The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 17 (2006)

Framing the Supernatural:
Henry James and F. Marion Crawford

Taeko KITAHARA*

INTRODUCTION
Although Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) has not been a
prominent ﬁgure in recent American literary history, in his own time hewas considered a strong rival of Henry James.1 Actually, as a writer,
Crawford surpassed James in terms of sales and popularity.2 Both Jamesand Crawford devoted signiﬁcant attention to two genres of ﬁction—
tales with “international” settings and stories of the “supernatural.”
Between them, the two authors created various kinds of ghost stories.
They addressed similar themes and motifs, such as revenge, vampirism,
ghostly encounters, and the uncertainty of the being of the ghosts, butthey treated such subjects in different ways. Curiously, both authors
often used the frame device. While the frame device is surely employedin other ghostly stories,3 the frequency of the device in these two authors’
works makes one wonder why they repeatedly used such a device andwhat it represents. This paper will, then, consider the function and meaning of this device by comparing these two authors’ major supernatural
stories. Two pairs of stories with different themes will be discussed. One
pair, “The Friends of the Friends” (James) and “For the Blood is the Life”(Crawford), deals with supernatural love—the love between a vampire
Copyright © 2006 Taeko Kitahara. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
*Associate Professor, Toyo University

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and a human being. The other pair, “The Turn of the Screw” (James) and“The Upper Berth” (Crawford), depicts visitations by ghosts.
These stories subtly raise diverse gender-related issues, such as female
sexuality, female subjectivity, and masculinity. As the narrative structureof each of these stories is inextricably intertwined with its contents, my
textual analysis will focus on gender as well as on the frame device.
Within the vast Jamesian scholarship, studies comparing him with popular authors certainly exist. Nevertheless, only a few scholars have studied the relations between James and Crawford.4 Such a comparison canbe expected to shed new light—not only on the reading of classic supernatural texts, but also on a dusky corner of American literary scholarship.
I SUPERNATURAL LOVEThe vampire is one of most important elements in the gothic tradition.
Both James and Crawford use vampires in their works. However, while
Crawford takes advantage of the conventional vampire image in “For the
Blood is the Life,” James invents an original version of “psychic vampirism”5 in “The Friends of the Friends.” Both stories delineate a love
between a female vampire and a human man, love being deﬁned here as
the emotional urge to seek compassion and understanding, which often
appears as eros. Its mode is not limited to “normal” heterosexuality withreproduction as its main purpose. The stories take the form of a framed
narrative; the frame introduces the inside story, while the inset offers thelove episode.
“The Friends of the Friends” (1896)6 therefore consists of two parts:
the frame and the inside story, which takes the form of a lady’s unpublished journal. In the frame story, the male narrator introduces the existence of a fascinating but unpublishable journal. The lady’s journal isthen presented as is, without any interference from the male narrator/
frame. The lady’s diary reveals her traumatic experience of losing her
ﬁancé to a female friend. The extraordinary dimension of her experienceis that her ﬁancé and her friend (all the characters are nameless) share aunique ability: both can communicate with the dead. The friend is widowed and dies in the middle of the story, but she then appears to the
ﬁancé, as a psychic vampire. This leads to the cancellation of the couple’s engagement and eventually the man’s premature death.

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In his “For the Blood is the Life” (1905) Crawford presents two characters—a nameless ﬁrst-person narrator and his painter friend, Holger—
in the introductory frame. They chat about a mysterious grave observablefrom the top of a historic tower in southern Italy. After Holger’s actual
visit to the grave, the narrator tells him an anecdote about the grave’s
history, smoothly shifting to the inside story. This inset tells how a youngman, Angelo, becomes possessed by a dead gypsy girl, Cristina, whocomes back to life as a vampire. After the exorcism scene, the narrative
moves back to the frame, in which the narrator and Holger muse overthe fate of the vampire.
Both stories thus treat supernatural phenomena. The credibility ofeach depends heavily on the narration. As T. J. Lustig suggests, the introductory frame device is usually employed to make the main narrative
ambiguous “by drawing attention to its unveriﬁability.”7 This is certainly
true of “The Friends of the Friends.” The male narrator tells his friendthat he hesitates to publish the journal because the action might be judged“indiscreet” by the world.8 Besides, even though the frame suggests thelady’s original intention to publicize her account (considering the anonymity of those involved), the subjective nature of the document (aprivate diary) itself calls into question the reliability of the narrative.
Furthermore, a careful reading of the inside text makes its real-world
readers wonder if the female narrator suffers from paranoia, being sovery jealous of the possible union of the two friends with a similar “peculiar power” (361). This is reinforced by the ﬁancé’s rejection of her suspicion that he is unfaithful to her as groundless. He even considers thisfear “a mystery of [her] producing” and “a puzzle of [her] consciousness, not of his” (358). There is no third person to conﬁrm the lady’s
account, either. With such a doubtful inside narration, then, the frame
doubly works to undercut the reliability of the account of the supernatural.
On the other hand, the function of the frame in “For the Blood is theLife” seems to be to support the vampiric legend, though it does indeed
make the inside story ambiguous. The ﬁrst frame introduces a character
who repeats the uncanny experience of Crawford’s nameless narrator.
Like the narrator, Holger also notices “the outline of the body” on top of
the grave so long as any moonlight shines upon it.9 When he visits thegrave, he ﬁnds nothing, but still he is convinced that something is behindhim. Then, the owl-like cry of the “Thing” is heard. This experience

