Ghostly Objects and the Horrors of Ghastly Ancestors in the Ghost Stories of Louisa Baldwin
2022; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09699082.2022.2050510
ISSN1747-5848
Autores Tópico(s)Crime and Detective Fiction Studies
ResumoABSTRACTThis article examines the late Victorian ghost stories of Louisa Baldwin. Looking at several stories from her 1895 collection The Shadow on the Blind, we argue that, although her work is a part of the ongoing tradition of women’s ghost stories in the nineteenth century, they differ from most by the weight of emphasis given to family, ancestry, and the importance of material, inherited objects. We argue that Louisa cannot be separated out from her family, who included sisters married to Edward Poynter, and Edward Burne-Jones; her nephew Rudyard Kipling, and her son Prime Minister (to be) Stanley Baldwin. There is a material weight of family evident in her work that haunts her characters through ancestry and heritage. The ghost stories discussed here display a sense of fatality; of destiny, of inescapability, and finally of a dwindling and the dying out of the ancestral line. Tracing some sort of autobiographical criticism of over-bearing families, this article explores both real, and spectral “ghastly ancestors”.KEYWORDS: Familyancestrymaterialityhaunted objectsghosts Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 John Pelan and Richard Dalby, “Introduction”, The Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories, ed. Alfred Baldwin (Columbia: Ash-Tree Press, [1895] 2001), ix.2 Diana Wallace, “Uncanny Stories: The Ghost Story as Female Gothic”, Gothic Studies, 6.1 (2004): 57–68 (57).3 Sophie Gilmartin, Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22.4 Ben Cowell, The Heritage Obsession: The Battle for England’s Past (Stroud: Tempus, 2008), 9.5 Cowell, 10.6 Cowell, 10.7 Simon Hay, A History of the Modern Ghost Story (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 54.8 Bill Brown, “Thing Theory”, Critical Inquiry, 28.1 (Autumn 2001): 4.9 Brown, 4 (emphasis in original).10 Brown, 4–5.11 Alex Preda, “The Turn to Things”, The Sociological Quarterly, 40.2 (Spring 1999): 349 (emphasis in original).12 Judith Flanders, A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter and Louisa Baldwin (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 106, 138.13 Ina Taylor, Victorian Sisters: The Remarkable Macdonalds and the Four Great Men They Inspired (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 73.14 Taylor, 75, 99.15 Earl, “Appendix 2”, Building Conservation Policy, 157.16 Punch, Or the London Charivari, 14 Dec. 1895, 288.17 Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 7.18 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 124.19 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 128.20 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 129.21 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 129–30.22 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 133.23 “Sir Nigel Otterburne’s Case”, 133.24 Hay, 5.25 Hay, 9.26 Nicola Brown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell, The Victorian Supernatural (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 11.27 “The Weird of the Walfords”, in The Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1895), 51–89.28 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 52.29 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 52.30 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 64.31 Brown, 5.32 Other scholars have worked on this idea including Melissa Edmundson in “Buyer Beware: Haunted Objects in the Supernatural Tales of Margery Lawrence”, The Female Fantastic (London: Routledge, 2018), 50–64, and much earlier, M. R. James in his wonderful short essay, “The Malice of Inanimate Objects”, in Complete Ghost Stories of M. R. James (London: Macmillan Collector’s Library, 2017), 565–70.33 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 59.34 David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York and London: The Free Press, 1996), 184.35 Lowenthal, 121 (emphasis in original).36 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 61.37 Gillian Naylor, The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of Its Sources, Ideals and Influence on Design Theory (London: Trefoil Publications, 1990), 28.38 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 60.39 Elizabeth Cumming and Wendy Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Movement (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 51.40 Cumming and Kaplan, 51.41 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 65.42 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 65–6.43 Emma Liggins, The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 25.44 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 66.45 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 73.46 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 73.47 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 74.48 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 83.49 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 84.50 Steven Connor, “Thinking Things”, Textual Practice, 24.1 (2010): 2.51 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 59.52 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 88.53 “The Weird of the Walfords”, 86.54 “The Empty Picture Frame”, in The Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories (Columbia: Ash Tree Press, 2001), 105–18.55 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 106.56 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 108.57 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 110.58 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 14.59 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 115.60 “The Empty Picture Frame”, 118.61 Ian Murphy, “Painted Portraits and Androgynous Apparitions in the Haunted-Portrait Narratives of Vernon Lee and E. Nesbit”, Women’s Writing, 28.4 (2021): 589–604 (590).62 Murphy, 592.63 The Glasgow Herald, 18 Dec. 1895.64 A. W. Baldwin, Earl of Bewdley, The MacDonald Sisters (Surrey: The Windmill Press, 1960), 183.65 Christopher Miele, ed., From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity, 1877–1939 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2005), x.66 Cowell, 12.67 Hay, 15.68 Hay, 4.69 Hay, 15 (emphasis in original).70 Liggins, 276.71 Liggins, 22.72 Liggins, 4.73 “The Shadow on the Blind”, in The Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories (London: J. M. Dent & Co., 1895), 1-49.74 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 3.75 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 22.76 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 13.77 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 5.78 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 13.79 The New Testament, Mark 5:9, Luke 8:30.80 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 44.81 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 43.82 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 44.83 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 48.84 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 49.85 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 49.86 Liggins, 2.87 “The Shadow on the Blind”, 49.88 See for example the discussion in Jennifer Uglow’s excellent “Introduction” to The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (London: Virago Press, 1992), ix–xvii.89 Pelan and Dalby, xv.90 Baldwin, 197.91 Pelan and Dalby, xv.92 Pelan and Dalby, xiii.93 Taylor, xviii.94 Taylor, 108.95 Taylor, 154.96 Jennifer Uglow, “Introduction”, in The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, ed. Richard Dalby (London: Virago Press, 1992), ix–xvii; xvii.97 Vanessa Dickerson, Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide: Women Writers and the Supernatural (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 5.98 Baldwin, 199.99 Baldwin, 205.100 Baldwin, 205.101 Taylor, 1.102 Flanders, 329.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRuth HeholtRuth Heholt is associate professor of Dark Economies and Gothic literature at Falmouth University. She is author of Catherine Crowe: Gender, Genre, and Radical Politics (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of Gothic Kernow: Cornwall as Strange Fiction (Anthem Press, 2022). She is co-editor of several collections including Gothic Britain: Dark Places in the Provinces and Margins of the British Isles (2018), and Haunted Landscapes (2017). She has organised international conferences including Folk Horror in the Twentieth Century (Falmouth and Lehigh Universities 2019) and is editor of the peer reviewed journal Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural.Rebecca LloydRebecca Lloyd is an independent researcher, with interests in Gothic creatures and landscapes, humour, ghost and crime fictions. She is the author of “Dead Pets' Society: Gothic Animal Bodies in the Films of Tim Burton” in Stella Hockenhull and Frances Pheasant-Kelly (eds.) Tim Burton's Bodies: Gothic, Animated, Corporeal and Creaturely (Edinburgh University Press, 2021); “The Human Within and the Animal Without? Rats and Mr Bunnsy in Terry Pratchett's The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents” in Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson (eds.) Gothic Animals (Palgrave, 2020); “Gravy Soup: humouring conformity and counterfeiting in A Rogue's Life” in The Wilkie Collins Journal, (2017, vol.14); and “Haunting the Grown-ups: The Borderlands of ParaNorman and Coraline” in Ruth Heholt and Niamh Downing (eds.) Haunted Landscapes: Super-Nature and the Environment (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). She is also the co-author with Ruth Heholt of entry on Anne Rice for The Encyclopedia of the Gothic (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
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