Untimely Women: Transgressive Histories in the Victorian Ghost Story

Abstract

Abstract: This paper examines the creation of a feminine, untimely relationship to history in two late Victorian ghost stories, Vernon Lee's "Oke of Okehurst" (1886) and E. Nesbit's "Man-Size in Marble" (1887). Nineteenth-century ghost stories, I argue, perform a radical mode of historical thinking and narration, one that rebukes conventional linear time and empiricist historicism. As ambassadors from the past, these literary ghosts confirm the doctrine of historical continuity while simultaneously undercutting it through their subversion of the orthodox frame narrative. Lee's and Nesbit's female protagonists exploit the anachronistic potential of ghostliness, shattering their husbands' deterministic mode of nationalist historical reasoning. In this way, this paper refigures the genre as more than an antiquated diversion from the realist fiction of the period, revealing the ghost story's serious intervention in conventional historical imaginaries.