The Usage and Effect of Ghosts in Literature

This idea originated from a quote in one of the most famed and critically-acclaimed ghost stories in the past century - "The Haunting of Hill House," by Shirley Jackson. The quote is: "No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself." (Jackson, 102) Dr. Montague comes to this discovery after years of researching the supernatural, leading to his greatest work yet in the form of four random citizens with backgrounds integrated in paranormal activity researching a possibly haunted house.

Dr. Montague's quote I believe can be traced along the guidelines and boundaries of our work this semester. Many of the stories we've read have had ghosts encounter characters in one way or another, whether they be metaphorical ghosts (personal, deep-seeded problems which for one reason or another become un-rooted throughout the stories, as seen in "Beloved"), ghosts created by the problems society has faced over time (as seen in "The Yellow Wallpaper") or actual ghosts which interact and disturb characters (such as the ghosts from Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," or "The Canterville Ghosts"). These ghosts, while sometimes heavily influencing the decisions and actions of the characters they "haunt," never bring any actual direct harm to the person. They simply make the character create situations which harm themselves, through the decisions they're forced to make.

In Toni Morrison's "Beloved," the main character Sethe coincides with the ghost of her baby daughter haunting her house ("124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom" [Morrison, 1]), while throughout the book several other ghosts come back to Sethe and continue to haunt her existence. These ghosts come in the flavors described earlier: the metaphorical sense (the "ghosts" of Sethe's traumatic life of slavery, degradation, humiliation and guilt after having murdered her daughter) and in a more physical sense (as the "reincarnation" of her deceased daughter Beloved). All of Sethe's ghosts severely deteriorate her personal character over time, as seen in this quote: "Then she did the magic: lifted Sethe's feet and legs and massaged them until she cried salt tears. 'It's gonna hurt now' said Amy. 'Anything dead coming back to life hurts." (Morrison, 42). This quote can be representative of Beloved's intrusion on Sethe's life, at first feeling good and making Sethe happy (much like the aforementioned massage) but eventually Beloved being brought back to life hurts Sethe, along with Sethe's resurrected feelings of guilt. Beloved and Sethe's past never actually bring direct harm to Sethe (nor do her feelings of guilt), but they do weigh down Sethe's emotions and conscience and can eventually be held responsible for her outburst toward the end of the novel, at a time when Sethe is still able to control her actions. This means Sethe chooses and creates the damage herself, choosing to lunge at the man with an ice pick.

Much of the physical, emotional, and mental damage Sethe receives in the novel can be viewed as if Sethe allows the damage to occur, or even goes as far to provoke it in some occasions. Sure some of the bigger, more traumatizing events in her life couldn't be avoided (being born into slavery, being sexually abused by the members of Sweet Home), but other important, "ghost-creating" events were triggered by Sethe. For example, there was overwhelming evidence of Beloved being the reincarnation of Sethe's murdered daughter. Sethe at first didn't believe it, in an attempt to escape her horrible past, but eventually followed it to be true and embraced Beloved's presence in the house as her long-lost child. Sethe could've simply taken Beloved in as her daughter and attempted to restart whatever family she had before the incident, but instead Sethe's guilt feeds off of her and turns Sethe into some twisted mother demanding forgiveness for what she's done, to try and calm down her intense guilt. In this sense Sethe is provoking the mental stress she endures in the later sections of the book, rather than seeing how she's acting toward Beloved and how she's responding to it. Ultimately, Sethe allows the ghost of Beloved to truly eat away at her character.

This leads into another part of Sethe's past which eats away at her: Sethe's interaction with slavery. Instead of embracing her negative experiences and possibly seeking help within her community (by either talking with someone about everything she's endured or simply asking someone for help with food and other domestic issues) Sethe chooses to repress her history and try to move forward. As noble as it is to attempt this, it eventually backfires when Paul D comes to 124 and forces tucked-away memories of abuse and mistreatment to come back to Sethe. Perhaps if Sethe confronted the ghosts of her past, her end result wouldn't have been so traumatic and damaging.

