed had he made different choices.

  Spencer, the product of a wealthy New York City family, has spent the past 33

  years in Europe and has only recently returned to the United States to oversee the

  conversion of one of his family ’ s properties into fl ats. Although surprised at how

  much New York City has changed in his absence, he is even more surprised at how

  adept he is at managing the architectural and business details of the construction

  and discovers that he has “ for too many years neglected a real gift ” (James 729).

  This realization initiates a period of refl ection on Spencer ’ s part, one in which he

  obsessively contemplates how his life might have been had he remained in New

  York and become a businessman.

  As Spencer stalks through the Jolly Corner, his family ’ s now - vacant New York

  City mansion, in the dead of night contemplating what might have been, he somehow

  conjures into being that part of himself which he has repudiated and transforms from

  the hunter to the hunted. His sense of not being alone in the house culminates in a

  confrontation with his alter ego, a fi gure like that of Spencer himself, with the excep-

  tion of two missing fi ngers, but a fi gure that Spencer fi nds monstrous and horrifying.

  The vision of this fi gure is also experienced by his intimate friend and love interest,

  Alice Staverton, but she does not share Spencer ’ s aversion, having accepted the ghost

  as an alternative materialization of the man she loves.

  In “ The Jolly Corner, ” James offers the reader the ghost of a man in search of

  himself (721) and a sophisticated rendering of the doppelganger motif common to

  Romantic literature in general and artfully deployed in American literature in stories

  such as Poe ’ s “ William Wilson. ” In keeping with James ’ s general interest in human

  psychology, in “ The Jolly Corner, ” he stages a scene of the self confronting itself – of

  the mind turning inward and attempting to penetrate with both curiosity and horror

  that which it has rejected on the conscious level. As such, what the story reveals is

  something that Irving already knew – that the mind creates ghosts. However, James ’ s

  spin on Irving is that ghosts are not the result of misperception or superstition; rather,

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  Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

  ghosts emerge from within, from the unconscious, and are the inevitable result of the

  mind ’ s in certain respects being a stranger to itself. To be haunted, says James, is the

  unavoidable corollary of being human.

  Ghost Stories by American Women

  Contentions like that of Ringe in his American Gothic that the American supernatu-

  ral tale ceased to play a role in American literature after Hawthorne and dies out

  after the Civil War, or that of Thompson, who claims that American Romanticists

  wrote few actual ghost stories, fail to take into account the fl ourishing of women ’ s

  ghost stories in the latter half of the nineteenth and the fi rst two decades of the

  twentieth centuries. Between roughly the start of the Ci
vil War and the end of the

  1920s, hundreds of uncanny tales were published by women in the periodical press

  and in books. These include stories by familiar fi gures such as Harriet Beecher

  Stowe, Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Lydia Maria

  Child, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Austin, and Elizabeth

  Stuart Phelps, as well as by authors almost wholly unknown to twenty - fi rst century

  readers such as Josephine Dodge Bacon, Madeline Yale Wynne, Gertrude Atherton,

  Alice Brown, Emma Frances Dawson, Alice Cary, Olivia Howard Dunbar, Georgia

  Wood Pangborn, and Harriet Prescott Spofford. According to Salmonson, nine-

  teenth - and twentieth - century supernatural fi ction written in English was predomi-

  nantly produced by women and her survey of supernatural fi ction included in North

  American Victorian magazines concludes that as much as 70 percent of it was com-

  posed by women.

  What attention to the body of supernatural fi ction by American women reveals is

  what Carpenter and Kolmar refer to as a “ distinctive tradition of ghost story writing ”

  (10) organized around recurrent themes foregrounding specifi cally female concerns

  and frequently manifesting a feminist consciousness. Participating in and manipulat-

  ing the nineteenth century

  ’

  s fascination with the supernatural, American female

  authors crafted a coherent body of supernatural literature refl ecting their anxieties and

  desires. Thus, supernatural fi ction became a powerful means for nineteenth - and early

  twentieth - century women to address such “ unladylike ” topics as bad marriages, the

  cultural injunction to have children, and the demands of maternity. In order to

  develop these assertions, I will focus on the ghost stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,

  Edith Wharton, and Ellen Glasgow.

  Although primarily regarded as a New England regionalist and a producer (like

  James, Wharton, and Glasgow) of realist fi ction, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman fashioned

  an accomplished body of Gothic fi ction, much of which addresses the “ social, personal,

  and economic pressures which often silenced or devalued women and their concerns ”

  (Voller). While Freeman ’ s “ Old Woman Magoun ” is devastating in its critique of

 

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