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mirrors the narrator’s earlier experience. Furthermore, in the text, thenarrator’s description of Holger as a painter with keen eyesight attests
that what the narrator has seen is not an illusion.
In the mid-frame, an interlude that marks a slight difference fromJames’ story, Crawford describes an exchange between the two men, but
he adds a touch of the supernatural to the realistic mode of narrative.
That is, Crawford has the narrator mention the “Thing” in the light of
the high moon—“the outline of the Thing on the mound was clearer toour eyes than before” (176–77).
In the last frame, Holger suggestively asks: “And that poor thing’s
body is there still, I suppose . . . Is it quite dead yet, I wonder?” (189)The narrator himself wonders, as well, but he concludes that he “shouldhardly care to see it, even in broad daylight,” and is unsure whether it isdead or alive (189). Here, one can observe that even the narrator, who is
supposed to be “a man of sense” (166), fears something supernatural.
Interestingly, the story’s circular structure does not necessarily guarantee the narrative return to the world in its natural order; rather, it pushes
the tale toward the supernatural.
While James’ frame makes the inside story ambiguous, Crawford’s
seems to create a neutral ground, which functions to establish the supernatural world. It seems, then, that the frame has a purpose other thanmerely to make the inside story ambiguous. Namely, what the frame
questions is not just the existence of supernatural beings (such as vampires) per se; it suggests something else. The frame suspends judgementon the possibility of a vampire, which surely is an uncertain being, something which is not supposed to be talked of openly. What, then, does thevampire symbolize? What is the unnameable or the cause of horror?
It is well-known that vampires are associated with female sexuality
and with sexual appetite, as one is reminded by the word “vamp.”10 In
both stories discussed here, the vampires implicitly represent excessive
female eros. It is worth noting that they are clearly not male but “female”
vampires from the beginning. In standard vampiric narratives, as
Douglas Robillard suggests, the women characters turn into vampires
after the assault of male vampires.11 (The most famous case is Dracula.)
In both of these stories, however, it is male characters who are victims.
Despite their gender, the female vampires are not subordinate; instead,they dominate the narrative situation and the hapless men.
“The Friends of the Friends” delineates how the ﬁancé is distracted by
the dead widow. According to the female narrator, after the widow’s

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visitation, he is psychologically affected by the vampire; the narrator
notices changes such as “every drop” in his voice and “every absence”
in his eyes (363). She even asserts: “You love her as you’ve never loved,
and, passion for passion, she gives it straight back! She rules you, sheholds you, she has you all!” (363) The early death of the ﬁancé shows
the monstrous power of a psychic vampirism. The narrator explains it as“the result of . . . an unquenchable desire” and “a response to an irresistible call” (364).
What needs to be remembered is that the widow decides to go and see
the ﬁancé herself, especially when she is dead, because he can communicate with the dead. Judging from her keen interest in the ﬁancé’s photo,she is attracted to him. The vampiric transformation she uses to satisfy
her desire is convenient for her, because she can ignore the social conventions; a lady can go out neither late at night nor to a bachelor’s houseby herself, but a deceased one can ignore such rules. She does both.
Ironically the narrator is used as a medium for the bodily contact thatkindles their erotic desire; by kissing the same spot of the narrator’s face,
they exchange their kiss. Except for this kiss and an exchange of glancesat the man’s house, there is no other contact between the widow and theman; no transfusion of blood between the vampire and the victim occurs.
Vampirism here is completely psychic but its effects are as overpowering as the regular bloody vampirism. The widow physically and emotionally controls the seduced man, taking over the position of his
betrothed. Considering her unconventionality, independence, and sexually liberated manner, the vampire is closer to a “New Woman” than a
Victorian lady. Her assertiveness and voluptuousness must have appeared threatening to the men within the established system.
In “For the Blood is the Life,” a male victim, Angelo, similarly comesunder vampiric possession. The gypsy Cristina, who in life adored himfrom afar, continues in her passion after death. As a vampire, she has“him fast now and he [can] not escape her” (183). It is Cristina who
approaches broken-hearted, penniless Angelo. He eventually responds
to her love, out of the loneliness and sexual frustration caused by his cancelled engagement with a rich girl. Her attitude toward the man is at ﬁrst
timid, but she grows bold enough to wind her arm around him and kisshis throat. To the original readers of the story, her sexual initiative probably makes her more masculine than the passive, weak Angelo.
Furthermore, Crawford describes in realistic detail a blood-sucking
scene that suggests love-making and shows the reversal of gender roles