One of the more important ghosts created by Sethe is hard to blame her for. In a blind, motherly rage, Sethe decides to murder her children (only successfully killing one) when Schoolteacher tries to take them all back to Sweet Home. Sethe's passion for her children overcame her, and the ghosts created from her past experiences caught up with her, giving her the option of murdering them. Sethe tries to protect her children from the life she had to endure, by believing death is a more viable option than a life of captivity and servitude. While Sethe did choose to kill her child, technically choosing to create the ghost which haunts her conscience in reaction to the murder, the reader can't help but become sympathetic for her after observing the consequences it has on her later on in life. It can be argued though that her child's death was in vain, and that there was another solution which she failed to see. Paul D sees this, and leaves 124 after hearing about what Sethe did so long ago: "What you did was wrong Sethe.' 'I should have gone on back there? Taken my babies back there?' 'There could have been a way. Some other way." (Morrison, 194) Whatever that option could have been perhaps wasn't seen at the time by Sethe because of her previous ghosts taking control, making her see only the one option she finally chooses.

Creating this ghost follows into Sethe inadvertently creating a more actual ghost which haunts 124 at the time of the story. The ghost haunting 124 is believed to be Sethe's murdered daughter, because of a number of supernatural occurrences (the baby's handprints on the cake, the mirror shattering) which scared away Sethe's other two children, Howard and Buglar. Therefore by murdering her daughter, Sethe created this ghost too, although this one was again hard to blame her for since its creation was more against her will considering her options at the time.

Several other characters we've read about throughout the course have created/been possessed by ghosts inadvertently, much like Sethe's daughter's ghost haunting 124, Eleanor Vance from "The Haunting of Hill House" being one of them. Eleanor had an extensive background involved with the paranormal, since an accidental rainstorm of rocks barraging her house when she was very young. This history with the metaphysical is what attracted Dr. Montague towards her for his experiment with Hill House. Eleanor's character is a very sheltered and sympathetic one, after having to take care of her ill mother for most of her life. This resulted in her not having many friends, along with the qualities friends tend to give people (like self-confidence and the idea of being socially acceptable). After seeing Hill House as a way of making new friends, her weakness of her desire to be accepted comes out, and the ghosts of Hill House (found out to be the actual house itself, angry after an unresolved feud with the daughters of the previous owners) prey on it by linking a common ground between the house and Eleanor (making Eleanor feel "at home"). This soon gives the house the ability to control her actions, which leads to her untimely demise behind the wheel of her car on her way out of the experiment.

Eleanor didn't realize how dangerous these ghosts could be, along with how fragile her character and psyche are. The ghosts of Hill House (more of an actual ghost than metaphorical, although Eleanor also like Sethe had metaphorical ghosts of an abusive past) were able to take advantage of this and corrupt her, yet releasing their grip on her at the very end of her life, making her realize what she was actually doing (somehow making her death an even more unfortunate, tragic experience, also more sympathetic for the reader). Eleanor didn't realize how these ghosts could take her conscience over, again making it hard to blame her for being possessed like Sethe. However, the ghosts of Hill House also didn't bring any physical harm to Eleanor (although there were several abnormal events throughout the house which showed their existence), as Eleanor wanted to drive her car into a tree at the end in some sick way of making her friends at the house feel bad for her by her own free will. Eleanor hurt herself while she could still decide to, only heavily influenced by the ghosts.

The unnamed character from "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman also suffered from a ghost the character fell victim to, rather than having her actions create it. Told through the point of view of several secret diary entries, the main character is believed to be suffering from postpartum depression after the recent birth of her child, as told by her husband and doctor John. To remedy this, he decides to take a vacation to a house in the countryside, and lock his wife in a room for several days as a way to come into complete relaxation, and possibly absolve her psychological ailment. It begins to work, until she discovers the "ugly" pattern of the yellow wallpaper in the room she's locked in. She becomes more and more fixated with it, to the point of near-insanity, then actual insanity at the end of the story, when she decides to lock her husband out of the room, tosses the key out of the window, making John faint as she continues to "creep" around the room.

