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Women In Horror Month: Supernatural Tales, Hidden No More

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Looking back at American supernatural tales of the 19th and 20th century, we can see that often the themes that they focused on revolved around women and children and the traditional roles they were expected to fill. On the surface, it may seem like that reinforces a conservative, patriarchal view of the world, but women who wrote these stories often used them to explore questions about sexuality, marriage, the domestic sphere, and the horror of confinement to the narrow expectations faced by women and girls.

Shirley Jackson’s “Afternoon in Linen”, is a textbook example of this (literally– it appears in my daughter’s language arts textbook). While it has no supernatural elements, we see a lot of tension between adult expectations of  our protagonist Harriet, her own desires, and the boy there who also happens to be her classmate. In the story, Harriet’s grandmother and mother expect her to perform on the piano and recite her original poetry to visitors. Harriet does not want to either play the piano or share her personal thoughts with the visitors and insists she doesn’t know how. She can tell that the boy who arrived with the visitors, who is also a classmate, will mock her poetry to her peers. Pushed to the limit by her grandmother, Harriet claims she lied about writing the poem herself. She would rather disappoint the expectations of the adults wanting to show off her feminine talents than perform for them; and she would rather be seen as a liar than teased by her peers. Harriet’s self-determination and how the conflicting expectations of the people around her affect her behavior leave the reader unsettled, even though the story doesn’t hold the horror of  The Haunting of Hill House.

It’s interesting that actually, many of the women who wrote supernatural stories are seen as “regional” or “realistic” authors, with their ghost and supernatural stories disregarded in favor of their better-known works. Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, Kate Chopin, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, all of whom either appeared in my American lit textbook or were recommended reading, were never identified as writers of supernatural fiction there.

While supernatural tales often were written with women as the victims, sometimes they were also written with powerful women with agency in them. Women authors used the supernatural to explore anxieties about marriage, home, power, and the fragility of love and relationships. Under cover of the fantastic and unreal. they were able to strike deep into the emotional and psychological truths of women’s lives, while delivering a terrifying tale that those simply looking for entertainment could appreciate.

So many women wrote for newspapers and periodicals that have now crumbled to pieces that we may never know how many talented writers’ works were lost forever. Of those that remain, some are only available in out-of-print limited editions. Others, however, are available either free or cheap as ebooks (The Wind in the Rose-bush by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton, for instance) You kind of have to know who you’re looking for to find the hidden supernatural tales that haven’t made it into textbooks or onto lists of recommended or required reading. I’ve written about some of them in the past, but there’s much to do to bring women writers of supernatural fiction to light.

Luckily, today, women don’t have to fight quite as hard to be recognized for their outstanding work in the horror genre. Today on Facebook, author Christopher Golden asked writers to name the people who had been supportive to them on their creative journey, and there were many women writers who responded, and even more who were named as mentors and friends.  Of course there is still a long way to go in terms of representation, but that’s why we have Women in Horror Month– to bring attention to all the great creative women in the horror genre who make it come alive. I challenge you to pick out a book by a woman writer of horror this month that you haven’t read before, and read it. There’s so much good stuff out there that there’s really no reasonable excuse not to.

Note: This post owes much to Alfred Bendixen’s Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers. It is out of print but is available new and used at Amazon. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in sampling the supernatural stories of many of the women mentioned above.

Posted on February 2, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Random House, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0812985405

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Lincoln in the Bardo can be described as an American ghost story, but there is much more to it than ghosts in a graveyard. It’s not a book to zip through once and put down with the confidence that you have completely absorbed what it has to offer. Trying to describe it, and review it, has been difficult, but it is worth it. George Saunders won the Man Booker prize for literary fiction for this novel, but don’t let that influence whether you try it for yourself.

At the center of the story is the death of Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie, and Lincoln’s grieving alone at night in the cemetery where Willie was laid to rest, although “laid to rest” isn’t really the best description for its residents. I didn’t know this, but a “bardo” is a Buddhist term for a kind of in-between or transitional state. The cemetery’s residents, who tell the majority of the story, are stuck in that transitional state, no longer alive but unable and unwilling to move on or even recognize that they are dead. When Willie arrives in the bardo, the other residents, based on their previous experience, expect that he will quickly move on, but when Lincoln returns to grieve, he promises to visit again, and Willie stays to make sure he is there when his father returns. Of course, as a ghost, he is unable to physically interact with his environment or with living people, and it isn’t as easy as it might seem for him to stay, especially without the help of the other ghosts of the cemetery. In fact, if he doesn’t move on, he may be taken by damned souls.

The narrative structure of the book is challenging. It alternates between sections that take place in the cemetery, with a variety of ghosts attempting to move the story forward, or include their own story, or push their way in, interrupting each other and editorializing on events and each other, and collections of multiple historical eyewitness accounts of the same events, mostly descriptions and opinions of the night Willie died and of Lincoln himself.

The parts in the cemetery can be very confusing, as the speakers (and there are many) are only named after they have spoken, so it’s not always clear who is telling the story. The reader certainly does get to see the democracy of death in America, though–  cemeteries include all kinds of people, from the repellent and hateful to decent and caring(and sometimes all of it in one person), but in this time, at the beginning of the Civil War, African-Americans are buried outside the fence and their ghosts have to rush the fence and fight off hateful racists to get in. Once they are in, many of them do speak up, and they remain some of the most powerful and lasting voices in the story.