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as they were socially accepted at the time; in love relationships particularly, men were supposed to take the initiative, while women were
expected to be passive. When Cristina sucks blood from Angelo’s throat,
Crawford writes:
He could not tell whether her breath was as hot as ﬁre or as cold as ice. He
could not tell whether her red lips burned his or froze them, or whether her
ﬁve ﬁngers on his wrists seared scorching scars or bit his ﬂesh like frost. He
could not tell whether he was awake or asleep, . . . but he knew that she loved
him. . . .
When the moon rose high that night the shadow of that Thing was not alone
down there upon the mound (179–80).

Here, Cristina’s position is above Angelo, suggesting her masculine
aggressiveness. Without resisting, Angelo remains submissive, all suggesting his feminization. The scene even arouses the image of vampiricrape. Angelo pays nightly visits to Cristina, and despite his moral andreligious revulsion in the morning, when he regrets his intercourse withthe heathen gypsy, he ﬁnds ecstasy in the “terror and delight” (181) of
his unearthly union.
With her aggressiveness and avidity, Cristina stands as a powerful sexual subject. Searching in vain for a doctor for Angelo’s dying father, she
encounters the thieves hiding a treasure stolen from Angelo’s house.
They kill the girl to silence her forever. Her unappeasable desire forlife/love brings her back to this world and gives her immortality as a
vampire. As for this point, Robillard writes that Cristina’s “desires . . .
are transformed . . . into an implacable sexual urge beyond the simple
human scope.”12 Yet, her thirst—emotional and physical—is never satisﬁed; as she drinks the blood, she needs more, for the blood is the life, as
its title suggests. This implies the bottomless sexual desire of a female
vampire as well as the inescapable destiny of a male victim; his vitality(blood) and his virility (semen) will be absorbed forever. Therefore,
Cristina is a tremendous threat to normal manhood.
Although for both James and Crawford “love” between female vampires and their male victims certainly exists, the relationship appears
abhorrent both to them and to other characters. This is because the malecharacters are practicing love outside the norm. That is, normal love wasmeant only for reproduction by way of phallic penetration into the vagina; the norm was strongly tied to the Victorian domestic ideology so as
to strengthen patriarchal system. Other modes of love such as homo-

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sexuality were publicly prohibited and detested. Copulation with a vampire belongs to such an anomalous category of eros. It is not surprising,then, that the jealous female narrator in “The Friends of the Friends”
curses the situation and says: “How can you hide it . . . when you’re sickalmost to death with the joy of what she gives you?” (363) Here she refers
to something “awfully private” (362) between the man and the deadwoman, hinting at a sexual relationship. After this remark, the narrator
gives up vying for the man with her supernatural rival.
Antonio, the narrator’s attendant in “For the Blood is the Life,” similarly calls Angelo and Cristina’s intercourse “an evil thing” (184).
Noticeably, only Cristina’s vampiric, hungry image is stressed in the
exorcist’s eyes; he never thinks of her “love” for Angelo:
The ﬂickering light of the lantern played upon another face that looked up
from the feast upon two deep, dead eyes that saw in spite of death, parted lips
redder than life itself and two gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop
(186–87).

Cristina’s end follows the convention of vampiric narratives; she is killed
by having a stake driven through her heart and is buried. The narrative
leaves open the possibility that she may live on.
Besides being a vampire, Cristina’s evilness is enhanced by her gypsy
attributes. To the nineteenth-century European/American readers, beinga gypsy generally connoted the exoticism associated with the East, alicentious alluring sexuality like that of “Carmen,” created originally by
Prosper Merimée, and a non-Christian heathen status. (Such conventional images of the gypsy were also circulated in literature of the period by other writers like the Brontës and George Eliot.) Accordingly,
located literally far from Western civilization, she is “other” to its system. Her promiscuity and her devilish nature exhibit both her vampirism
and her gypsy blood. Furthermore, her sex is another factor to dread. For
human beings, the transfusion of blood by a vampire is a particular sourceof horror. In Cristina’s case, her becoming pregnant—giving Angelo a
hybrid child—must be the unspoken but the most feared possibility. By
exchanging blood/semen, Angelo is taken in by her otherness. In otherwords, the border between the system’s inside and outside can be fusedby this new type of miscegenation. Such chaos must be prevented. Thus
two patriarchal protectors, a religious authority (priest) and a physically strong man (miner), combat the evil female sexuality and succeed in
restoring the social/religious/moral order.

