Spaces that Haunt: Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story”
Spaces that Haunt: Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story”

Author(s): Anna Kędra-Kardela
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, 19th Century, Philology, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Elizabeth Gaskell; “The Old Nurse’s Story”; haunted house; Gothic space; Victorian Gothic
Summary/Abstract: The author applies Manuel Aguirre’s theory of two zones in horror literature separated by thresholds – “the human world” and the “Otherworld” – to the haunted house in one of Elizabeth Gaskell’s rare excursions into the supernatural, “The Old Nurse’s Story.” There is analysis of the concern voiced about the fate of female victims of men and of the undermining of the idea of home as a safe place by its presentation as anti-home.

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