The alternating sections of compiled contemporary eyewitness accounts are probably what was most fascinating to me. Many of them contradict each other: some are sympathetic, complimentary, or admiring, while others condemn him in the strongest terms. To see history, and Lincoln, through so many different eyes, is fascinating, and connects with Lincoln’s interior dialogue and terrible grief for both his own son, and for all of the sons he will be sending onto bloody battlefields, as imagined by Saunders. Even if the cemetery story is too much for you, I recommend at least looking through the book to see these accounts. About two-thirds of the way through you will find absolutely scathing comments and letters as bad as anything you can find about our president on the Internet.

While Lincoln in the Bardo can be read as a novel of historical fiction, or a portrait of grief, it can be funny, foul, and sometimes gross (I was not expecting a poop joke four pages in). There are many moments of tenderness, and, despite the grief, horror, denial, and anger that emerge in the cemetery, it is also hopeful for those in the bardo, and for freedom in America.

If you like your narratives to be straightforward, this is probably not the book for you. But if you are willing to try out this unusual narrative structure, and do some rereading for better understanding, this is a ghost story you won’t soon forget.

Contains: racial slurs, suicide, references to rape and child molestation.

Posted on November 27, 2018 by , Reply

Musings: Writing From The Heart: Strange Star by Emma Carroll and Out of the Wild Blue by Blue Balliett

Strange Star by Emma Carroll

Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0399556050

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

In a recent interview, R.L. Stine expressed his frustration with the writing advice “write from your heart.” To paraphrase, he said “I don’t write from the heart. I write to entertain.”

You may argue that Stine writes formula fiction, which can be predictable, and that it’s shallow to write only to entertain. Only you can make that decision, but know that just because you are writing out of love, that doesn’t mean your writing will be loved, or even understood, by the audience you are trying to reach. I’m writing about children’s books here because that’s what I love and where I’ve recently seen examples of this, but if you’re writing for any audience, this still applies. In general, people who read to escape are looking for a good story, one that flows. They don’t want to have to work for their chills and thrills. I think that’s particularly true for children and teens.

I’ve come across two books this month that illustrate this perfectly. The first one, which I recently reviewed here, Out of the Wild Blue, by the outstanding children’s author Blue Balliett, was a tribute to Nantucket and its ghosts. It is clever and literary, and the worst book she’s ever written. I read it because I was asked to by another school media specialist who couldn’t get through the first 20 pages. Both of us are baffled at the amazing reviews this book has gotten from other librarians and reviewers. Heavy on atmosphere, this book shorted us on character development and plot. It was WORK for me to get through it, and what kid wants to have to work for the creepiness and chills you expect in a ghost story? I mean, the story is practically a love letter, but it’s not successful as an accessible ghost story for children. Or, for that matter, for at least two other adults with expertise in children’s literature.

The second, Strange Star, by Emma Carroll, has a lot of originality, although it’s not necessarily successful at getting the reader to fully suspend disbelief, and some of the pieces don’t connect as smoothly as they could. Strange Star centers on the events of the “haunted summer” during which Mary Shelley first conceived of Frankenstein. The first point of view character, is Felix, a free black servant boy working for Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati, whose goal is to convince Byron to take him back to England as a footman. His story is told in third person. We get Felix’s impressions of Byron, the Shelleys, and their friends, and some pretty detailed information on them is communicated through him. Felix isn’t only used as a way to communicate information, though. He is a character with agency and his own motivations. The second point of view character, Lizzie, an English village girl who was struck by lightning, blinded, and kidnapped by a scientist obsessed with using electricity to resurrect the dead, speaks in her own voice. Her experience of the same group of people that Felix admires is a terrifying one.

The author named many of the fictional characters in the book after characters in Frankenstein as well, even naming the scientist Francesca Stine. She managed to include historical figures like William Godwin, Mary’s father (a relatively minor part of her life after she ran away with Shelley) as a character, whose motivations and actions help move the story toward its conclusion. The messages of and ideas behind the creation of Frankenstein come through clearly in the book—clearly Carroll did her research and used it creatively.

As someone who’s read Frankenstein and also read a lot about Mary Shelley, I found this to be really well done and clever. It is vivid, not just in its descriptions and setting (the title is Strange Star for a reason), but in its portrayal of terrible emotions, particularly grief. Carroll also did a nice job of seamlessly integrating diversity into her characters. But I am not the audience. This is a book written for middle-schoolers, most of whom will not yet have read Frankenstein or heard of Mary Shelley. They won’t even yet have encountered the work of Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. They will miss most of the references and won’t be able to connect the dots when things are implied rather than stated outright (okay, maybe you don’t want them to figure out that Claire Clairmont has a thing going on with Byron). You would have to love Frankenstein and be fascinated with the life of Mary Shelley to write this book, but so much of it will be above the heads of the readers it is targeted for!

I’m sure there are more readers for this than for Balliett’s book, because Carroll handles plot and character development much more effectively—parts of the book are disturbing and even terrifying—but while Strange Star is definitely one to remember, and certainly one I’d recommend to fans of Mary Shelley, it’s more the book that Carroll wanted to write than the one her target audience will appreciate.

As an adult choosing or reviewing a children’s book for a child or teen, it can be easy to forget that we can’t read these books as if they’re written for us when making recommendations. And as an adult choosing to write a book for a child or teen, or really anyone looking to read for pleasure, it’s important to recognize that, if you want to reach readers, writing from your heart is not enough.

 

Posted on September 21, 2018 by , Reply
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