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Sexuality is usually repressed in most Victorian ﬁction. The analysisof these stories, however, paradoxically illustrates its weight. Yet,stressing female sexuality is dangerous, for it means the subversion ofgender balance and the collapse of patriarchy. The message of the insets
therefore is that supernatural love especially with the strong female sexual autonomy is forbidden and unthinkable. The ﬁancé dies in “TheFriends of the Friends,” while Angelo of “For the Blood is the Life”
wastes away and is only saved by priestly intervention. As these examples show, the strong female sexuality incarnated in the vampire, wholiterally consumes masculinity and vitality, is something to be dreaded.
Such a cause of horror needs to be controlled and contained. James’
frame literally serves this purpose. By using a male narrator, James in
the frame questions the credibility of the inside story. He succeeds ininvalidating the female narrator’s version and in rejecting the possibilityof such a horror. Suggestively, Lustig refers to this point, writing that“the formal, masculine framing of the female voice provides insights into
James’s attempts to restrict the explosive force of the ghostly.”13
Crawford, on the other hand, seems to avoid giving a clear opinion in
the frame; by taking an ambivalent stance toward the inset, he shows his
reluctance to declare what normative female sexuality should be. The
narrator’s ﬁnal words—that he hardly cares to think about the vampire—
illustrate Crawford’s evasive attitude toward female sexuality itself. This
seems to suggest his strong fear of female sexual power as well as his
deep misogyny. Still, by setting a less restrictive frame than James,
Crawford himself brings to light the unappeasable force of female sexuality.
II

A VISITATION BY GHOSTS

In ghost stories, representations of the ghosts vary. Some are vague
and silent; some are invisible; others make a sound—talking or evenscreaming. In the following cases, James and Crawford portray ghosts
who dare to challenge human beings. In other words, from their own
point of view, the human characters experience the horror of being not
only visited but also attacked by unearthly existences. James presents
human-like ghosts—that of a valet and a governess—in “The Turn of theScrew” (1898). These ghosts aim to take the children Miles and Floraaway to where they themselves reside. To protect her pupils, the newlyhired young governess is obliged to confront the ghosts. In “The Upper

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Berth” (1885), Crawford’s ghost—probably a male passenger drowned
at sea—is very different from James’ visionary beings, as one can touchand smell it; it has physicality, and it even ﬁghts back against these characters who try to disturb the ghost. Like the vampire stories, though, thesestories are framed in a similar way. The frames introduce the narratorsand their audiences, who anticipate hearing the ghost stories; the insets
offer the details of the ghostly visitations.
“The Upper Berth” has the structure of a story within a story. Thistime, however, Crawford does not return to the frame at the end, as hedoes in “For the Blood is the Life.” In this frame, a nameless narrator
introduces ﬁve bored club members gathered together. One of them,
Brisbane, begins to tell a story of seeing a ghost, which instantly awakes
the others. The original narrator is thus replaced by Brisbane, and theframe naturally ends. The inset begins as Brisbane recalls, in the ﬁrstperson, his trans-Atlantic voyage on the Kamtchatka. He tells of his
encounter with a ghost in his cabin and his actual ﬁght with the specter,which escapes by hurting him. The inside story ends with the narrator’s
wrap-up—the room is blocked up and Brisbane expresses a strong wish
never again to sail on the Kamtchatka.
The structure of “The Turn of the Screw” is very similar to James’ earlier “The Friends of the Friends.” Actually, as Leon Edel points out, thelatter story “foreshadows” “The Turn of the Screw.”14 This famous ghost
story has a complicated frame where two male narrators appear; one ofthem, Douglas, begins to unfold a ghost story for the ﬁrst time in forty
years. It is told to several guests, who gather round the ﬁre in an old houseon Christmas Eve.
There is a little narrative procrastination devoted to obtaining a document containing the ghost story, which is itself kept in the distance.
Twenty years ago, Douglas was entrusted with the manuscript by thewriter, a governess, before her death. Before his talk, he ﬁrst provides a“prologue” in an attempt to help his audience better to understand thesituation of the story—the “general uncanny ugliness and horror andpain.”15 Then, the other ﬁrst-person narrator, nameless, makes it clearthat the subsequent narrative is “an exact transcript of [his] own mademuch later,” for Douglas entrusted the document to his good friend
before his death (638). The narrative, thus, has been passed on to the present through the hands of three different people.
Then, like the lady’s journal in “The Friends of the Friends,” the governess’ account is presented as it is, as the inside story. In it, the nameless

