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

Published Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

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Description 1 online resource Series Palgrave gothic Palgrave gothic series. Contents 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 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 Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-203) and index Notes Print version record Subject American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism Ghost stories, American -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century Gothic revival (Literature) -- United States Women in literature. Material culture in literature. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers -- English -- USA. Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 -- English -- USA. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Gothic & Romance. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Media Studies. American literature -- Women authors Gothic revival (Literature) Material culture in literature Women and literature Women in literature Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers -- United States of America, USA -- 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899. Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 -- United States of America, USA -- 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899. United States Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781137323989 1137323981

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