Ghosts have always been used in literature to represent elements belonging to the past. But more than often, what makes ghosts appear is more terrible than the apparitions themselves. In order to explain this statement, we will explore guilt and its relationship with ghosts through Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Old Nurse’s Story using Sigmund Freud’s studies about The Uncanny as a basis.
What makes ghosts scary? According to Sigmund Freud, ghosts are part of a set of elements that he identifies as uncanny. Sigmund Freud defines the Uncanny as a phenomenon in which we feel fear towards something that comes back to our lives after being repressed and hidden in the depths of our mind. The most prominent characteristic of the Uncanny is that it appears …show more content…
The origin of these ghosts is in the rivalry between Miss Maude and Miss Grace, two sisters who fell in love with the same man. Miss Maude married this man illegitimately and had a little girl with him, but he repeatedly cheated on her with Miss Grace, eventually leaving the family. The situation was very tense between the two ladies, and eventually Miss Grace told their father Miss Maude’s secret. Furious about her daughter disgracing herself and the family, the old lord hit her child with a crutch and kicked them out of home, and eventually the miserable duo died in the …show more content…
However, nowadays, we could think that these kind of ghosts belong to the past and that they do no longer produce terror. A contemporary reader might find The Old Nurse’s Tale too distant from their era and ideology, since our reaction to an illegitimate marriage would be different to the one of the Furnivall family. Yet, the guilt for horrible actions is still present in us. This is exemplified by Andrew Bennet and Nicholas Royle by using the attitude of contemporary US culture towards its past of slavery and native pillage: “…US culture continues to be haunted by the atrocities of its past.” In fact, they accompany this example with a literary work based on the ghosts of slavery: Beloved, by Toni Morrison. It is impossible to revert the consequences of years and years of atrocities; it is too horrible, too much of a taboo topic to speak about it, but at the same time, it must be talked about in order to avoid forgetting it. “The history of the United States is an untellable ghost story that must not, however, be
What makes ghosts scary? According to Sigmund Freud, ghosts are part of a set of elements that he identifies as uncanny. Sigmund Freud defines the Uncanny as a phenomenon in which we feel fear towards something that comes back to our lives after being repressed and hidden in the depths of our mind. The most prominent characteristic of the Uncanny is that it appears …show more content…
The origin of these ghosts is in the rivalry between Miss Maude and Miss Grace, two sisters who fell in love with the same man. Miss Maude married this man illegitimately and had a little girl with him, but he repeatedly cheated on her with Miss Grace, eventually leaving the family. The situation was very tense between the two ladies, and eventually Miss Grace told their father Miss Maude’s secret. Furious about her daughter disgracing herself and the family, the old lord hit her child with a crutch and kicked them out of home, and eventually the miserable duo died in the …show more content…
However, nowadays, we could think that these kind of ghosts belong to the past and that they do no longer produce terror. A contemporary reader might find The Old Nurse’s Tale too distant from their era and ideology, since our reaction to an illegitimate marriage would be different to the one of the Furnivall family. Yet, the guilt for horrible actions is still present in us. This is exemplified by Andrew Bennet and Nicholas Royle by using the attitude of contemporary US culture towards its past of slavery and native pillage: “…US culture continues to be haunted by the atrocities of its past.” In fact, they accompany this example with a literary work based on the ghosts of slavery: Beloved, by Toni Morrison. It is impossible to revert the consequences of years and years of atrocities; it is too horrible, too much of a taboo topic to speak about it, but at the same time, it must be talked about in order to avoid forgetting it. “The history of the United States is an untellable ghost story that must not, however, be