patriarchal exploitation of women – in the story, Old Woman Magoun allows her
14 - year - old granddaughter Lily to eat poison berries and die rather than to go with
The Ghost Story
419
her unscrupulous father Nelson Barry, who has gambled and lost her in a card game
to another man who presumably will conscript her into sexual slavery – Freeman ’ s
ghost stories such as “ The Lost Ghost ” and “ The Wind in the Rose - Bush ” also empha-
size both violence against children and the demands that children make upon women.
In “ The Lost Ghost, ” the narrator, Mrs. Meserve, recollects a time when she boarded
with two widows, Mrs. Amelia Dennison and her sister, Mrs. Abby Bird. Neither
woman had ever had children, although Mrs. Bird is described as especially maternal.
Having left her coat in the foyer on a cold September evening against the advice of
Mrs. Bird, Mrs. Meserve was interrupted from her comfortable meditation before the
fi re by a knock on her bedroom door that elicited from her a vague feeling of fright.
Opening the door revealed her coat in the arms of a tiny, pitiable fi gure. The child,
Mrs. Meserve states, would only repeat, “ I can ’ t fi nd my mother ” (192). Retrieving
her coat, she found it “ as cold as if it had come off ice ” (193).
Mrs. Meserve ’ s panic summoned Mrs. Bird and Mrs. Dennison who detailed their
own experiences with the apparition, which they had hoped wouldn ’ t disturb Mrs.
Meserve, as well as the tragic history of the house. According to the two women, the
house had previously been owned by the Bisbees, a father and mother with one daugh-
ter. Mr. Bisbees was often away and Mrs. Bisbees was a “ real wicked woman ” who
not only “ never seemed to take much interest in the child ” (199) but forced her to
perform labor inappropriate for a girl of just over 5 years old. Neighbors of the family
were also suspicious that Mrs. Bisbees had taken up with a married man.
Following the disappearance of this married man with a stolen sum of money,
neighbors noticed that Mrs. Bisbees and her daughter were missing as well, but also
remembered that she had mentioned the prospect of taking the child to visit family
in Boston, so no investigation was launched until one of the neighbors recalled hearing
a child crying three nights in a row a week after Mrs. Bisbees had last been seen.
Entering the house at last, neighbors discovered the daughter dead in a back bedroom
on the second fl oor, likely having frozen to death. This tragic tale culminated in the
murder of the wife by the husband once he discovered what she had done.
Although the little ghost was disconcerting to them all, Mrs. Bird, Mrs. Meserve
recalls, was the one most often visited and most powerfully affected by the tiny appa-
rition. Mrs. Meserve recollects her saying, “ ‘ It seems to me sometimes as if I should
die if I can ’ t get that awful little white robe off that child and get her in some clothes
and feed her and stop her looking for her mother ” and remembers that “ she cried
when she said it ” (203). In retrospect, this statement becomes prophecy. One morning,
as Mrs. Meserve and Mrs. Dennison were at breakfast, they viewed Mrs. Bird out the
window walking hand - in - hand with the child who “ nestl[ed] close to her as if she
had found her own mother ” (204). Mrs. Dennison intuited from this that her sister
was dead and indeed the two women found her dead in her bed, “ smiling as if she
was dreaming, and one arm and hand was stretched out as if something had hold of
it; and it couldn ’ t be straightened even at the last ” (204). The story concludes with
Mrs. Meserve reporting that “ the child was never seen again after she went out of the
yard with Mrs. Bird ” (204).
420
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Freeman ’ s “ The Lost Ghost ” celebrates maternity as a woman ’ s natural calling, even
as it disturbingly underlines the sacrifi ces that motherhood demands. According to
Bendixen, “ The Lost Ghost ” is “ not an unqualifi ed plea for mother love ” (Afterword
249). Rather, “ [i]t will be noted that the child demands a human sacrifi ce: a living
woman must become a ghost. Thus in this tale we fi nd a strong sympathy for the
deprived child combined with the suggestion that motherhood may require self
-
sacrifi ce to the point of sacrifi ce of self ” (249). This anxiety, according to Bendixen,
is a recurring theme in uncanny fi ction by American women: “ Underlying much of
the supernatural fi ction written by American women is the fear that the traditional
roles imposed upon women often turn them into ghost - like creatures, not fully alive,
not fully human ” (249 – 50).
The place of women within Anglo culture and the limitations placed upon them
are also a central focus of the supernatural output of Edith Wharton. In stories such
as “ Afterward, ” “ Kerfol, ” “ Pomegranate Seed, ” and “ The Triumph of Life, ” conven-
tions of the Gothic are used to engage with social institutions and to question
entrenched cultural attitudes and expectations regarding gender roles. As Patrick
notes, these ghost stories therefore are not escapes from reality, but rather investiga-
tions of the “ reality beneath the surface of custom, class, and gender roles ” (vii) that
celebrate the courage, compassion, and fi delity of women even as they highlight the
daunting expectations placed upon women and the sacrifi ces of self that marriage
demands.
