The Ghosts of Capitalism
Unrestricted runaway capitalism during the Gilded Age lies ever-present as motivating or determining force in Wharton’s serious novels of manner, so it should hardly be surprising that it also pops up in her genre fiction. What is surprising, however, is the corrosiveness of the critique. While Wharton freely criticized social convention and etiquette New York’s upper crust, those novels and stories rarely if ever make any apology for actually being wealthy. The main unifying link between her serious fiction and ghost stories is milieu; these ghosts haunt mansions and other domiciles of the well-to-do. The appearance of the spirits is very often tied to past. The ghastly appearance of the titular organs in “The Eyes” are directly connected to the greed the character named Culwin. Even more, the activity of ghosts are directly tied to the excesses of capitalism in “Afterward.”
Ghosts as the Agency of Second Chances
The world of Edith Wharton’s ghosts is also a world of mortals seeking second chances in life. Many of the stories feature characters at a pivotal point in their lives in which their efforts to reconstruct their past or reboot their present is the engine driving them toward conflict with the supernatural. "A Bottle of Perrier" situates this theme perhaps most directly and certainly most ironically with the tale of its protagonist ultimately being victimized by a vain attempt to reclaim the glory of his past. The ghosts of romance, on the other hand, is at play in stories of attempts at rekindling old flames in stories like “Afterward” and “Pomegranate Seeds.” Old love literally becomes a ghost in the form of Emma Saxon in “The Lady Maid’s Bell.”
Haunted House as Homes of the Subconscious
While known as “ghost stories,” Wharton’s supernatural stories can be more appropriately termed haunted house fiction. The link between spectral character and moral characters is almost always dependent up the mediation of a home. The architecture of domesticity is a metaphor for the architectural construction of the subconscious and the halls, rooms, grounds, passageways and various other external aspects of the home become means by which the repression is activated within the living to stir the arrival ghostly presences. In “All Soul’s” and “The Looking Glass” the mediation is activated through domestic servants. On the other hand, the ghosts of “Kerfol” are dependent upon the repressed emotions of a lifelong bachelor literally setting loose the ghostly dogs war.
