Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories Spectres, Revenants, Ghostly Returns

This book offers new insights on socially and culturally engaged Gothic ghost stories by twentieth century and contemporary female writers; including Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Ali Smith, Susan Hill, Catherine Lim, Kate Mosse, Daphne du Maurier, Helen Dunmore, Michele Roberts, and Zheng Cho. Through the ghostly body, possessions and visitations, women’s ghost stories expose links between the political and personal, genocides and domestic tyrannies, providing unceasing reminders of violence and violations. Women, like ghosts, have historically lurked in the background, incarcerated in domestic spaces and roles by familial and hereditary norms. They have been disenfranchised legally and politically, sold on dreams of romance and domesticity. Like unquiet spirits that cannot be silenced, women’s ghost stories speak the unspeakable, revealing these contradictions and oppressions. Wisker’s book demonstrates that in terms of women’s ghost stories, there is much to point the spectral finger at and much to speak out about.    

1. Introduction: Lifting the veil on women’s ghost stories. - Section 1: Haunted texts, haunted houses, haunted lives. -  2. Haunted romance and haunted houses: Rebecca (du Maurier, 1938), The Haunting of Hill House (Jackson, 1959). - 3. Revengeful ghosts: The Woman in Black (Hill, 1983), Beloved (Morrison, 1987). - Section 2: Possession. - 4. True love as possession: Ashputtle (Carter, 1987), Lady Oracle (Atwood, 1976), The Greatcoat (Dunmore, 2012), The Glass Bottle Trick (Hopkinson, 2000). - 5. The Spectral voice: In The Red Kitchen (Roberts, 1990), Affinity (Waters, 1999), Beyond Black (Mantel, 2005). - 6. Domestic hauntings: The Little Stranger (Waters, 2009), Birdcage Walk (Dunmore, 2017), The Stopped Heart (Myerson, 2016). Section  3: Traumas of  Place: Postcolonial Hauntings. - 7. Postcolonial hauntings and urban Gothic in Singapore and Malaysia: The Serpent’s Tooth (Lim, 1982), The Bondmaid (Lim, 1992), Haunting (Lim, 1981), The Black Isle (Tan, 2012), Ponti (Teo, 2018), House of Aunts (Cho, 2014), The Crocodile Fury (Yahp, 1992). - 8. Traumas of place, travel, hauntology: Novel without a Name (Duong, 1995), Daughters of the House (Roberts, 1992), The Winter Ghosts (Mosse, 2010). - 9. Visits and visitations:  A Visit (Jackson, 1950), Ghost Summer (Due, 2015), Her Fearful Symmetry (Niffenegger, 2009), Hotel World (Smith, 2001).- 10. Conclusion: Breaking boundaries, leaking truths, pressing issues: Ghost Wall (Moss, 2018).

Gina Wisker is an Associate Professor at the University of Bath, and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education & Contemporary Literature at the University of Brighton, UK. Gina has published twenty-six books and over one hundred and forty articles, including Key Concepts in Postcolonial Literature (2007); Horror Fiction: An Introduction (2005); Margaret Atwood, an Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction (2012) and Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction (2016). Gina co-edits the online dark fantasy journal Dissections (2006-), Spokes poetry magazine (1990s-) and hosts ‘words and worlds’ readings for ICFA. Gina lives in Cambridge, has two sons and a feisty poodle.