Ghost Stories

     I began reading The Turn of the Screw because it was one of the books on my "To Read in the Future" list. Once I had finished it my need for suspense and mystery had not yet been fulfilled so I thought it would be interesting to then read a ghost story written by a different author during the same time period. I am absolutely a fan of Edith Wharton. I read several of her novels in college and immensely enjoyed The Age of Innocence (earning her the honor of first woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize in fiction). I had never read a ghost story by either of these authors, but having read other works by both, I was confident that they would be impressive in their own ways.

     The Turn of the Screw by Henry James begins with friends sitting around a fireplace telling ghost stories, as was apparently the tradition on Christmas Eve. The story that everyone is most anxious to hear is told by a man that has come into possession of a woman's manuscript through a friend. The actual narrator of the story is a twenty year old woman that remains unnamed throughout the story. This narrator began her journey by accepting the position of governess to two small children, Flora and Miles, in the wealthy home of their benefactor. The governess is immediately taken with the beauty and charm of the children, though the boy is mysteriously expelled from school for unknown reasons. In fact, the job seems to be perfect until she sees the ghost of a man staring down at her from the house. She has never seen this man before and when she describes him to the housekeeper she is informed that the description matches that of the master's deceased valet.  She then sees the ghost of the children's former teacher, who was also the previous valet's lover. What is most shocking to our narrator is that the ghosts seem only interested in the children. They seem to only watch the young boy and girl which leads the governess to believe that they mean the children harm and she must therefore protect them at all times. As the story progresses it becomes obvious that we are dealing with an unreliable narrator. After situations or conversations that the reader has been privy to, when asked about such events, she appears to be making things up rather than relating the truth.  Another odd thing is that the governess is the only one that can see these ghosts. Every time she attempts to prove their existence by pointing them out to another person, it becomes clear that this narrator is alone in her visions. For me, most of this book was spent trying to decipher whether or not this woman was in fact seeing ghosts or suffering from some sort of psychotic break. To add even more confusion to the plot there also seems to be a strange sexual tension between the governess and the young boy which is a bit disturbing. By the end of the book I was convinced that this woman was seeing illusions resulting from her internal struggles, and not the ghosts of previous employees.

     The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton on the other hand seems to contain actual sightings of ghosts and other haunting disturbances. Of the stories I read I chose to discuss The Lady's Maid's Bell because there were quite a few similarities to James' story. This story tells of a young woman that has also recently taken position in a wealthy home. Hartley is the new maid/companion of Mrs. Brympton, a sickly woman that has lost both of her children. The ghost that Hartley begins to see is also a previous employee, Emma Saxon, the former lady's maid. This ghost does not seem interested in Hartley, but in Mrs. Brympton alone. After Emma Saxon died, Lady Brympton  refused to ring the bell for any future maid. Therefore, when Hartley begins hearing the bells in the middle of the night, she knows something is wrong. When she arrives at her mistress's door however the husband asks, "How many of you are there?" This must mean that the ghost of Emma Saxon greatly resembles Hartley and that she arrived as soon as the bell rang, before Hartley. The questions that stood out to me were, "How involved is this ghost with the family's daily lives?"  and "How can she be confused for a living person?". Another interesting similarity between these works is that both stories end with a sudden death. The most significant difference between these two works however is that in The Lady's Maid's Bell, several people are disturbed by Emma Saxon's ghost therefore presenting the existence of a ghost as fact whereas The Turn of the Screw is famously ambiguous and leaves most of its plot up to the reader's interpretation.
 
     As an added bonus, both books come with an author's note explaining their thoughts behind the work. The autobiographical note at the end of this Edith Wharton collection is especially interesting because she admits that after suffering from typhoid fever as a child she developed the greatest fear of all things supernatural. The following is from her note,

"I had been naturally a fearless child; now I lived in a state of chronic fear. Fear of what? I cannot say--and even at the time, I was never able to formulate my terror. It was like some dark undefinable menace, forever dogging my steps, lurking and threatening...But how long the traces of my illness lasted may be judged from the fact that, till I was twenty-seven or -eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story, and that I have frequently had to burn books of this kind, because it frightened me to know that they were downstairs in the library!"

I think it is fascinating that a woman with this plaguing fear would one day overcome it and go on to write an excellent collection of incredibly haunting stories. The following illustrations are by Laszlo Kubinyi and are featured in The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton.

The Lady's Maid's Bell



Afterward

Mr. Jones