I read the other day in a book by a fashionable essayist that ghosts went out when electric light came in. What nonsense!
The essential quality of this quote should not be underestimated. In fact, it is a necessity for appreciating Wharton’s ghost stories; for that matter, any ghost story. Not only is it of no great importance whether nor not the reader believes in ghosts, it is beside the point; what is absolutely vital to the success of any story of the supernatural is that at least one integral character believe in them. A ghost story populated by non-believing mortals would almost not be worth the writing.
Bells was not nearly as large as it looked; like many old houses it was very narrow, and but one story high, with servants’ rooms in the low attics, and much space wasted in crooked passages and superfluous stairs.
Many of the ghost stories written by Edith Wharton might more accurately be termed haunted house stories. The sense of place is essential to creating an atmosphere of increasing dread. In addition, Wharton often relies upon the conventional Gothic conventions of lending her haunted homes the requisite architectural secrets and idiosyncrasies which can contribute to mysterious occurrences and situations.
“Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say there’s one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The women in Brittany drink dreadfully.”
Generally speaking, the structure of Wharton’s ghost stories do not very much from one to the next. As a means of keeping within the conventions she had set out for herself, the options to differentiate them were rather limited. “Kerfol” is another haunted house story, for instance. But in this case, she is able to tweak the template in an agreeable manner by locating the spirit of the ghosts within its animal inhabitants rather than its human occupants.
Have you ever questioned the long shuttered front of an old Italian house, that motionless mask, smooth, mute, equivocal as the face of a priest behind which buzz the secrets of the confessional? Other houses declare the activities they shelter; they are the clear expressive cuticle of a life flowing close to the surface; but the old palace in its narrow street, the villa on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the disjointed stones and the keys rust in unused doors. . . .
The opening paragraph to this story could well serve as a preface to a collection of Wharton’s ghost stories. The ghost is always inextricably bound to a place. Wharton connects the architecture of a building to the essence of the souls which have called it home. Non-spectral visitors must learn to intuit and interpret the messages these homes are trying to send them because in nearly every case, the structure is somehow a transmission of the spirit haunting them.
