Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories

This book offers new insights on socially and culturally engaged Gothic ghost stories by twentieth century and contemporary female writers; including Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Toni Morrison, Ali Smith, Susan Hill, Catherine Lim, Kate Mosse, Daphne du Maurier, Helen Dunmore, Michele Roberts, and Zheng Cho. Through the ghostly body, possessions and visitations, women’s ghost stories expose links between the political and personal, genocides and domestic tyrannies, providing unceasing reminders of violence and violations. Women, like ghosts, have historically lurked in the background, incarcerated in domestic spaces and roles by familial and hereditary norms. They have been disenfranchised legally and politically, sold on dreams of romance and domesticity. Like unquiet spirits that cannot be silenced, women’s ghost stories speak the unspeakable, revealing these contradictions and oppressions. Wisker’s book demonstrates that in terms of women’s ghost stories, there is much to point the spectral finger at and much to speak out about.    

“In this compelling exploration of the gendered resonances of ghosts, revenants and superstitions for the contemporary woman writer, Gina Wisker asks us to look again at the dark secrets which leak out of haunted spaces. Revelatory in the connections it makes between female-authored Gothic narratives and forgotten crimes, violence, injustices and oppression, it advances arguments about the ghost story’s inventiveness by critiquing the terrifying silences of history and the trauma of place.” (Dr Emma Liggins, Reader in English Literature, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) 

“Gina Wisker has brilliantly shone a spotlight on ghosts. She has provided an excellent historiography of the ghostly critical landscape and invaluable analyses of contemporary novels in a chorus of spectral voices channelled by women writers. No self-respecting ghostbuster should be without a copy. 20th and 21st century ghosts from Britain, America, Singapore and Malaysia crowd its pages. You willbe haunted by this book for a long time to come.” (Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Professor of English Literature, University of the West of England, UK)

“Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories: Spectres, Revenants, Ghostly Returns combines a truly impressive geographical and sociocultural reach with depth of analysis and detailed close reading. Accessibly and engagingly written, this book constructs a compelling argument that connects the oppression of women, in a variety of cultures and milieu, with the depiction and social function of ghosts. Though focused on narratives of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Gina Wisker situates that focus within a highly authoritative broader historical context, endowing the ghost story almost with testimonial insights into the plight of women everywhere.” (Lucie Armitt, Professor of Contemporary English Literature, University of Lincoln, UK)

“Moving eruditely and ghost-like across narratives from such diverse locales as the Caribbeanand Ireland, Southeast Asia and Australia, Contemporary Women’s Ghost Stories reads the post-Jamesian internalized world of the 20^th- and 21^st-century ghost story as a woman writer’s vehicle of choice, through which to articulate personal and cultural trauma and expose histories of oppression, repression, and exclusion. In what Gina Wisker cogently argues is a fundamentally female form, women – figuratively spectral and possessing a silenced, spectral history – resurrect the often vengeful and monitory disembodied to question, in powerful and provocative ways, what it is to be embodied and human. A compelling must-read hauntology for all lovers of ghost stories, layperson and scholar alike.” (Carol Margaret Davison, Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Windsor, Canada)

Gina Wisker is an Associate Professor at the University of Bath, and Professor Emeritus of Higher Education & Contemporary Literature at the University of Brighton, UK. Gina has published twenty-six books and over one hundred and forty articles, including Key Concepts in Postcolonial Literature (2007); Horror Fiction: An Introduction (2005); Margaret Atwood, an Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction (2012) and Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction (2016). Gina co-edits the online dark fantasy journal Dissections (2006-), Spokes poetry magazine (1990s-) and hosts ‘words and worlds’ readings for ICFA. Gina lives in Cambridge, has two sons and a feisty poodle.