The ghosts which appear in this short story are more metaphorical than the actual ghosts we've previously seen, compared to the other stories. The main character's over-analysis of the yellow wallpaper reveals it to have two layers - a back layer which looks like several women "stooping down and creeping" around behind the first layer, which looks like bars. This builds a visual of women being locked up for their creeping, or sneaking even, which in a bigger picture can represent the domestic roles of women during the time of the story and their struggle for empowerment / feminism (the bars showing their prevention of this by men). The ghosts featured in this story are based on the issues previously stated - the societal ghosts of female oppression and domesticity, with which the main character falls victim to. These ghosts, in combination with the lack of her expressing herself (she's forced to keep the diary hidden from John, he doesn't want her writing in it as he sees it as a way of making her worse) and the ineffectiveness of S. Weir Mitchell's "resting cure" (the procedure she's under in the story, being locked in a room to be at "complete rest") are what eventually dwindle her sanity down, to the point of her complete breakdown at the end of the story.

Eleanor's fall from grace can be compared to the main character's in that they both don't realize what's wrong with them while it happens. Eleanor's haunting had her on a mission of revenge for being kicked out of Hill House by her friends, while the main character's haunting had her thinking she was free of the ghosts which had taken her: "I don't like to look out of the windows even-there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?" (Gilman, 22) The main character refers to herself coming out of the wallpaper along with the other creeping women, meaning she thought she was free from the ghost's haunting (or the pressures presented by society). The reader later finds out she isn't free, and instead has lost her sanity, to the point where she can't recognize her loss. This, like Eleanor's demise, puts a more sympathetic light on her, since she cannot realize her mistake.

The main character's overall circumstances are actually different from any other character we've encountered. For the other characters Sethe and Eleanor, the ghosts which haunted them forced the two to create situations and choices which harmed themselves, following accurately what Dr. Montague said. With the main character from "The Yellow Wallpaper" though, her story's a little bit different due to the face that Sethe and Eleanor had the freedom to make their own decisions. The main character didn't have that freedom, since John limited everything she did on their "vacation," to the point where she would often be compared to having the freedoms and responsibilities of a child. This results in different consequences for the main character, in the form of a complete loss of sanity. While the other characters could ultimately choose their own fate and the consequences which come from it (Sethe choosing to kill her child, Eleanor choosing to drive her car), she could not, which makes her truly break down and snap. In spite of this, the ghosts which hampered her did not cause any damage to her which John, her family or society didn't already cause. Whatever damage was done was caused by her actions (in this case her choice of being fixated on the yellow wallpaper).

All of the characters described have interacted with a ghost of some form, whether it be a ghost haunting them from their past (Sethe's ghosts of slavery and abuse, Eleanor's ghosts of a closeted domestic life), society (the main character's ghost from "The Yellow Wallpaper") or actual ghosts which physically affect something around them to make their presence known (Sethe's baby haunting house 124, the ghosts of Hill House). Although all of these ghosts give negative effects to the characters they haunt, all of them never directly harm the characters they possess. Instead, they heavily influence decisions the characters have to make in many different ways, such as presenting an option during a hectic and stressful situation, or prying on a weakness a character has by posing a possible solution. All of these situations force the reader to take a more in-depth look into ghost stories, since a whole new level of possible damage and corruption to the character is revealed (as opposed to simply inflicting direct harm to the character), and I believe this creates a much more informative and overall entertaining story.

Works Cited

1) Gilman, Charlotte. The Yellow Wallpaper. US: Dover, 1892.

2) Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. US: Viking Press, 1959.

3) Morrison, Tori. Beloved. New York: Random House Inc., 1987.