The Pleasurable Shudder
In order to give the ghost story a“credible context” Victorian writers included everyday details, such as furniture, home decor, dress, food and drink.
In my Bookstore blog this month, I mentioned how in England, even before Dickens’s time, Christmas had long been associated with the supernatural, and that, during the Victorian era, this “Christmas and the supernatural” connection took on the form of the ghost story. In this post, I’ll discuss the Victorian era in-depth.
The Victorian era in England was a time of transition. For centuries, life had revolved around feudalism, and the lifestyle was agrarian. But then came the Industrial Revolution, changing everything, leaving people uncertain and full of anxiety about the present, as well as the future.
Many scholars believe this upheaval inspired the ghost story. In The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, it is suggested that the ghost story was crafted as a way to anchor “the past to an unsettled present.” In essence, then, I believe the ghost story provided a sense of security for the Victorians, since it implied that “the past is never a closed book…what has been can be again.” In turn this comforted Victorian readers, who were probably longing for the way of life they knew and loved, which was slipping away fast.
I love Victorian ghost stories because they express one of my favorite storytelling elements–the past haunting the present. Additionally, according to the aforementioned book “the function of most Victorian ghost stories…was simply to produce…the pleasurable shudder.”
Ohhh….the pleasurable shudder…one of my favorite things to experience while reading.
Writers of Victorian ghost stories, such as Elizabeth Gaskell and M.R. James, were extremely skilled at producing this pleasurable shudder in a way so it still surprised the reader. Unlike earlier gothic tales of horror, such as Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, which was obviously fictitious, the Victorian ghost story is domestic in tone with the action taking place in a familiar setting, somewhere domestic, versus a fake, historical setting used in the gothic novel. This left the reader wondering if the story might be true.
Maybe the events really did happen. Or maybe they could happen.
Victorian ghost stories were super popular, thriving for four decades, even in the face of developing science, perhaps because of it, since they presented scenarios in direct contrast.
One convention of the Victorian ghost story: the ghost always returned for a reason; there was always motivation, for instance, a desire to reveal a secret, avenge a wrong, or even…re-enact an old tragedy.