“ Afterward ” tells the story of a married couple, Edward and Mary Boyne, who
purchase a Tudor estate called Lyng in Dorset, England, because of its remoteness and
rustic charm. As the result of a sudden windfall from a mine, the couple is able to
retire to the English countryside so that Mary may devote herself to painting and
gardening and Ned may produce his “ long - planned book on the ‘ Economic Basis of
Culture ’ ” (60). Ned and Mary are desirous that the country home they are to inhabit
should come with a ghost and express some disappointment that the legend concern-
ing the house is that it is indeed haunted, but that the ghost is never recognized as
a ghost until long after the encounter. Later in the text, Ned disappears and it sub-
sequently becomes clear that he was involved in some dubious business dealings as
concerns the mine, the nature of which Mary was – or kept herself – in ignorance. It
also becomes clear to Mary that a gentleman she directed to her husband just prior
to his disappearance was in fact the ghost of a suicide named Elwell – an individual
Ned had cheated out of a share of the lucrative mine.
Beyond simply criticizing the ethical void at the center of capitalist business trans-
actions, “ Afterward ” also calls into question gender expectations that assume either
that women have little capacity for comprehending business dealings and therefore
should have no interest in them or that genteel women need to be protected from the
unsavoriness of business. Jenni Dyman observes in her study of Wharton ’ s supernatu-
ral fi ction that, “ [i]n keeping with the social code and her husband ’ s desires, Mary
Boyne has developed habits of submissiveness, repre
ssion, and absence of direct com-
munication. … Mary ’ s need for preservation of the status quo is so strong that she
The Ghost Story
421
conveniently ignores or forgets any information that might alter her life ” (42). Mary
Boyne is portrayed as a woman who has been content to benefi t from her husband ’ s
less - than - scrupulous business dealings without ever asking where in fact the money
comes from. By conforming to gender expectations that dictate that she should have
no interest in her husband
’
s economic transactions, she, too, is complicit in the
ruining and suicide of Elwell.
Lastly in this all - too - quick overview of the American ghost story, we turn to the
work of Ellen Glasgow. Like James, Freeman, and Wharton, Glasgow has primarily
been appreciated as an author of realist fi ction, but in supernatural tales such as “ The
Shadowy Third, ” “ The Past, ” “ Whispering Leaves, ” and “ Dare ’ s Gift, ” she produced
well - crafted ghost stories dealing with timely social issues including gender, race,
and class.
Glasgow ’ s “ The Past ” falls into the category of supernatural stories that express the
anxieties of a second wife attempting to satisfy the expectations of a husband with
previously established ideals (a common scenario into the twentieth century). As
Lundie observes,
“
[l]iving as she did in the fi rst wife
’
s house, sleeping with her
husband, and often caring for her children, a second wife was haunted continually by
the memory of the woman she had replaced ” (12). In “ The Past, ” this metaphorical
haunting becomes real as the narrator, Miss Wrenn, the new secretary to Mrs. Van-
derbridge, observes her employer ’ s depression and listlessness. Attempting to ferret
out the cause of her melancholia, Miss Wrenn is shocked when, at dinner with Mr.
and Mrs. Vanderbridge, a third woman enters and seats herself although she is not
acknowledged or spoken to by anyone at the table.
What quickly becomes clear is that this “ Other One ” (to use the terms of the story)
is Mr. Vanderbridge ’ s deceased fi rst wife, whom Mr. Vanderbridge doesn ’ t realize
others can perceive, and her malevolence is slowly killing the second Mrs. Vander-
bridge. The second Mrs. Vanderbridge is only able to vanquish her spectral foe
through an act of renunciation. She discovers evidence of an extra - marital affair on
the part of the fi rst wife but, rather than exposing the fi rst wife ’ s deceit to her husband,
she destroys the evidence and triumphs “ not by resisting, but by accepting; not by
violence, but by gentleness; not by grasping, but by renouncing ” (174). The lesson
here seems to be that one cannot compete with the past but rather must accept it and
move on.
The Waning of the American Ghost Story
Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, ghost stories by both men
and women populated the pages of story papers, periodicals, and gift albums. Works
by men, as we have seen, often raised epistemological and ontological questions about
the abilities of human beings adequately to rationalize their universe, while works by
women frequently dealt with the terrors of the known world – the constraints placed
upon women living in a culture controlled by men. The prevailing critical opinion is
422
Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
that ghost stories in general went into decline in the 1930s and a variety of reasons
have been adduced to explain the ebb in supernatural output, including women ’ s
rights advances that obviated the need to veil cultural critique, the infl uence of Freud-
ian psychoanalysis, and a decline in the respectability of the supernatural tale – to
which one must add the changing confi guration of the literary marketplace, the eco-
nomic impact of the Great Depression, and a changing worldview resulting from the
increasing impact of technology on contemporary American culture. Just as the rise
of the American ghost story was the result of a confl uence of cultural forces, its pur-
ported decline can also be attributed to a combination of factors.
