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The Spirit of Rebellion: The Transformative Power of the Ghostly Double in Gilman, Spofford, and Wharton

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00497878.2013.820612

1547-7045

Cynthia Murillo,

Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank the outside reviewers for their meticulous and insightful commentary on an earlier version of this article. Notes 1See Diana Wallace, "Uncanny Stories: The Ghost Story as Female Gothic,"Gothic Studies, 6 (May 2004), 57–68, and Alfred Bendixen Bendixen, ed., Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers (New York: Ungar, 1987). Subsequent references to Bendixen's work will be cited parenthetically in the text. 2Claire Kahane, "Gothic Mirrors and Feminine Identity,"The Centennial Review, 24 (1980), 43–64. 3Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Madwomen in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Have: Yale UP, 1979), vii, 95. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 4Nina Auerbach, Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1982), 9. 5See, for example, Julianne E. Fleenor, ed., The Female Gothic (Montréal: Eden Press, 1983); Maggie Kilgour, The Rise of the Gothic Novel (London: Routledge, 1995); Diane Long Hoeveler, Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontes (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1998). 6Rosemary Jackson, "Introduction," in What Did Miss Darrington See?: An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction (New York: Feminist Press, 1989), xx. 7Vanessa D. Dickerson, "The Ghost of a Self: Female Identity in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," Journal of Popular Culture, 27 (Winter 1993), 79–80. 8Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanood: 1820–1860,"American Quarterly, 18 (Summer 1966), 151–174. 9Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York: Oxford UP, 1985), 13. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 10Martha J. Cutter, Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1950–1930 (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999), xvi. All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 11Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in The Book of Doppelgängers, ed. Robert Sterling (Doylestown, Pennsylvania: Betancourt & Company, 2003), 143–158. All subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 12Conrad Shumaker, "'Too Terribly Good to Be Printed': Charlotte Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'" in "The Yellow Wallpaper": Women Writers Texts and Contexts, ed. Thomas L. Erskine and Connie L. Richards (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1993), 134. 13Loralee MacPike, "Environment as Psychopathological Symbolism in 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'"American Literary Realism, 8 (1975), 288. 14Suzanne E. Owens, "The Ghostly Double behind the Wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'"Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, ed. Lynette Carpenter and Wendy K. Kolmar (Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1991) 54. 15Catherine Golden, ed., Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-Paper': A Sourcebook and Critical Edition (New York: Routledge, 2004), 16; 101–102. Golden 101–102; 1. The criticism on "The Yellow Wallpaper" is extensive, but Catherine Golden's Routledge sourcebook provides an excellent overview of the extant scholarship on this story with highlighted excerpts from numerous critical interpretations. The book as well provides the reader with contextual reviews and personal letters from and to Gilman. 16Elaine Hedges in her edited version, The Yellow Wallpaper (New York: Feminist Press, 1973), claims that the name "Jane" could be a printer's error, but it could also very likely refer to the narrator herself—her real name. In this case, such naming on her own terms frees her from the name that subscribes her to wifehood and motherhood (63). 17Eugenia DeLamotte, "Male and Female Mysteries in 'The Yellow Wallpaper,'"Legacy. 5 (Spring 1988), 8. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. Significantly, all three stories under discussion draw on the first person. The "I," then can be said to take center stage. 18Virginia Woolf, "Professions for Women." The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Ed. Virginia Woolf. 1931. Reprint (New York: Harcourt, 1972), 17–18. 19Joyce W. Warren, "Fracturing Gender: Woman's Economic Independence," in Nineteenth Century American Women Writers: A Critical Reader, ed. Karen L. Kilcup (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1998), 150. Several critical works have emerged over the last few years that provide in-depth analyses of the American New Woman and her multiple renditions from the Gibson Girl and the Flagg Girl to the New Negro Woman. See, for example, Leslie Petty, Romancing the Vote: Feminist Activism in American Fiction, 1870–1920 (Athens: U of Georgia P, 2006); Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson Girl: Reimagining the American New Woman, 1895–1915 (Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2008); and Martha H. Patterson, The American New Woman Revisited: A Reader, 1894–1930 (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008; Catherine Gourley's, Gibson Girls and Suffragists: Perceptions of Women from 1900–1918 (Minneapolis, Twenty-First Century Books, 2008) provides historical information on and photographs of the New Woman throughout history, particularly as she relates to fashion, film, and immigration. 20Even though the publication of Spofford's story occurs before what most scholars consider the Progressive era, it nevertheless seems an important text to mark the change in the way women began to see themselves. In 1868, Texas brought before its constitutional convention a resolution proposing the vote be extended to women. In addition, The National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, was formed in 1869. It was in 1872 that the first American woman, Victoria Woodhull, was nominated as a candidate for the U.S. presidency. Although universal suffrage was not granted until 1920, the first wave feminists of the nineteenth century were strongly gaining ground and the True Woman began to fade. Writing directly in the middle of these historical markers, Spofford, through her ghost tale, accurately anticipates the changing function of the literary double as indicative of woman's changing role and the necessity of eradicating the voiceless female. A broader understanding of the era can better help us recognize other women writing in the 1870s, specifically their supernatural fiction, whose contribution to progressive efforts were just as strong as those writing in the 1890s and beyond. 