Ghosts and l'écriture-femme

Old Nurse's Tale

by Elizabeth Gaskell

Camille Pissarro (1830-1902), Chestnut Trees at Louveciennes (1872)

Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The Old Nurse's Story: background

Hello all

I do hope that everybody enjoys Gaskell's classic ghost story - possibly her greatest Gothic tale!

The story is included in the Penguin Classics edition of Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell, and also in Curious, If True, a collection published by Virago, and I believe it is also in many ghost story compilations.

The tale was first published in "A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire" in Household Words, Extra Christmas No. (December 1852). A footnote in Gothic Tales explains that the tale appeared with 10 others, including two by Dickens, who "also provided the loosest of framing devices by which to link them."

Jenny Uglow writes in her biography of Gaskell:

"This ghost story is one of the finest Victorian examples of the genre. As if the short form and Gothic, aristocratic setting had released her inhibitions almost without her knowing it, Gaskell produced a bold, sweeping treatment of the same themes - unmarried sex and illegitimacy - that she was currently dealing with so cautiously in 'Ruth. Here she makes no play with 'innocence', but exposes stormy passions in lonely women, attacking the jealous, self-righteous sister and violently punishing the cruel, intolerant father."

Despite Uglow's comments, while reading the story it struck me that the child's mother is in fact not "guilty" of unmarried sex at all because she is "secretly married" to the child's father, that favourite Victorian device to avoid the shock storyline of an illegitimate child. Nevertheless, the feelings of guilt and concealment are there very strongly in the text - despite the rather hollow church ceremony, we feel as if a seduction and betrayal have taken place.

There are quite a few similarities between Gaskell and the Brontes, and this story in particular seems to have that haunted Bronte ring to it. Laura Kranzler's introduction to the Penguin Classics edition suggests a link with Wuthering Heights and also a possible source for the story.

Kranzler writes: "Actually, there are many ways in which 'the Old Nurse's Story' can be seen as a 'borrowing' of 'Wuthering Heights', most notably in the scenes where the ghost of the little girl stands beseechingly at the window, trying to incite the real, live Rosamond out into the cold and snowy fells.

Moreover, in an uncanny moment of her own literary doubling, Gaskell recounts a story in 'The Life of Charlotte Bronte' that 'made a deep impression on Charlotte's mind', but which eerily repeats the plot of her own short story, written five years before the biography. It tells of a Haworth woman who had been seduced by her brother-in-law and became pregnant. Her outraged father locked her up in her room 'while her elder sisters flouted at and scorned her'. Haworth legend reveals that the ghosts of the mother and her daughter continue to haunt the area."

I'm not sure if this means the mother and daughter still haunt the area *now* or that they were still supposed to be there when Gaskell was writing. But the landscape round there is certainly fairly wild and bleak, and you'd think that, if ghosts exist anywhere, this would be a good spot!

Bye for now
Judy Geater

Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Gaskell's 'Old Nurse's Story': Highly Theatrical yet Real

For those who have read this one: would it not make an effective film? The snow, the organ, the jealous unmarried sisters, the fierce father, the crutch coming down hard, nearly killing the vulnerable? A vision which keeps taking us back to some original primal scene of hideousness where where the young woman and her child are thrown out of the house to starve and freeze to death; the hatred of the sisters. The two fighting over the music teacher; the sex. Then there's the child whose very existence is threatened by another child trying to get it to go out deep into the snowy landscape where it will freeze to death? The story is laden with anxiety on the part of the nurse who stands in for a mother figure. Terror when nurse cannot find the child, looks about, where could she be?

The last thing by Gaskell we read on this list was Cousin Phillis. Before that the often pastoral Cranford stories. Supposedly gentle feminine idylls. But is not this a woman's story too? Can we link Gaskell's socially concerned novels to this ghost story? Mary Barton is about a factory girl; Ruth, about an unwed mother. The difference between this ghost story and the domestic realism is one of theatricality and frankness. Is not 'The Old Nurse's Story' one of female helplessness in the face of male violence. But the villain is not the male sex, for one female loathed another. In these country towns gentlewomen didn't get to meet many males. The story of the musician or male tutor who aspires to the 'young lady' and wins her is not uncommon. As I recall her ghost story, 'The Grey Woman' is based on lurid tale of revenge which really happened within a family at one another's throats over sex and money.