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governess, about thirty years old, recalls her experience at Bly at the ageof twenty. The story closes with the end of the governess’ narrative.
Here, the frame story again functions to undermine the credibility of
the woman’s narrative. Unlike the case of “The Friends of the Friends,”
however, the nameless narrator in the frame does not directly question
the governess’ account. Yet, as the other guests obviously hint, Douglas’
infatuation with the woman lessens his credentials for describing thegoverness objectively: he calls her “awfully clever and nice” and “worthy of any [position] whatever” (637). His apparent attempt to vouch forthe truth of the governess’ account serves, ironically, to cast doubt on its
veracity.16 The “acute” main narrator also refrains from evaluating
Douglas’ comments, again guaranteeing nothing (637). Overall, then,the frame works to question the validity of the ghostly narrative.
The frame story of “The Upper Berth” does not have the same effectas that of “The Turn of the Screw.” At ﬁrst glance, its aim seems to be
to present Brisbane as a reliable narrator. As the other characters refer
to “a man of his intelligence”17 and can hardly believe that he claims tohave seen a ghost, Brisbane is characterized as a reasonable man. Also,
the frame shows that, with his many voyages, Brisbane is qualiﬁed totell of his nautical experience; he would not have been deluded by any
event on a ship. Having taken such introductory steps, Crawford moves
on to the inside story of the otherworldly. The inset itself reveals a succession of uncanny events, which have beset this “reliable” narrator. Thisis supported by the concrete evidence of Brisbane’s broken arm after aﬁght. The ghostly story, then, sounds convincing. Nonetheless, the narrator ﬁnishes his narrative in an open-ended manner, refraining from giving any ﬁnal judgement on his experience. Such a noncommittal attitude
shakes the validity of his narrative. In other words, the frame, seemingly
set up to prove the narrator’s qualiﬁcations, on the contrary contributes
to making the inside story ambiguous at the end.
As has been seen, the frames play a signiﬁcant role in creating the“ambiguity” of the two stories. The frames seem to represent the voiceof reason, or that of society, in nullifying the irrational occurrences.
What, then, is rejected by the frame? Is it the ghost itself?
In “The Turn of the Screw,” the ghosts are harmful to human beings.
The ghosts gradually affect the mental condition of the governess.
Although she is high-spirited when she comes to Bly, she becomes nervous and excitable after encountering the two apparitions. They do notphysically attack the governess, as in the case of Brisbane, but they over-

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whelm her with their unﬂinching glances and their very presence. Peter
Quint, the valet, stares at her unreservedly. In their ﬁrst encounter outside the house, “he never [takes] his eyes” from her until he disappears(654). Thereafter, inside the house as well, Quint ﬁxes her with his eyes.
James writes that they “[face] each other in [their] common intensity”(683). With some kind of dignity, Miss Jessel also stuns her successor;
her indifferent, detached manner makes the governess feel that she is“the intruder” (705).
The ghosts also have “evil” effects on the pupils. Flora begins to use“horrible” language (727), while Miles’ conduct at school and homebecomes ungentlemanly. Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, informs the governess that Quint and Miles were “perpetually together” and that Flora“was with the woman” (677–78). The governess thinks the pair of Quint
and Miss Jessel put “the evil” into her pupils (693), initiating them into
wrongdoing. Furthermore, the children continue to have secret communion with the ghosts, as they steal out on various occasions. Wherever
the governess ﬁnds the missing pupils, she also ﬁnds one of the apparitions.
As for Crawford’s story, his ghost does not hesitate to attack humanbeings. In the ﬁrst meeting, responding to Brisbane’s pull, it “[springs]
violently forward against [him], a clammy, oozy mass,” which seems tohim “heavy and wet, yet endowed with a sort of supernatural strength”(213–14). It dashes out of his sight. On the next occasion, Brisbane’s
grappling scene, the narrator reports:
I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me backand nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse’s arms about my neck, the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud and fell, and left
my hold (226–27).

Crawford thus shows the literally destroying strength and violent physicality of the ghost.
Overall, the human beings lose to the ghosts. The governess fails toprevent the spectral evil inﬂuence; Flora grows to shun her and Miles’
heart stops in her arms; Brisbane is hurt in body and soul. Both stories
seem to suggest the overwhelming, destructive power of the supernatural. That is what “common sense” cannot acknowledge, so the authors
need to utilize the frame’s ambiguous nature. Simultaneously, it can besaid that James and Crawford wish to express, in the shape of ghosts,
some kind of monstrosity in the human mind—that is, the sexual drive