21Harriet Prescott Spofford, "Her Story" in Restless Spirits: Ghost Stories by American Women 1872–1926, ed Catherine Lundie (Amherst: U Of Massachusetts P, 1996, 217. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 22Eva Gold and Thomas Fick, "A 'Masterpiece' of 'the Educated Eye': Convention, Gaze, and Gender in Spofford's 'Her Story'," Studies in Short Fiction, 30 (1993), 512. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically in the text. 23The description of Hyacinthine's hair as "snake-like" seems fitting in that many late-nineteenth-century feminists were likened to Lilith of classical mythology, who was sometimes pictured coddling snakes. As the incarnation of perverse womanhood, Lilith's refusal to heed Adam posited her as the world's first virago, or wild-woman, a term also associated with the New Woman. Kenyon Cox's rendition of Lilith reproduced in Scribner's in 1892 makes this connection very clear. See Will Low and Kenyon Cox, "The Nude in Art," Scribner's, 12.6 (December1892), 744. 24An interesting observation is that this story with no explicitly named ghost is included in an anthology entitled Ghost Stories by American Women. It seems logical, then, to argue that the woman the narrator sees is not so much a person than the image or ghost of sexuality. 25Karen F. Stein, "Monsters and Madwomen: Changing Female Gothic" in The Female Gothic, 124. 26Gold and Fick go on to argue in their article that the first wife's aggressive replacement, although appearing powerful at first, is nonetheless rendered powerless by the story's end since all of her aggressive actions have been an attempt to solicit Spencer's gaze at her body (519). However, I would point out that although Spencer's eyes are constantly directed at her body, such descriptions nevertheless make her particularly present, something that cannot be said about the nearly "invisible" first wife. As the narrator astutely observes, "I never had the face to praise him, she had." 27Qtd in Anita Clair Fellman and Michael Fellman, "The Rule of Moderation in Late Nineteenth-Century American Sexual Ideology,"The Journal of Sex Research, 17 (August 1981), 241. 28See, for example, R. W. B. Lewis, ed., The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), xvii. Lewis points out that Wharton was greatly influenced by Poe. When W. C. Brownell was writing an essay on Poe for Scribner's in January 1909, Wharton contributed substantial commentary on the author. Refer to Wharton's autobiography, A Backward Glance, intro. Louis Auchinloss (New York: Charles, Scribner's Sons, 1964), 66–68, for additional commentary on Poe and Wharton. 29John Tibbetts, "Men, Women, and Ghosts: The Supernatural Fiction of Edith Wharton"Helicon Nine, 3 (1989), 46. 30Kathy Fedorko, Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1995), pp. 13, xii. Quoting from Wharton's "Life and I," Fedorko, explains that Wharton's questioning her mother about marriage and sexuality was met with an icy stare from her mother who admonished, … "'Then for heaven's sake don't ask me any more silly questions, You can't be as stupid as you pretend!'" (14). Such discomfort forced Wharton to transform "terror of the outside unknown … into terror of the internal unknown, within the house/mother rather than outside of it" (12). Subsequent citations to Gender and the Gothic will be cited parenthetically in the text. 31Wharton also was plagued with typhoid as a young adult. 32Edith Wharton, "In The Lady's Maid's Bell," in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 12–13. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically. 33Michelle A. Massé, "Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night,"Signs, 15 (Summer1990), 682. Masse also includes Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" in her analysis. 34Fedorko, "Edith Wharton's Haunted Fiction: 'The Lady's Maid's Bell' and The House of Mirth," in Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women, 84. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically. 35Jessica Salmonson, ed., "Introduction," What Did Miss Darrington See? An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction (New York: The Feminist Press, 1989); Catherine Lundie, ed., "Introduction," Restless Spirits: Ghost Stories by American Women 1872–1926 (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1996); See also Helen Killoran, "Sexuality and Abnormal Psychology in Edith Wharton's 'The Lady's Maid's Bell,'" CEA Critic 58.3 (1996), 43. 36Elbert, Monika, "The Transcendental Economy of Wharton's Gothic Mansions,"American Transcendental Quarterly 9.1 (1995), 58. 37R. W. B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 24–25. Subsequent references will be cited parenthetically. 38Holly Blackford, "Haunted Housekeeping: Fatal Attractions of Servant and Mistress in Twentieth-Century Female Gothic Literature,"Literature Interpretation Theory 16 (April/June 2005), 236. 39Helen Killoren argues that "the quivering bell" reveals Hartley's "latent lesbian attraction to Mrs. Brympton," pointing out that Hartley reveals that she has "a warm feeling" for her mistress and acknowledges "some feeling that I couldn't put a name to" (41–49). Although a deep feeling of commitment for Mrs. Brympton is obviously present in the story, it seems more plausible to suggest that the "feeling" Hartley has is not sexual, but instinctual. Emma appropriately appears at dire times, causing Hartley to seek out an answer to this weighted feeling—to fulfill her own desire to know the truth. 40Catherine Lundie, "'One Need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted': American Women's Supernatural Fiction,"Canadian Review of American Studies 23.1(1992), 250. 41Jacqueline S. Wilson-Jordan, "Telling the Story That Can't Be Told: Hartley's Role as Dis-Eased Narrator in 'The Lady's Maid's Bell'," Edith Wharton Review 14 (Spring 1997), 12. 42See, for example, Monika Elbert, 58. 43Qtd. in William Leach, Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 93. 44Susan Cruea, "Changing Ideals of Womanhood During the Nineteenth-Century Woman Movement," American Transcendental Quarterly 19 (Sept. 2005), 190–192.