So is this unreal or reality masquerading under the supernatural? The story ends in injustice and cruelty, especially the final vision.

Notice how we go back into time. A layered memory: an old nurse named Hester remembers that when she was young, she was hired to take care of a young girl, a Miss Rosamund whose parents died. Both come to live in Westmoreland (far away, rural) with an elderly female relation, Grace Furnival. So we go back in time to when the mother of the children to whom the story is addressed was a child. Hence we know from the beginning that Miss Rosamund survived.

Elements: elderly silent women, ancient house, lonely and strange. An East wing from which comes wild organ music. Great deal of care in building up of atmosphere. Frozen snowed in atmosphere: snow as death. Dead bodies are cold. Minds imprisoned.

When the nurse checks on the organ and finds it impossible such a crumbled instrument could have produced music, this produces a shudder.

Then there's the meanness, the mischief. Why should Miss Rosamund pay for the cruelty? What did she do? The supposedly innocent child who lures another to her certain death an eruption of something in the universe which is playfully malign, mischievous?

Any thoughts about this one in relation to other ghost stories you've read, its relation to Christmas, superstition and the supernatural, to woman's literature (lots of women have written ghost stories), to Gaskell?

As Judy wrote, this one's available in an anthology of Gaskell's stories, in Penguin Book of Ghost Stories, J. A. Cuddon, and, I add, Victorian Ghost Stories, ed. Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert from which I take my signature quotations for this evening

Ellen

---

O, tell us a tale of a ghost! now do!
It's a capital time, for the fire burns blue.
Anon, 'The Vicarage Ghost',
Tinsleys' Magazine
(Christmas Number, 1868).
And she harbours a silent wrath against Providence for
allowing the dead to walk and to molest the living.
--- Sabine Baring-Gould, 'The Leaden Ring',
from A Book of Ghosts (1904)

Re: "Old Nurse's Story:" A full-length movie

There's really enough here for a full-length movie. And, I agree, a really good one! Trying to cast it now in my mind.

Also struck me that we have a Miss Havisham wannabe here in the jilted, malevolent, vengeful, haunted (and ultimately pathetic) ancient virgin. I too wondered why the innocent child should be sucked up by the evil ghosts. And why were they evil? Why vengeful toward the child rather than toward the elderly sister?

-Karen-

Subject: [trollope-l] Gaskell's 'Old Nurse's Story': Highly Theatrical yet Real

From: Ellen Moody

For those who have read this one: would it not make an effective film? The snow, the organ, the jealous unmarried sisters, the fierce father, the crutch coming down hard, nearly killing the vulnerable?

Hello, Ellen and all:

Yes, I agree this would make a wonderful movie. All the elements are here, and it's a very chilling sort of tale.

A vision which keeps taking us back to some original primal scene of hideousness where where the young woman and her child are thrown out of the house to starve and freeze to death; the hatred of the sisters.

I was thinking of Regan and Goneril while reading this story. How very terrible it all was, seeing the coldness of the sisters toward each other. I do have to wonder, though, why coldhearted women are so often depicted as flawlessly beautiful. I suppose to show you cannot be beautiful and kind, though there are examples of that in literature, as well (Ann Radcliffe's heroines, among others). In any event, I did like the passages about the paintings, and how lovely fine the sisters were, yet how haughty and cold at the same time.

The story is laden with anxiety on the part of the nurse who stands in for a mother figure. Terror when nurse cannot find the child, looks about, where could she be?

As a mother myself, I felt especially chilled when thinking what terrible things could happen should the nurse turn her back on the child.. When she left the child sleeping in the nursery I wanted to shake her!

Is not 'The Old Nurse's Story' one of female helplessness in the face of male violence. But the villain is not the male sex, for one female loathed another.

Yes, in this case it's female rivalry that's at the crux of the matter. And how shameful it's between two sisters. It's a sort of Dorian Gray, really, when you think about it. It starts with the lovely portraits, degenerates into the death of one and the aging of the other, then to the fi nal revenge.. I can see some similarity here.

When the nurse checks on the organ and finds it impossible such a crumbled instrument could have produced music, this produces a shudder.

