American women's ghost stories in the Gilded Age / Dara Downey, University College Dublin, Ireland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Downey, Dara, author.

Series:

Palgrave gothic series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Ghost stories, American--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Ghost stories, American.

Women and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

American literature--Women authors.

United States.

History.

Gothic revival (Literature)--United States.

Gothic revival (Literature).

Women in literature.

Material culture in literature.

Physical Description:

viii, 209 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Summary:

"Dara Downey explores how closely late nineteenth-century American women's ghost stories engaged with objects such as photographs, mourning paraphernalia, wallpaper and humble domestic furniture. Featuring uncanny tales that range from the big city to the small town and the empty prairie, she offers a new perspective on an old genre. Rather than seeing the spectres that stalk the pages of women's writing in Gilded-Age America as mere hallucinations or signs of mental disturbance, Downey examines the unusual motif of haunted houses without ghosts. Rarely appearing as ghosts, the dead women in the tales studied here hide away in the patters of furniture and wallpaper, offering a radical critique of the male gaze that reduced female bodies to alluring objects. Covering murderous nightcaps, haunted boarding houses and spectral china closets, it allows the object matter of the ghost story to, almost literally, come out of the closet"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note:

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. 'Fitted to a Frame': Picturing the Gothic Female Body

2. 'Handled With a Chain': Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' and The Dangers of the Arabesque

3. 'Dancing Like a Bomb Abroad': Dawson's 'An Itinerant House' and the Haunting Cityscape

4. 'Solemnest of Industries': Wilkins' 'The Southwest Chamber' and Memorial Culture

5. 'Space Stares all Around': Peattie's 'The House that Was Not' and the (Un)Haunted Landscape

6. 'My Labor and My Leisure Too': Wynne's 'The Little Room' and Commodity Culture

Afterword.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137323972

1137323973

OCLC:

883869447