Any wider analysis of American supernatural fi ction, however, would need to pay
careful attention to the marked end - of - the - century resurgence of uncanny themes in
the works of authors including Stephen King, Peter Straub, Joyce Carol Oates,
Cynthia Ozick, and Anne Rice, and most especially in work by ethnic American
women, including Toni Morrison, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich,
Christina Garcia, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Sandra Cisneros, and Nora Okja
Keller, who reclaim the subversive potential of the ghost story to contest the ways in
which minorities are “ ghosted, ” in much the same way that their nineteenth - century
forebears did to articulate anxieties related to the place of women in general in the
US. Our ghosts, it seems – although they are put to work doing different jobs in
different times and places – are never far from our doorstep.
References and Further Reading
Baym , Nina , ed. The Norton Anthology of American
Carpenter , Lynette , and Wendy K. Kolmar .
Literature , Vol. B . 7th edn. New York : W. W.
“ Introduction . ” Haunting the House of Fiction:
Norton , 2007 .
Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American
Bendixen , Alfred . “ Afterword . ” The Wind in the
Women . Eds. Lynette Carpenter and Wendy K.
Rose - Bush by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman .
Kolmar . Knoxville : University of Tennessee
Chicago
:
Academy of Chicago Publishers
.
Press , 1991 . 1 – 25 .
239 – 58 .
Carroll ,
Bret
E.
Spiritualism in Antebellum
— — — . “ Introduction . ” Haunted Women: The Best
America .
Bloomington :
Indiana
University
Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers .
Press , 1997 .
Ed. Alfred Bendixen . New York : Ungar , 1985 .
Castle , Terry . The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth -
1 – 12 .
Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny .
Bierce , Ambrose . “ The Death of Halpin Frayser . ”
New York : Oxford University Press , 1995 .
American Gothic: An Anthology 1787 – 1916 . Ed.
Cavaliero , Glen . The Supernatural and English
Charles L. Crow . Malden, MA : Blackwell , 1999 .
Fiction . Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1995 .
408 – 17 .
Coultrap - McQuin , Susan . Doing Literary Business:
— — — . “ The Middle Toe of the Right Foot . ” The
American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century .
Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce . Ed. Ernest
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press ,
Jerome Hopkins . Lincoln, NE : Bison Books ,
1990 .
1984 . 160 – 6 .
Cox , Michael , and R. A. Gilbert . “ Introduction . ”
Braude , Ann . Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and
V
ictorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology . Eds.
Women ’ s Rights in Nineteenth - Century America .
Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert . Oxford : Oxford
Boston : Beacon Press , 1989 .
University Press , 1991 . ix – xx .
The Ghost Story
423
Degler , Carl N. At Odds: Women and the Family in
— — — . “ The Tale of the German Student . ”
America from the Revolution to the Present . Oxford :
Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old and New .
Oxford University Press , 1980 .
Ed. Marvin Kaye . Garden City, NY : Double-
Dyman , Jenni . Lurking Feminism: The Ghost Stories
day , 1981 . 147 – 51 .
of Edith Wharton . New York : Peter Lang , 1996 .
James , Henry . “ The Jolly Corner . ” Henry James:
Edel , Leon , ed. Henry James: Stories of the Supernatu-
Stories of the Supernatural . Ed. Leon Edel . New
ral . New York : Taplinger , 1949 .
York : Taplinger , 1949 . 721 – 62 .
Freeman , Mary E. Wilkins . “ The Lost Ghost . ”
Kelley , Mary . Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary
Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by
Domesticity in Nineteenth
- Century America . New
American Women Writers . Ed. Alfred Bendixen .
York : Oxford University Press , 1984 .
New York : Ungar , 1985 . 186 – 204 .
Kennedy , J. Gerald . “ Phantasms of Death in Poe ’ s
— — — . “ Old Woman Magoun . ” American Gothic:
Fiction
.
”
In Kerr, Crowley, and Crow,
The
An Anthology 1787 – 1916 . Ed. Charles L. Crow .
Haunted Dusk , 39 – 65 .
Malden, MA : Blackwell , 1999 . 256 – 66 .
Kerr , Howard . Mediums, Spirit - Rappers, and Roaring
Geary , Robert F. The Supernatural in Gothic Fiction:
Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature,
Horror, Belief, and Literary Change . Lewiston,
1850 – 1900 . Urbana : University of Illinois
NY : Edwin Mellon Press , 1992 .
Press , 1972 .
Glasgow , Ellen . “ The Past . ” Restless Spirits: Ghost
Kerr , Howard , John W. Crowley , and Charles L.
Stories by American Women 1872
–
1926 . Ed.
Crow .
“ Introduction . ”
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 91