The ghosts that haunt us : Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's stories of the supernatural

Author

Sally E. Corran

Date of Award

12-2000

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Don Cox

Committee Members

David Gosles, B.J. Leygett, Thomas C. Hood

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's short stories of the supernatural in which he emphasizes the presence of forces beyond human knowledge and control. Using Todorov's notion of the fantastic and Freud's notion of the uncanny,I Argue that Le Fanu presents spiritual, historical, and psychological forces as supernatural in order to warn his readers that there are powers in the material world working in ways that cannot be explained by science or rationalism.Le Fanu challenges the increasing rationalism and materialism of the nineteenth century by creating stories that leave readers questioning the veracity of events depicted,the reliability of the narrators, and the causes of the seemingly supernatural events.However,he does present the reader with possibilities for interpreting the supernatural events.They might be caused by supernatural powers in a spiritual realm. Often,the mysterious events occur when a character ignores or denies the existence of a spiritual force,whether Christian or folkloric. Another interpretation is that many of supernatural events occur because of a crime committed years ago by an ancestor ornation.In these cases,even the innocent are affected by the inexplicable events,muchlike Le Fanu and his family were affected by the repercussions of the Anglo-Irish wars a century earlier. The final explanation Idiscuss is psychological; the disturbed internal state of a character supernaturally affects the material world around him or her. These Explanations depict the power of the spiritual, historical,and psychological forces that rationalism and science cannot explain.In LeFanu's stories,though,the explanations are ambiguous,and the reader is left doubting the veracity of.any one interpretation.Not Only do these stories present the different forces at work in the material world,but because of the reader's hesitation,they are whatTodorov would call fantastic. This Quality creates an uncanny effect on the reader,and as Freud argues,the uncanny is the feeling created by submitting to an irrational belief. By Creating this uncanny feeling in the reader,Le Fanu's stories haunt them with the feeling that there are powers beyond their knowledge and control.

Recommended Citation

Corran, Sally E., "The ghosts that haunt us : Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's stories of the supernatural. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2000.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/8253