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and its persistence in a homosocial world. James’ ghosts even suggest
the homoerotic possibility in the story.
“The Turn of the Screw” seems to be ﬁlled with diverse examples ofsexuality. The most fearful must be the female subjectivity exerting
sexual command. In the repressed and prudish Victorian social environment, it was considered unthinkable that women had sexual desires. To
express such desires openly must be nothing but deviant. Still, one canassume that “The Turn of the Screw” treats the governess’ desire. As
many critics have said, following Edmund Wilson, the ghosts can beinterpreted as the product of the female narrator’s imagination.18 The
young woman’s sexual frustration in a lonely country house produces
her hallucination of Peter Quint; the double of her adored but unreachable employer. She is also jealous of Miss Jessel, because her youth andgood looks attracted the master’s attention. In addition, Miss Jessel’saffair with Quint, a pseudo-master, must stir her jealousy.
In a sense, the ghost of Miss Jessel can be the governess’ self-projection, as Millicent Bell suggests19; she is another wretched, middle-class,single woman, possibly like the governess wishing to marry her glamorous Harley Street master. Miss Jessel’s ghost foreshadows the governess’ difﬁcult situation at Bly. It is worth noting that Quint’s features
are distinct, while Miss Jessel is vaguely portrayed20; the governess’ fearof facing her alter ego—her own reality—seems to create the vision of afaceless ghost. The fact that only the governess actually sees the ghosts
in the story also supports the hallucination thesis; Mrs. Grose, who lacks
imaginative power and who stands for the rational viewpoint, sees noghosts at all.
One can also argue that James writes about a further, more threatening sexuality in “The Turn of the Screw.”21 One example is the governess’ immoderate attachment to her male pupil.22 Interestingly, in thechild-sized suits tailored in the same style as his uncle’s, Miles looks andbehaves like the master, a possible surrogate lover. After a certain point,
the conversation between the governess and the pupil grows to take ona tint of that between lovers. The discussion of Miles’ returning to school
even sounds like a grown-up gentleman deserting his girlfriend, wanting
to “see more life” and “[his] own sort” (701–02). He calls his governess“my dear” with familiarity (700); he suggestively says something disturbing for the governess—that he is leaving Bly because he may not“love” her (702). The governess’ imagining a honeymoon scene withMiles is the climax of her wild fancies:

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We continued silent while the maid was with us—as silent, it whimsicallyoccurred to me, as some young couple who, on their wedding-journey, at theinn, feel shy in the presence of the waiter. He turned round only when thewaiter had left us. ‘Well—so we’re alone!’ (732)Also, the love between Quint and Miss Jessel belongs to the forbidden
category, because the lady not only crosses the limits of class with a manof lower rank, but breaks social convention by having premarital intercourse. No wonder the implicit consequence is her death in childbirth, a
traditional punishment in ﬁction. The relationships, between Quint andMiles and that between Miss Jessel and Flora, are also dubious. Bellacutely suggests this point by writing that sexual “love between adultand child is a violation of taboo even more outrageous than love between
the classes,”23 as it could be pedophiliac or homosexual. Similarly, considering Miles’ dismissal from school on the grounds that he said problematic things to his peers, it is possible that he is under Quint’s
homosexual inﬂuence. These literally deviating states of love are obviously taboo in the genteel tradition; they must, therefore, be contained.
In the Victorian period, transatlantically, the social code and the lawsought to regulate and even prohibit such anomalies, as the Wilde trial
suggests. Here in the story, the frame contains them within the inside
narrative.
Compared to “The Turn of the Screw,” “The Upper Berth” appears tolack such sexual dimensions. One can read it as a simple story of a madpassenger missing from the upper berth, whom other ship members consider to have drowned himself. Crawford delineates the specter’s strong
attachment to life by his repeated return to the upper berth and by his
expelling the passengers from his position. By so doing, he seems to seeka liaison with the living world.
Curiously, the entire narrative suggests that the male homosocial environment is truly desirable for men. There, no female character appears.
“For the Blood is the Life” at least presents some woman villagers
besides Cristina, yet “The Upper Berth” delineates a totally homosocialworld. In the frame story, Brisbane, his companions, and the butler are
all men. They create a men’s club atmosphere, ﬁlled with smoke, liquor,
and ennui. Their ability to relax and be comfortable with the attentive
butler suggests that the members like to linger there. Besides, as theghostly topic instantly dispels the listless atmosphere, these men arestrongly interested in the subject. Such a change suggests their nostalgia
for the boyhood adventure; there, they enjoyed the same kind of thrill

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and excitement as the ghost stories, which girls never shared. In otherwords, the frame subtly exposes these grown-ups’ unconscious yearning for boys’ exclusive solidarity.
Although the inset depicts a passenger ship’s voyage, on which one
would expect at least some female passengers, again a homosocial worldis presented. All the characters are men—Brisbane, the captain, a surgeon, stewards, ofﬁcers, and a ship’s carpenter. That is, Crawford presents a macho world of seamen, one that should satisfy the cult of
manhood. As a passenger, the ghost elects this place, not its home, tocome back to. By excluding women, the men on ship can be themselves
and wholly enjoy their bonding.
From the living passengers’ viewpoint, the above-mentioned bodily
encounter with the male ghost evokes shudders in two senses. Firstly,
they shake with fear for the possible deaths brought by the specter.
Secondly, they shiver with a new sensation at being touched by the ghost
in a violent manner. This contact could arouse masochism or kindlesame-sex desire. Brisbane is vaguely aware of these prohibited possibilities, for he later comes to avoid confronting the ghost, like otherseamen who hesitate to face it. Therefore, the story shows how ship
members vacillate between an inclination for homosocial comfort and a
repressed fear of the homoerotic.
Thus, in “The Upper Berth,” Crawford tacitly writes about the hidden
masculine desire to seek and fear a homosocial world by depicting aghost who refuses to give up its continuity with such a world. The seemingly asexual story suggests the decadence peculiar to the late nineteenth
century. The taboo subject here proposed by Crawford again must be
blocked up, just like the cabin with the “upper berth.” The frame wellserves for this purpose, though it surely gives an eerie impression to thereaders along with its open ending.
CONCLUSION
In the framed ghost stories, both James and Crawford write aboutsomething that goes beyond what is ﬁctionally permissible—somethingthat breaks the ethical code of ﬁction of their time. The frames are necessary not only to regulate but also to explore such subjects; as has been
discussed, though, the real horrors of the stories are never explicitly identiﬁed. The ambiguity of the ghostly existence matches the two authors’unmentionable suggestions regarding gender/sexuality. Still, the narra-

