Abstract
This chapter explores Elizabeth Gaskell’s ghost stories in the light of mid-Victorian fascination with the old house and the tourist gaze in Catherine’s Crowe’s The Night-Side of Nature (1848) and Gaskell’s essay “Clopton House.” It considers the Radcliffean ancestral mansion and the servants’ cottage in relation to domestic confinement, Victorian spatial divisions and mistress-servant intimacies. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s reflections on forbidden space, it argues that women’s fearful navigation of the house brings to light the secrets of the past. It analyses the location of women and ghosts outside windows and behind locked doors in “The Old Nurse’s Story,” “The Poor Clare” and “The Grey Woman.” The uncanny opening of doors in “The Crooked Branch” is explored in relation to Gaston Bachelard’s conceptualisations of inside/outside.
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Liggins, E. (2020). The Old Ancestral Mansion and Forbidden Spaces in Elizabeth Gaskell’s ghost stories. In: The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories. Palgrave Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40752-0_2
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