Abstract
Anxieties about rooms, furniture and spatial boundaries are prominent in Victorian narratives of spectralisation. This chapter considers the dynamics of the mid-Victorian household and the operation of mistress-servant intimacy in relation to the preoccupation with gendered space in women’s ghost stories. It analyses Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s stories of the 1860s and 1870s, particularly ‘Eveline’s Visitant’, ‘Chrighton Abbey’ and ‘The Shadow in the Corner’, in relation to visiting practices and the strained performance of domestic duties. Positioned in gloomy attic-rooms, unused quarters of the house or secluded gardens, both mistresses and servants are vulnerable to spectral encounters which drain their vitality.
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Liggins, E. (2021). Haunted Space and Gender Performance in the Ghost Stories of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40866-4_9
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