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tive vagueness produced by the frame stories has the effect of engendering fear of what is told in the inset—not merely ghosts but what humanbeings seek at the subliminal level. At the same time, it is the frame thatat least partially nulliﬁes the inside message. In other words, without theframe device, these authors could neither experiment with the supernatural genre nor possibly explore deeper, prohibited issues related to gender and sexuality.
Considering gender, it must be mentioned that male narrators dominate all the examined frame stories. That is, the frames questioning thevalidity of the insets are equivalent to the masculine voice. This naturally makes clear who makes the various social standards that inﬂuence
the sales of ﬁction as well as women’s social position. Both James andCrawford seem to be keenly aware of the patriarchal power to strictly
control sexuality in the Victorian society. Besides, both the authors themselves belong to the dominant gender, which explains the masculine
dynamism working in their narratives. Comparing James and Crawford,
however, the latter seems to show a more misogynistic tendency, as hedoes not give voice to any female characters at all. Cristina never speaks
a word in “For the Blood is the Life,” while no woman even appears in“The Upper Berth.” On the contrary, in both “The Friends of the Friends”
and “The Turn of the Screw,” James has the female characters narrate intheir own voice via their writings. In both the James’ stories, the female
narrators are free to express anything, even untouchable subjects. Sucha difference may stem from James’ concern about his own sexuality; thatconcern may have led him to take a more sympathetic attitude toward
women,24 but this is such a large topic that another occasion will be necessary to discuss it wholly.
Ghost stories must have been considered a safe product, for they often
appeared in the Christmas issues of Victorian periodicals. They musthave been entertaining and appropriate at the hearth at Christmas time.
In this connection, it is worth recalling that the opening scene of “The
Turn of the Screw” is set on Christmas Eve. As professional writers,
James and Crawford never forgot this feature of the genre; they bothwished to write marketable stories.25
In this sense, it is interesting to observe that the germs of uncanny tales
lie in worldly emotions. For instance, “jealousy” drives the Jamesiannarrative in “The Friends of the Friends” and “The Turn of the Screw.”
A pathetic yearning for love unites the lovers in “For the Blood is theLife.” Unspoken wishes to escape from wives and children, in the

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manner of Rip van Winkle, guide the characters in “The Upper Berth.”
The authors also utilize other staples of Victorian tabloid ﬁction, such as
broken engagements, secret love affairs, and love crossing social ranks.
These topics are, needless to say, closely related to the issues ofgender/sexuality. Due to their unmentionable nature in society generally,
they must have been intriguing for Victorian readers. Especially in theguise of a vampire/ghost, at least subconsciously James and Crawford
seem to have appealed to their genteel readers’ curiosity about sexuality.
The contents of the inset emerge as frightful and absorbing. It can besaid, then, that the framed stories are meant to seem harmless entertainment, based on the popular themes. Regarding sexual issues, no matter
how much code-breaking is done in the inset, the frame device can makeit socially and culturally acceptable. Hence, the most striking horror of
the uncanny stories by James and Crawford is that the ingenious authors
subtly hide the explosive in the popular form of a Christmas gift, thus
escaping notice.
NOTES
Since all textual citations are based on the same editions, full publication data is given
only when ﬁrst cited, thereafter, only the page number will be indicated (in parentheses).
1
Recent literary histories reﬂecting the revision of the American literary canon do
not include F. Marion Crawford. See Nina Baym, ed., Norton Anthology of American
Literature: vol. C 1865–1914, 6th ed. (New York: Norton, 2003) and Emory Elliott, ed.,Columbia Literary History of the United States (New York: Columbia UP, 1988). Earlyin the twentieth century, though, Crawford was placed side by side with James in the“international” context or “realist” tradition. For example, Fred Lewis Patee, A Historyof American Literature Since 1870 (1915; New York: Cooper Square, 1968) and Carl
Van Doren, The American Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1921). Contemporary anonymous critics for magazines compared James and Crawford in reviewing the two: “A
Rival of Mr. James,” Life, 26 April 1883, 197; and “James, Crawford, and Howells,”
Atlantic Monthly 57 June 1886, 850–57.
2Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius: A Biography (New York:
William Morrow and Company, 1992) 186, 440.
3
The framed ghostly stories are discussed by Julia Briggs, Night Visitors: The Riseand Fall of the English Ghost Story (London: Faber, 1977) (Chapter 1 especially); T. J.
Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly (Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1994) 94.
4
The ﬁrst full-ﬂedged comparative study of James and Crawford is the following dissertation: Taeko Kitahara, “Light and Shadow: A Comparative Study of Henry Jamesand F. Marion Crawford” (University of Tokyo, 2003). Other critics, however, brieﬂymention these two authors together. See Adeline R. Tintner’s The Pop World of Henry
James: From Fairy Tales to Science Fiction (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1989); Marcia Jacobsonrefers to the two authors’ ﬁction-making theories in Henry James and the Mass Market(Alabama: U of Alabama P, 1989); Thomas Henry Wayne discusses Crawford’s auto-

