Towards a Definition of the Victorian Ghost

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the definition of the Victorian ghost story by defining the specific kind of ghost that is typical for the genre. It is not enough to define a ghost story through the mere presence of a ghost or a supernatural event, since that would also include other genres such as fairy tales, legends, folklore and mystery stories. Furthermore, the entities that appear in stories up to the eighteenth century are significantly different from the new kind of ghost that emerges only in the nineteenth century. In order to define the Victorian ghost, I turn to Jacques Derrida’s theory of the spectre as articulated in Spectres of Marx. I argue that the specific characteristics he considers to be key to the spectre, most importantly its ability to destabilize both ontology and semantics, may be used to set apart the Victorian ghost from other kinds of ghosts. Furthermore, such a definition also means that events or entities which are not supernatural in nature but fulfil the same role as the Derridean spectre may be included within the definition of the Victorian ghost story, which would significantly redraw the boundaries of the genre.