The Ghostmodern: Revisionist Haunting in Turn-Of-The-Century American Literature (1887-1910)
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THE GHOSTMODERN: REVISIONIST HAUNTING IN TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE (1887-1910) by MATH TRAFTON B.A., University of Colorado, 2003 B.S., University of Colorado, 2003 M.A., University of Colorado, 2005 M.A., University of Colorado, 2008 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature 2013 This dissertation titled: The Ghostmodern: Revisionist Haunting in Turn-of-the-Century American Literature (1887-1910) written by Math Trafton has been approved for the Department of Comparative Literature Dr. Karen Jacobs, committee chair Dr. Mark Leiderman Dr. Eric White Dr. Sue Zemka Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Trafton, Math (Ph.D., Comparative Literature) The Ghostmodern: Revisionist Haunting in Turn-of-the-Century American Literature (1887- 1910) Dissertation directed by Associate Professor Karen Jacobs This project attempts to identify and explain numerous significant transformations in the genre of the literary ghost story in the period roughly contemporary with the earliest emergence of literary Modernism. Through a detailed examination of the literary encounters with invisibility in pivotal American ghost stories from the end of the twentieth century, the project considers the rich literary trope of ghostly haunting according to its capacity to provoke an engagement with marginalized, liminal spaces. In traditional ghost stories, however, as ghosts are ultimately overcome and order is restored, normative structures resume, and such engagements are trivialized. My analysis identifies a critical historical moment in which when certain authors explore changes to this practice. Particularly, this project performs a detailed reading of a select group of texts published between the years 1887-1910, namely, Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla” (1887), Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Henry James’s “Sir Edmund Orme” (1891), and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward” (1910). Through exploring the ways these texts significantly innovate the genre of the literary ghost story, this project proposes the emergence of a distinct subgenre, which I ultimately term the Revisionist ghost story. Through the trope of literary haunting, Revisionist ghost stories reflect on the nature of otherness and its essential incomprehensibility. In figuring haunting as a pervasive and ubiquitous force capable of disrupting order and stability, such texts challenge traditional iv assumptions of subjective mastery and explore alternatives to prevailing normative structures. Revisionist ghost stories further suggest an essential incomprehensibility intrinsic to subjectivity as they present their characters’ ultimate powerlessness to exorcize their ghosts or escape their haunting. Not even the attempt to reflect on the inexplicable experience of haunting through the work of narrative can formulate an adequate coherence, for the characters’ frequent endeavors to recount their situation only intensify and propagate the impression of haunting. When a ghost appears in a Revisionist ghost story, it is not to signal the commencement of haunting, but to reveal the essential point that the experience of reality is itself always-already haunted by the profound limitations of human subjectivity and the incomprehensible vastness in the reality beyond. This dissertation is dedicated to Zoë Madison Trafton, Whose vision is a source of infinite inspiration. vi CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 The History of the Modern Ghost ................................................................................ 28 Chapter 2 – “Le Horla” and Otherness ......................................................................................... 72 Chapter 3 – “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Jamais Vu ................................................................ 111 Chapter 4 – “Sir Edmund Orme” and Melancholia .................................................................... 160 Chapter 5 – “Afterward” and Belatedness .................................................................................. 239 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 292 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 300 1 INTRODUCTION This project attempts to identify and explain numerous significant transformations in the genre of the literary ghost story in the period roughly contemporary with the earliest emergence of literary Modernism: 1887-1910. Through a detailed examination of the literary encounters with invisibility in pivotal American ghost stories from the end of the twentieth century, the project considers the rich literary trope of ghostly haunting and the ways it profoundly affects the way one perceives the world. When seeking an encounter with the invisibility of a ghost, one is always more attuned to what is not perceived than what is; haunting thus provokes an engagement with marginalized, liminal spaces. In traditional ghost stories, however, as ghosts are ultimately overcome and order is restored, normative structures resume. My analysis identifies a critical historical moment in which when certain authors explore changes to this practice. Particularly, this project performs a detailed reading of a select group of texts published between the years 1887-1910, namely, Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla” (1887), Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Henry James’s “Sir Edmund Orme” (1891), and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward” (1910). Through exploring the ways these texts significantly innovate the genre of the literary ghost story, this project proposes the emergence of a distinct subgenre, which I ultimately term the Revisionist ghost story. Through the trope of literary haunting, Revisionist ghost stories reflect on the nature of otherness and its essential incomprehensibility. In figuring haunting as a pervasive and ubiquitous force capable of disrupting order and stability, such texts challenge traditional assumptions of subjective mastery and explore alternatives to prevailing normative structures. Revisionist ghost stories further suggest an essential incomprehensibility intrinsic to subjectivity 2 as they present their characters’ ultimate powerlessness to exorcize their ghosts or escape their haunting. Not even the attempt to reflect on the inexplicable experience of haunting through the work of narrative can formulate an adequate coherence, for the characters’ frequent endeavors to recount their situation only intensify and propagate the impression of haunting. When a ghost appears in a Revisionist ghost story, it is not to signal the commencement of haunting, but to reveal the essential point that the experience of reality is itself always-already haunted by the profound limitations of human subjectivity and the incomprehensible vastness in the reality beyond. The figure of the ghost has always possessed a complex theoretical foundation throughout its long history through Western culture, even in isolation from its diverse literary depictions. As popularly conceived, a ghost essentially amounts to an extension of human subjectivity beyond its traditional mortal limits; it is a subject’s a return from—or deferral of— the grave. However, given that the ghost’s return involves uniquely traversing death, that essential disruption of mortal integrity, ghostliness itself reflects the radical displacement of presence. More precisely, death’s disfiguration compromises the ghost’s intact human form and divests it of its completeness; as a result, in virtually all of its cultural expressions, it is generally disembodied from its original form in some way or another (sometimes as a soul, spirit, mind, will, and so on), and its presence is strikingly immaterial and imperceptible (or partially imperceptible). The ghost’s unique semi-transparency and insubstantiality reveals the inescapable complexity of the corresponding “ghostly subject”—that is, its original mortal form, prior to its disfiguration. Paradoxically, insofar as its radical displacement has unhinged its subjectivity from its presentation, the ghostly subject, in its original form, is not properly present, nor is it 3 properly nonpresent.1 By virtue of the supernatural capacity to transcend or elude the event horizon of death, the essence of the ghost’s original presence is magically preserved, albeit in a substantially reduced form; it persists, that is, via a displacement into a reflection or image.2 The ghost is not identical to its prior state but a reference to it—it is always of something, the ghost of its original. Whereas a certain aspect of the original presence endures through death (and the return from it), there is a corresponding aspect that does not endure. Because death’s disfiguration necessarily results in an intrinsic reduction in form, the ghost will always be incomplete, lacking something of the original to which it refers. In the translation process, there is a remainder that is irretrievably lost to absolute invisibility.