I knew that was coming but still did have to shudder! It was a frightening discovery.

Any thoughts about this one in relation to other ghost stories you've read, its relation to Christmas, superstition and the supernatural, to woman's literature (lots of women have written ghost stories), to Gaskell?

I've not read a lot of ghost stories at all, I must say. They've never appealed to me very much, though I've not pursued Victorian ghost stories before. I do like the gothic very much, so now that I've read this story I'll likely pursue more of the same genre.

I have read at least three Gaskell novels, and I'm trying to think what may be a common link. I can name Wives and Daughters as having the cold-hearted beauty, in the guise of the step-sister, but she was wonderful to her step-sister and awful and manipulative mostly to men. I'll have to think further.

Lisa Guidarini

Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: R[trollope-l] Old Nurse's Story

From: Karen Irland Shields

Also struck me that we have a Miss Havisham wannabe here in the jilted, malevolent, vengeful, haunted (and ultimately pathetic) ancient virgin.

I'd not thought of that, Karen, but that is true.

I too wondered why the innocent child should be sucked up by the evil ghosts.And why were they evil? Why vengeful toward the child rather than toward the elderly sister?

That's a good question. Perhaps because the child was the easier target and would be far more horrifying? After all, how much more the child would be mourned than the older lady, who hadn't too many friends and wasn't as beloved.

Lisa Guidarini

Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Gaskell's 'Old Nurse's Story': Highly Theatrical yet Real

Dear Ellen and everyone

Then there's the meanness, the mischief. Why should Miss Rosamund pay for the cruelty? What did she do? The supposedly innocent child who lures another to her certain death an eruption of something in the universe which is playfully malign, mischievous?

Whether intentionally or not, Gaskell's story links with the common idea that young children are often 'linked' with poltergeist activity, one theory being that the natural innocence linked with the exuberance of a young child can create a 'channel' for the poltergeist (literally translated as a 'scatter ghost' - due to the amount of 'physical' upheaval a poltergeist is said to cause) However, the haunting in this story does not seem to be that of poltergeist activity, but 'straightforward' restless spritis. Yet for some reason, although the haunting is said to have been taking place before the arrival of the nurse and child, once Miss Rosamund arrives the ghostly child focuses on her as if out for revenge. so are we to infer that because, in her way, Miss Furnival 'takes' to Rosamund, the ghostly child is jealous of the earthly one? Does this parallel the jealousy of the two sisters that ultimately led to the first child's death? (Grace 'telling on' her sister to their father prompts the scene where Mother and child are expelled from the house) Or is the ghostly child out for revenge on her aunt and the only way the child can hasten her aunt's death is by reducing her to such a state of fear that she will succomb to a stroke? And why does the 'ghostly mother' take Rosamund on her knee and lull her to sleep (one supposes it would have been the sleep of death) - is this too as a revenge against the (living) child that is now favoured by the (living) sister?

Ellen suggests that the jealousy between the two sisters was based on sexual jealousy, but if jealousy exists between the ghostly and earthly children, it is one sided and *not* sexual. Rosamund desperately wants to help her 'friend', calling her 'my little girl'.

One last 'psychological' question. Since this story is only narrated by one person, the old nurse, do the readers have any reason to think it may have come from *her* disordered mind? Does Gaskell, like Henry James many years later, want the reader to decide whether the ghosts were 'real' or 'figments' of the nurse's disordered brain?

Love, Gwyn.

Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The Old Nurse's Story

Hello all

Gwyn wrote

One last 'psychological' question. Since this story is only narrated by one person, the old nurse, do the readers have any reason to think it may have come from *her* disordered mind? Does Gaskell, like Henry James many years later, want the reader to decide whether the ghosts were 'real' or 'figments' of the nurse's disordered brain?

I was also reminded of the later Henry James story "The Turn of the Screw" in the way in which the ghosts cling to the child and the adult in charge has to try to protect her from them. A passage near the ending, where the nurse holds the child "tighter and tighter, till I feared I should do her a hurt" also strikingly foreshadows events in the Henry James tale - I'm wondering if the Gaskell story may have been an influence on him.

I suppose there is a certain ambiguity in the fact that the story is told by the old nurse, whose voice as storyteller is quite distinctive, and who, as you say, could have imagined the whole thing.

However, within the ghost story itself as told by the nurse, Gaskell interestingly makes all the characters see the ghosts - not just the child - making it seem that they do really exist.

Dickens, as editor of the magazine where the story was originally published, Household Words, wanted a stronger element of ambiguity, and wrote a series of letters to Gaskell asking her to change the ending so that only little Rosamond would see the ghostly figures, although everybody would see the phantom child. He even went as far as changing the ending himself - clearly overstepping the mark!

Jenny Uglow tells the story in her book "Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories":

"Dickens thought it 'a very fine ghost story indeed. Nobly told and wonderfully managed.' But the ending was the cause of a sharp disagreement between him and Elizabeth. He felt strongly that only the little girl, Rosamund, should see the phantoms. Elizabeth... replied by return, adamantly insisting that Grace must be *visibly* confronted by her guilt. Both were equally determined. Dickens hung on, proposing to leave the story on one side, 'then to come to it afresh - alter it myself - and send you the proof'. Which he did. She sent it straight back, rejecting his alterations and conceding only that Rosamund should see the ghost-child first. Dickens gave in, but drew himself up to full editorial height:

'I have no doubt, according to every principle of art that is known to me from Shakespeare downwards, that you weaken the terror of the story by making them all see the phantoms at the end. And I feel a perfect conviction that the best readers will be the most certain to make the discovery. Nous verrons.'

Having won, Elizabeth was overcome by nerves at that 'Nous verrons'. Dickens condescended to soothe her. He still thought his ending best, though, and brought out an unanswerable argument: 'All I can urge in its behalf is, that it is what I should have done myself.' "

As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, the story was written at around the same time as Gaskell's "fallen woman" novel, Ruth, (I know this is one of your favourites, Gwyn!) and I think there is a strong feeling of the same theme in the ghost story. Although the mother is secretly married (possibly a device to avoid offending Household Words readers by showing a woman giving birth outside marriage, I suspect), her father does not know this and takes it that her child has been born in sin.

He takes out his anger against the mother on the child, striking the little girl to leave that terrible wound and then casting her out to die in the cold. This whole tragedy expresses the idea of the "sin" being avenged on the next generation - as indeed illegitimate children were victimised for centuries. I think the idea of the indelible wound also somehow has a religious flavour, although I'm finding it hard to explain why - it's late at night as I write this. No snow in sight, though!

Cheers
Judy

To Trollope-l

December 14, 2000

RE: 'Old Nurse's Story:' A Winter's Tale

This certainly is a wintry tale: the imagery of snow, its coldness and the fear this engenders is central. I find the idea that the narrative is a product of the nurse's mind intriguing, and there is this folding back in time as the nurse tells the story many years after it happened. Still it's not uncommon for ghost stories to be written in the first person, and first person narratives are by definition products of the speaker's mind. The subjective feel is strong. However, as Judy says the story is written in a way that insists the other characters really see the ghosts; there is a drive towards punishment, some terrible harm has been wreaked and the forces of this tale erupt in terrible harms to match it in return. The Christian language is a thin overlay or rationale, a way of expressing something more fundamental or primtive: a fierce animism. This story projects terrible hatred and to expunge it, it seems one needs obsessively to reenact that. The suddenness of the ending is like some eruption.

Ellen Moody

Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [trollope-l] The Old Nurse's Story

I've just finished reading The Old Nurse's Story and the posts about it. I enjoyed it very much and can see why Jenny Uglow made those connections with Wuthering Heights. Ellen commented that it would make a good film and I was reminded of the way that horror films proceed, gradually showing glimpses before the full terror is burst upon us. I liked the way there were little false trails, and when the child was lost all sorts of possible frightening places in the house were there in our minds : the picture turned to one side, the broken organ, the east wing. It was a surprise to find that the child was not in the house at all.

I like Judy's link to The Turn of the Screw :

I was also reminded of the later Henry James story "The Turn of the Screw" in the way in which the ghosts cling to the child and the adult in charge has to try to protect her from them. A passage near the ending, where the nurse holds the child "tighter and tighter, till I feared I should do her a hurt" also strikingly foreshadows events in the Henry James tale - I'm wondering if the Gaskell story may have been an influence on him.

We know that the child lives but there is an ambiguous hint about her. The nurse says after the ordeal in the snow : "She wakened up bright and clear - or so I thought at first - and, my dears, so I think now." I could be over reading but the last clause might be put in to reassure the listener.

Angela

From my class lectures:

Elizabeth Gaskell: brief biography

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born in 1810 and died in 1865. She lost her mother when she was very young and was brought up by an aunt; her parents were Unitarian so she grew up somewhat outside the traditional church establishment. Her earliest years were spent in the countryside of Cheshire; her brother, John Stevenson, was lost at sea when she was young and the motif of a brother thought dead who comes back alive repeats itself in her fiction. When she was 17, her father remarried, and she didn't get along with the stepmother.

She married a Unitarian minister, Reverend William Glaskell and they moved North to industrial towns where she saw much abysmal poverty, terrible working conditions for factory and agricultural workers. She had apparently always loved to make up stories, and between 1837 and her death she wrote a number of novels and many short stories. The ghost story is structurally speaking a short story. She added much to her husband's income; she gave birth a number of times and there were tragedies: a stillborn girl, the death of a one year old son. She was successful; Dickens published her work in his All the Year Round and Household Words. She became friendly with other literary people, close to Charlotte Bronte who wrote Jane Eyre. Some people think Gaskell's finest book is her biography of Charlotte Bronte.

She apparently had heart trouble, perhaps today something could have been done to help her, but there was no effective medicine then. She died of a heart attack before she finished a very fine novel, Wives and Daughters (1865).

She used to be most admired for her socially concerned novels -- and her ghost stories fit into these from the angle of a woman's point of view.

North and South is about industrial unrest, Mary Barton about a factory girl; Ruth about an unwed mother. She is most often praised for quiet domestic realism. Superb psychologist; gift for pictorial detail. People think of her as writing gentle feminine idylls.

Yet she wrote a number of ghost stories which turn these gifts to theatrical account. orphaned when very young, and began to write stories as a girl. In these she again and again explores female helplessness in the face of male violence: how did these erupt, and they usually do in families.

She is unusual for presenting working and genuinely lower middle class women (though we don't have them in 'Old Nurse's Story' except for old nurse herself. I told of her quarrel with Dickens who wanted her to change the ending of 'Old Nurse's Story' and suggested Gaskell wanted the emphasis to be on the injustice and cruelty of the original incident.

She uses Gothic mode to challenge conventional ideas about women and marriage and sex. This fits with her interest in social justice in her realistic fiction which is woman centered too. She often sets the ghost stories in earlier era of the French revolution; often in far- away places -- as in this one the Westmoreland and Northumberland countryside.

Story itself.

'Old Nurse's Story' 1852. Old nurse named Hester when young hired to take care of young girl, Miss Rosamund whose parents die. She is taken to live in Westmoreland with an elderly female relation, Grace Furnival in Northumberland. So we go back in time to when the mother of the children addressed was a child. Ask them to tell story line. Emerges that when young Grace, the elderly lady, lost her over, a foreign music teacher, to sister Maude; and betrayed her to ruthless father in revenge. Maud and child cast out into the snow to die after he wreaks vengeance on child with his crutch.

Elements: elderly silent women, ancient house, lonely and strange. An East wing from which comes wild organ music. Great deal of care in building up of atmosphere.

Her checking up on organ and finding it impossible creates shudder.

Why have it told by the nurse? She is comfy and prosaic person; she is frightened and young; she is attached to young child, yet vulnerable. Memoir form. Flashback in little

Use of normal kinds of incidents where same anxiety aroused: you have a small child, it disappears. Where is it?

Story about "out there:" note that in numbers of the stories, we are led away from social world and into nature. Forces of nature beyond the constructions of our existence hold something in them we cannot control, beyond us. Stiff and cold in the prison of sleep and snow. Beyond the world of Christianity and safety, beyond life.

hy does the child want to lure the other child? Mischief. A poltergeist.

A Parallel story is 'Mr Justice Harbottle by Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73: it too has same triangle of evil, guilt and justice, same strange malign ghosts, same sense of ordinariness yet grandeur and theatricality.


Home
Contact Ellen Moody.
Pagemaster: Jim Moody.
Page Last Updated 31 January 2005