Ghosting the Victorians in A.S. Byatt, Kate Atkinson and Michèle Roberts's neo-Victorian fiction

Abstract

The notion of haunting has often been used to refer to the relationship between past and present which is at the heart of neo-Victorian fiction, revealing that the ghosts of the past are transformed as they pervade the present. Indeed, we are shaped by the stories we tell about the past just as our stories shape the past. Bearing in mind, in M-L Kohlke’s words, ‘how desire makes the spectres dance to our tune’, this chapter examines how neo-Victorian fiction engages with the process of representation and narrativization of the past through the ghost, as metaphor or as character, to comment on both past and present and bring the invisible into focus, whether in terms of sensation or of silenced figures. Case studies look at ways this haunting of the past both activates and contributes to cultural identity and memory. A form of immersion in the past based on the senses can be observed in A.S. Byatt’s neo-Victorian fiction while a double temporality and the representation of ghosts are foregrounded in Kate Atkinson’s play Abandonment and Michèle Roberts’ novel The Walworth Beauty.