The Act of Ghostedness in the Ghost Stories of Victorian Female Authors
The Act of Ghostedness in the Ghost Stories of Victorian Female Authors

Summary/Abstract: The vast popularity of ghost stories in the mid-nineteenth century and their pervasiveness in the literary periodicals of the era testify to how much Victorian female authors invested in the concept of fear and terror to addresses the social subversion of women. The ghost story narratives that they used enabled them to push the boundaries of supernatural fiction to enlighten the world about complex issues of Victorian womanhood and social oppression. The cultural and social biases against women were the driving force behind the Victorian authors to confront critical issues such as the socially imposed domesticity and the fully disabled female agency. “Self-ghosting” is a key factor in developing the interpretative theory I am using to understand how and why a desperate act perceived as uncanny measure is, in fact, ideal. It helps them meliorate their problems and endure their plight. Therefore, I coin the term “the act of ghostedness” to illustrate a voluntary act their heroines adopt to move to a supernatural world where they subsist in a quasi-ghost existence. In so doing, they are able to find the security and the satisfaction the physical world failed to provide them. This essay endeavors to demonstrate that the ghost stories of Anne Hoyt, Rose Terry Cook,and Alice Cary secured a place in the broad spectrum of feminism and gender studies when their narratives divulged the social subversion that long inured women to a ghost-like anonymity.

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