Restless Spirits
Subtitle: Ghost Stories by American Women, 1872-1926
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Amherst, MA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 316
ISBN-13: 9781558490567
Copyright date: 1996
Description: Just as dreams have long been associated with the unconscious, ghost stories have often served as forums for otherwise unapproachable issues. This volume brings together a lively selection of ghost stories by women writers, who use the genre to reveal and challenge prevailing cultural discourses on the nature and status of women. Depicting marriage, motherhood, female sexuality, spinsterhood, widowhood, and the intersection of madness and medical practice, the authors displace their critiques of dominant ideologies onto the supernatural, thus shielding themselves from critical recrimination. Their evocative works provide a resource for insights into women's writing and lives. Originally published in popular magazines, the 22 stories in this collection are set in all corners of the United States and were written by a range of authors known and unknown, including Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin and Zora Neale Hurston. Whether depicting a servant who helps save the reputation of her master's dead first wife, a ghostly mother who haunts a stranger until he agrees to adopt her orphaned daughter, or a ghost who revisits her beloved husband only to discover his long-standing preference for her sister, these tales possess great psychological richness and offer first-rate entertainment even as they explore the social and psychological realities of women's lives. Each story is preceded by a biographical headnote.
Table of contents: title: I. Until Death Do Us Part ... and After: Marriage : The lady's maid's bell / Edith Wharton --; title: The readjustment / Mary Austin --; title: The shell of sense / Olivia Howard Dunbar --; title: Spunk / Zora Neale Hurston --; title: A legend of Sonora / Hildegarde Hawthorne --; title: II. The Tie That Binds: Motherhood : The children / Josephine Daskam Bacon --; title: Broken glass / Georgia Wood Pangborn --; title: The little gray ghost / Cornelia A.P. Comer --; title: Hunger / Katharine Holland Brown --; title: The giant wistaria / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --; title: III. The "Other" Woman: Sexuality : At La Glorieuse / M.E.M. Davis --; title: The past / Ellen Glasgow --; title: Secret chambers / Mrs. Wilson Woodrow --; title: Her letters / Kate Chopin --; title: IV. Madwomen or Mad Women? The Medicalization of the Female : The second wife / Mary Heaton Vorse --; title: Her story / Harriett Prescott Spofford --; title: The gospel / Josephine Daskam Bacon --; title: Clay-shuttered doors / Helen R. Hull --; title: V. Shades of Discontent: Widows and Spinsters : Lois Benson's love story / Anne Page --; title: A dissatisfied soul / Annie Trumbull Slosson --; title: Mistress Marian's light / Gertrude Morton --; title: Luella Miller / Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.