Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide Women Writers and the Supernatural

An interesting rereading of familiar texts by Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot recovering the historical and literary roots of the supernatural as it appears in each women's work. Dickerson (English, Rhodes College) makes interesting observations about women's changing roles in the 19th century when scientific advancements relegated women to the home as arbiters of the spiritual while men occupied themselves with "rational" invention. Through close readings, she demonstrates how the Brontes, Gaskell, and Eliot resisted this division and, simultaneously, created a spiritual genre of writing traditionally denigrated by critics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR