Weird Women Read online

  Contents

  Introduction by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

  The Old Nurse’s Story (1852) by Elizabeth Gaskell

  The Moonstone Mass (1868) by Harriet Prescott Spofford

  Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse (1869) by Louisa May Alcott

  What Was the Matter? (1869) by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

  An Itinerant House (1878) by Emma Frances Dawson

  Nut Bush Farm (1882) by Mrs. J. H. (Charlotte) Riddell

  The Gray Man (1886) by Sarah Orne Jewett

  In a Far-Off World (1890) by Olive Schreiner

  The Giant Wistaria (1891) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  The Lady with the Carnations (1896) by Marie Corelli

  The Were-Wolf (1896) by Clemence Housman

  Transmigration (1900) by Dora Sigerson Shorter

  The Wind in the Rose-Bush (1902) by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

  The Banshee’s Halloween (1903) by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

  In the Closed Room (1904) by Frances Hodgson Burnett

  The Dream-baby (1904) by Olivia Howard Dunbar

  The Third Drug (1908) by E. Bland (Edith Nesbit)

  The Pocket-Hunter’s Story (1909) by Mary Austin

  Twilight (1912) by Marjorie Bowen

  The Swine-Gods (1917) by Regina Miriam Bloch

  Jordan’s End (1923) by Ellen Glasgow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  To Mary Shelley, mother of monsters

  Introduction by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

  “… if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”

  —from The British Critic’s 1818 review of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein

  Any student of the literary history of the weird or horror story can hardly be faulted for expecting to find a genre bereft of female writers, at least in its first two centuries. A few of the authors included in this volume—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Clemence Housman—were discussed in early studies like H. P. Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927); some would be acclaimed in later, more exhaustive works like The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986); and others would find later fame thanks largely to filmed adaptations of their work (Herminie Templeton Kavanagh with Disney’s 1959 Darby O’Gill and the Little People, and Edith Nesbit with the BBC adaptation of The Railway Children in 1968). But reprint anthologies of horror published throughout the twentieth century could routinely be counted on to include few or no stories by women. Perhaps the editors of those books were concerned about “the gentleness of her sex.”

  Yet there were women writing early terror tales—in fact, there were a lot of them. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when printing technologies enabled the mass production of cheap newspapers and magazines that needed a steady supply of material, many of the writers supplying that work were women. The middle classes were demanding reading material, and the plethora of magazines, newspapers, and cheap books meant a robust marketplace for authors. Women had limited career opportunities, and writing was probably more appealing than some of the other avenues open to them. Though the publishing world was male-dominated, writing anonymously or using masculine-sounding names (such as “M.E. Braddon”) gave women a chance to break into the market. It was also still a time when writers were freer than today’s writers to write work in a variety of both styles and what we now call genres. A prolific writer might pen adventure stories, romantic tales, domestic stories, mystery or detective fiction, stories of the supernatural—there were really no limits.

  Spiritualism—the belief that spirit communication could be conducted by a medium at a séance, and could be scientifically proven (despite continued evidence to the contrary)—was widely popular, and so one might expect to find that many writers of this period were producing ghost stories. But ghost stories were just one type of supernatural story produced by women writers at this time. Women were also writing stories of mummies, werewolves, mad scientists, ancient curses, and banshees. They were writing tales of cosmic horror half a century before Lovecraft ever put pen to paper, and crafting weird westerns, dark metaphorical fables, and those delicious, dread-inducing gems that are simply unclassifiable.

  This range of subjects is, of course, not unique to women writers, but there are nonetheless certain attributes to much of their work that are distinctly feminine. Not surprisingly, many stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth century feature women involved in traditional feminine pursuits—family, children, and even gardening all figure prominently in their fiction. Look, for example, at the terror and pathos surrounding the children at the heart of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Giant Wistaria,” Mary Wilkins Freeman’s “The Wind in the Rose-bush,” Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s “What Was the Matter?,” and Olivia Howard Dunbar’s “The Dream-baby.” In the latter story, the author addresses head-on the self-worth of childless women, even when their lives are otherwise satisfying.

  These early female authors often introduced social commentary into their works, especially issues of the role of women and class struggles. The suffragette movement and labor reform were important throughout this period of time; in fact, the vast majority of the women included in this book were involved in these movements, as well as socialism (and, of course, spiritualism). During the nineteenth century, work as a domestic was one of the few options available to women who were either not born into the middle or upper classes, or were unfortunate enough to fall from them, and several of these stories—Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story,” Dora Sigerson Shorter’s “Transmigration,” Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “In the Closed Room”—are told from the point of view of either domestics in a wealthy household or the very poor. A story like Marjorie Bowen’s “Twilight” took the reverse tactic of turning one of history’s most decadent, wealthy figures (Lucrezia Borgia) into a nightmarish vision that terrifies a young man, while Ellen Glasgow’s “Jordan’s End” traces the macabre fall of a once-great family. Olive Schreiner’s “In a Far-off World” and Regina Miriam Bloch’s “The Swine-Gods” use rich, dark metaphors—complete with bloody sacrifices—to illustrate societal ills like war, greed, and disparity between the genders in relationships. And then there are the ghost stories, which speak to how these authors both romanticized and feared the past.

  While it seems downright shocking today to think that anyone could decide to support a family by writing and actually do it in a relatively short period of time, a number of the writers included here—women who abruptly found themselves without a father or a husband and with siblings, children, or elderly parents to support—entered the writing field for precisely that reason. Ann Radcliffe, one of the greatest female novelists in the years prior to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters, was the highest-paid writer of the 1790s, and a century later Marie Corelli (whose lovely and eerie “The Lady with the Carnations” is a fine example of her work) would hold that honor in the 1890s. But even a writer of moderately successful short stories could keep a family on her earnings during this time, and without resorting to a life of drudgery in a factory or wealthy household. Writing also gave women the chance to receive the same pay as men, especially if they were satisfied with anonymity. Two of the most famous authors of the period who originally took up writing out of financial need (and both of whom appear in this book) were feminist icon Charlotte Perkins Gilman—who, by the way, was also an early user of self-publishing—and Frances Hodgson Burnett, who, like Louisa May Alcott, became known for her children’s books although both enjoyed writing supernatural tales (Alcott, in fact, actually preferred writing them.). Charlott
e Riddell—another author who took up the pen to support herself and her mother—produced ghost stories that felt drenched in the folklore of the past, with their plots often depending on the time-honored tradition of a haunting that originated from a murder (see “Nut Bush Farm”). Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Gray Man,” written about fifty years after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Gray Champion,” almost reads as a feminine answer to that earlier story; whereas Hawthorne’s ghost returns to engage in battle, Jewett’s specter is a participant in gentler activities like teaching and gardening (however, Jewett also captures the hint of irony underscoring Hawthorne’s tale).

  While many of these women certainly wrote as much from the simple, basic writer’s need to tell a story, there’s another key difference between them and their male counterparts: call it ego or ambition … or lack thereof, because many of these women wrote under pseudonyms, used their married name (Riddell and Gaskell were usually known as Mrs. J. H. Riddell and Mrs. Gaskell), or in some situations—like Harriet Spofford’s astonishing weird tale “The Moonstone Mass”—under no byline whatsoever. Many of these authors were friendly with male writers who would go on to achieve greater fame, or they were tremendously admired by famous men, only to see their own names fade into semi-obscurity. Emma Frances Dawson, whose collection An Itinerant House and Other Stories is now a sought-after rarity in the secondhand market, was a great favorite of Ambrose Bierce, who frequently served as her editor, yet there’s conjecture that Dawson died (at the age of 87) of starvation. Similarly, the mysterious Regina Miriam Bloch, once rumored to be the great Rebecca West, and who had been acclaimed by the British newspapers when her two short story collections, The Swine-Gods and Other Visions and The Book of Strange Loves, were released in 1917 and 1918 respectively, didn’t merit a single mention in any paper upon her death in 1939.

  Fortunately, the rise of the academic genre and feminist studies over the last few years has (deservedly) brought some of these authors back into the limelight; and fine small presses like Ash-Tree Press have provided lovely new editions of their works. We hope this volume will serve to continue introducing more of these gifted—and very dark—works to modern readers.

  A Note on the Selection Process: we seriously considered well over fifty stories (by fifty authors) for inclusion in this book. We read critical studies, scoured old periodicals and anthologies, and in one case (that of Regina Miriam Bloch) even photographed the pages of a book from a university library’s Special Collections. Unfortunately, in the end a publisher can only print so many pages, so we were forced to winnow our initial list down to less than half of those we loved. We weighed our final selections for their importance in the genre and how well they fit in with our vision for the book, but—first and foremost—we chose stories that frightened, disturbed, entranced, amused, and generally entertained us. We apologize to readers who may have a favorite story that isn’t reflected here; if you’d like to hear more about our decisions—and read some of the stories we couldn’t use—please check out our site www.weirdwomenbook.com.

  Weird Women

  Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810–1865) was a British author who is often known simply as “Mrs. Gaskell.” At the age of 22, Elizabeth married an assistant minister, William Gaskell, and bore four daughters. A son, born in 1845, died at nine months from scarlet fever. To distract her from her grief, her husband suggested she write a novel. Her first novel, Mary Barton, a story of impoverished workers, was published in 1848 and had a tremendous impact on British readers. Charles Dickens was a fan (although their relationship as editor and writer for his magazines was sometimes tumultuous), and Gaskell was also acclaimed for her biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Although she’s now known primarily for social realism, she was also a gifted teller of ghostly tales. “The Old Nurse’s Story” first appeared in 1852, in a special section of Dickens’s periodical Household Words entitled “A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire.”

  The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

  You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor. I thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming baby, and what I should have to do with it. However, I see you don’t care so much for this part of my story, as for what you think is to come, so I’ll tell you at once. I was engaged and settled at the parsonage before Miss Rosamond (that was the baby, who is now your mother) was born. To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when she came, for she was never out of her mother’s arms, and slept by her all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted her to me. There never was such a baby before or since, though you’ve all of you been fine enough in your turns; but for sweet, winning ways, you’ve none of you come up to your mother. She took after her mother, who was a real lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a grand-daughter of Lord Furnivall’s, in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor sister, and had been brought up in my lord’s family till she had married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in Carlisle—but a clever, fine gentleman as ever was—and one who was a right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells. When your mother, little Miss Rosamond, was about four or five years old, both her parents died in a fortnight—one after the other. Ah! that was a sad time. My pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby, when my master came home from one of his long rides, wet and tired, and took the fever he died of; and then she never held up her head again, but just lived to see her dead baby, and have it laid on her breast, before she sighed away her life. My mistress had asked me, on her death-bed, never to leave Miss Rosamond; but if she had never spoken a word, I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world.

  The next thing, and before we had well stilled our sobs, the executors and guardians came to settle the affairs. They were my poor young mistress’s own cousin, Lord Furnivall, and Mr. Esthwaite, my master’s brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so well-to-do then as he was afterwards, and with a large family rising about him. Well! I don’t know if it were their settling, or because of a letter my mistress wrote on her death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow it was settled that Miss Rosamond and me were to go to Furnivall Manor House, in Northumberland; and my lord spoke as if it had been her mother’s wish that she should live with his family, and as if he had no objections, for that one or two more or less could make no difference in so grand a household. So, though that was not the way in which I should have wished the coming of my bright and pretty pet to have been looked at—who was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never so grand—I was well pleased that all the folks in the Dale should stare and admire, when they heard I was going to be young lady’s maid at my Lord Furnivall’s at Furnivall Manor.

  But I made a mistake in thinking we were to go and live where my lord did. It turned out that the family had left Furnivall Manor House fifty years or more. I could not hear that my poor young mistress had ever been there, though she had been brought up in the family; and I was sorry for that, for I should have liked Miss Rosamond’s youth to have passed where her mother’s had been.

  My lord’s gentleman, from whom I asked as many questions as I durst, said that the Manor House was at the foot of the Cumberland Fells,I and a very grand place; that an old Miss Furnivall, a great-aunt of my lord’s, lived there, with only a few servants; but that it was a very healthy place, and my lord had thought that it would suit Miss Rosamond very well for a few years
, and that her being there might perhaps amuse his old aunt.

  I was bidden by my lord to have Miss Rosamond’s things ready by a certain day. He was a stern, proud man, as they say all the Lords Furnivall were; and he never spoke a word more than was necessary. Folk did say he had loved my young mistress; but that, because she knew that his father would object, she would never listen to him, and married Mr. Esthwaite; but I don’t know. He never married, at any rate. But he never took much notice of Miss Rosamond; which I thought he might have done if he had cared for her dead mother. He sent his gentleman with us to the Manor House, telling him to join him at NewcastleII that same evening; so there was no great length of time for him to make us known to all the strangers before he, too, shook us off; and we were left, two lonely young things (I was not eighteen) in the great old Manor House. It seems like yesterday that we drove there. We had left our own dear parsonage very early, and we had both cried as if our hearts would break, though we were travelling in my lord’s carriage, which I thought so much of once. And now it was long past noon on a September day, and we stopped to change horses for the last time at a little smoky town, all full of colliersIII and miners. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep, but Mr. Henry told me to waken her, that she might see the park and the Manor House as we drove up. I thought it rather a pity; but I did what he bade me, for fear he should complain of me to my lord. We had left all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gates of a large wild park—not like the parks here in the south, but with rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old oaks, all white and peeled with age.

  The road went up about two miles, and then we saw a great and stately house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew, and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place;—to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriage-way in order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed front; at both sides of which a wing projected, which were each the ends of other side fronts; for the house, although it was so desolate, was even grander than I expected. Behind it rose the Fells, which seemed unenclosed and bare enough; and on the left hand of the house, as you stood facing it, was a little, old-fashioned flower-garden, as I found out afterwards. A door opened out upon it from the west front; it had been scooped out of the thick, dark wood for some old Lady Furnivall; but the branches of the great forest-trees had grown and overshadowed it again, and there were very few flowers that would live there at that time.