Introduction: Lifting the veil on women's ghost stories -- Part I. Haunted texts haunted houses, and haunted lives. Haunted romance and haunted houses: Rebecca (du Maurier, 1938), The Haunting of Hill House (Jackson, 1959) -- Revengeful ghosts: The Woman in Black (Hill, 1983), Beloved (Morrison, 1987) -- Part II. Possession. True love as possession: Ashputtle (Carter, 1987), Lady Oracle (Atwood, 1976), The Greatcoat (Dunmore, 2012), The Glass Bottle Trick (Hopkinson, 2000) -- The spectral voice: In the Red Kitchen (Roberts, 1990), Affinity (Waters, 1999), Beyond Black (Mantel, 2005) -- Domestic hauntings: The Little Stranger (Waters, 2009), Birdcage Walk (Dunmore, 2017), The Stopped Heart (Myerson, 2016) -- Part III. Traumas of place: Postcolonial hauntings. Postcolonial hauntings and urban Gothic in Singapore and Malaysia: The Serpent's Tooth (Lim, 1982), The Bondmaid (Lim, 1992), Haunting (Lim, 1981), The Black Isle (Tan, 2012), Ponti (Teo, 2018), House of Aunts (Cho, 2014), The Crocodile Fury (Yahp, 1992) -- Traumas of place, travel, hauntology: Novel without a Name (Duong, 1995), Daughters of the House (Roberts, 1992), The Winter Ghosts (Mosse, 2010) -- Visits and visitations: A Visit (Jackson, 1950), Ghost Summer (Due, 2015), Her Fearful Symmetry (Niffenegger, 2009), Hotel World (Smith, 2001) -- Conclusion: Breaking boundaries, leaking truths, pressing issues: Ghost Wall (Moss, 2018) -- Index
Summary:
"In this compelling exploration of the gendered resonances of ghosts, revenants and superstitions for the contemporary woman writer, Gina Wisker asks us to look again at the dark secrets which leak out of haunted spaces. Revelatory in the connections it makes between female-authored Gothic narratives and forgotten crimes, violence, injustices and oppression, it advances arguments about the ghost story's inventiveness by critiquing the terrifying silences of history and the trauma of place." -- Dr Emma Liggins, Reader in English Literature, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK This book offers new insights on socially and culturally engaged Gothic ghost stories by twentieth century and contemporary female writers; including Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Ali Smith, Susan Hill, Catherine Lim, Kate Mosse, Daphne du Maurier, Helen Dunmore, Michele Roberts, and Zheng Cho. Through the ghostly body, possessions and visitations, women's ghost stories expose links between the political and personal, genocides and domestic tyrannies, providing unceasing reminders of violence and violations. Women, like ghosts, have historically lurked in the background, incarcerated in domestic spaces and roles by familial and hereditary norms. They have been disenfranchised legally and politically, sold on dreams of romance and domesticity. Like unquiet spirits that cannot be silenced, women's ghost stories speak the unspeakable, revealing these contradictions and oppressions. Wisker's book demonstrates that in terms of women's ghost stories, there is much to point the spectral finger at and much to speak out about."-- Provided by publisher
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.