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biographical romance, The Three Fates, in comparison with Crane, James, and Howellsin “Canon Fodder: The Fictional Strategy of Francis Marion Crawford” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1993).
5
Martha Banta deﬁnes a “psychic vampire” as “the vampire-like creature that takes
possession of the soul of the living person and, by drawing forth its force, causes thevictim to waste away.” See Henry James and the Occult: The Great Extension (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1972) 89.
6
The story’s original title was “The Way It Came,” but in this paper, I will use thebetter-known, revised title used in the New York Edition.
7
Lustig 94.
8
Henry James, The Novels and Tales of Henry James, New York Edition, vol.17 (NewYork: Scribner’s, 1907–1917) 323.
9F. Marion Crawford, “For the Blood is the Life” and Other Stories (1911; Clarkston,
Georgia: White Wolf Publishing, 1996) 164.
10
On this topic, Fred Botting devotes a section in his Gothic (1996; London:
Routledge, 2004) 144–154.
11
Douglas Robillard, “The Wandering Ghosts of F. Marion Crawford,” American
Supernatural Fiction, From Edith Wharton to the Weird Tales Writers, ed. Douglas
Robillard (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996) 50.
12Ibid., 50.
13Lustig 95.
14
Leon Edel, Henry James: Stories of the Supernatural, ed. Leon Edel (New York:
Taplinger, 1970) 396. Other critics compare the two stories; see Pamela J. Shelden,“ ‘The Friends of the Friends’: Another Twist to ‘The Turn of The Screw,’ ” Wascana
Review 2, no.1 (1976): 3–14; Sidney E. Lind, “ ‘The Turn of the Screw’: The Tormentof Critics,” Centennial Review 14 (1970): 234–240.
15
Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw,” Complete Stories: 1892–1898, 5 vols. (NewYork: Library of America, 1996) 636.
16David McWhirter makes the same point: “In the ‘Other House’ of Fiction: Writing,Authority, and Feminity in The Turn of the Screw,” New Essays on Daisy Miller and
The Turn of the Screw, ed. Vivian R. Pollak (Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP,
1993), 121.
17
Crawford, “The Upper Berth,” “For the Blood is the Life” and Other Stories, 194.
18
The interpretations of “The Turn of the Screw” roughly fall into three types: 1) the
ghostly existences are “real,” 2) the ghosts are hallucinations seen only by the governess,and 3) the nature of the ghosts is—and is designed to be—ambiguous. Edmund Wilson’s
essay opened the door for the second interpretation. See “The Ambiguity of Henry
James,” Hound & Horn 7 (1934): 385–406.
19
Millicent Bell, “Class, Sex, and the Victorian Governess: James’s The Turn of theScrew,” New Essays on Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw, 114.
20
For further analysis of the vague description of the female ghost, see Kitahara 305–6.
21
Bell’s discussion is typical: “Class, Sex, and the Victorian Governess,” 91–119. See
also Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1991)
225–26, 234–35.
22
Leonard Heldreth explicitly writes about “the erotic tension”; see “The Ghost andthe Self: The Supernatural Fiction of Henry James,” The Celebration of the Fantastic,
eds. Donald E. Morse, et al. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1992) 138.
23
Bell, “Class, Sex, and the Victorian Governess,” 107.
24
Leonora M. Ballinger elaborates on this aspect in her dissertation, “Apparitions andNight-Fears: Psychosexual Tensions in the Ghostly Tales of Henry James,” (New York
University, 1996).

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Martha Banta, “Henry James and ‘The Others,’ ” New England Quarterly 37, no.2
(1964): 177. Crawford himself calls novels marketable “commodities” in The Novel:
What It Is (1893; Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Literature House, 1970), 12.
25