Introduction: Women in the Haunted House

Abstract

This introduction begins with a reading of E. Nesbit’s ghost story, “The Shadow” (1905) before outlining the relevance of Anthony Vidler’s conceptualisation of the architectural uncanny and the heimlich/unheimlich opposition in Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay, “The Uncanny” to an understanding of women’s ghost stories. It then considers the uncanniness and unhomeliness of the Victorian and modernist haunted house in relation to recent discussions of the gendering of domestic space. The following sections explore: the significance of Female Gothic as a framework for analysing women’s ghost stories, the explained/unexplained supernatural in the 1790s and beyond, critical debates about ghost stories and gender, the relevance of spatial theory to an understanding of the architectural uncanny, and the links between the haunted house, the past and modernity.