by Graeme Davis
MORE
Deadly
THAN
THE MALE
MASTERPIECES FROM
THE QUEENS OF HORROR
Edited by
GRAEME DAVIS
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK LONDON
Dedicated to my wife, my love, and my best friend, Jamie Paige Davis, who proves to me every day that women are amazing. I love you.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION by Graeme Davis
THE TRANSFORMATION by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
THE DARK LADY by Mrs. S. C. Hall
MORTON HALL by Elizabeth Gaskell
A GHOST STORY by Ada Trevanion
AN ENGINEER’S STORY by Amelia B. Edwards
LOST IN A PYRAMID, OR THE MUMMY’S CURSE by Louisa May Alcott
TOM TOOTHACRE’S GHOST STORY by Harriet Beecher Stowe
KENTUCKY’S GHOST by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
AT CHRIGHTON ABBEY by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
THE FATE OF MADAME CABANEL by Eliza Lynn Linton
FOREWARNED, FOREARMED by Mrs. J. H. Riddell
THE PORTRAIT by Margaret Oliphant
THE SHRINE OF DEATH by Lady Dilke
THE BECKSIDE BOGGLE by Alice Rea
THE HIDDEN DOOR by Vernon Lee
UNEXPLAINED by Mary Louisa Molesworth
LET LOOSE by Mary Cholmondely
THE CAVE OF THE ECHOES by Helena Blavatsky
THE YELLOW WALL PAPER by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
THE MASS FOR THE DEAD by Edith Nesbit
THE TYBURN GHOST by The Countess of Munster
THE DUCHESS AT PRAYER by Edith Wharton
THE VACANT LOT by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
AN UNSCIENTIFIC STORY by Louise J. Strong
A DISSATISFIED SOUL by Annie Trumbull Slosson
THE READJUSTMENT by Mary Austin
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
by Graeme Davis
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so-called “conduct books” advised parents—especially fathers—on how to instruct their children—especially daughters—in the ways of genteel civility. In these books, and elsewhere, a great deal of ink was devoted to the corrupting influence of the popular novel. Novels—indeed, all forms of popular fiction—supposedly stirred the emotions to an unhealthy pitch, instilling false expectations of life and false values in the reader, and over-indulgence in sensational reading was a sure step on the road to ruin.
And yet, women were not only reading Gothic and other sensational fiction: they were writing it as well. Clara Reeve—a clergyman’s daughter, no less—published a Gothic novel titled The Champion of Virtue (later retitled The Old English Baron) in 1777, in imitation of Hugh Walpole’s seminal The Castle of Otranto. Ann Radcliffe’s two-volume novel A Sicilian Romance introduced the brooding “Byronic hero,” modeled on the scandalous poet: this archetype is the direct ancestor of Edward Cullen and Christian Grey. Radcliffe went on to create the four-volume classic The Mysteries of Udolfo, and her work is said to have inspired later writers from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Her father was a respectable London haberdasher who moved to fashionable Bath to run a china shop.
To today’s readers, though, one name stands above all: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Although she stood on the shoulders of Reeve, Radcliffe, and other pioneering women, hers is the first work to have achieved true immortality. It certainly did not hurt that the story was conceived during a thunderstorm as part of a storytelling contest involving her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician John Polidori, whose own entry became the first-ever vampire novel.
If the idea of women reading novels made men uncomfortable, then the thought of women writing novels was even more insupportable. Many female writers, like the Brontë sisters, decided to publish under male pseudonyms—Currier, Ellis, and Acton Bell in their cases—while others went by their initials, just as J. K. Rowling did two centuries later. Others still refused to bow to social pressure and published boldly under their own names.
However, according to British author and journalist Hephzibah Anderson, it was not until the 1970s that scholars and critics began to appreciate how an author’s gender affected the horror fiction they wrote. In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wall Paper,” for example, Anderson sees the author’s postpartum depression elevated to near-psychotic levels by the restrictive, paternalistic confinement she suffered. Elsewhere there are hints of marital resentments transformed into bloody tales of murder and vengeful ghosts haunting the perpetrators of those crimes great and small that were part and parcel of a woman’s existence in those times—and many of which still remain disturbingly commonplace today.
Not all horror stories written by women contain these subtexts, of course, and not all female ghosts are avengers freed by death from the constraints of society. It is as invidious and patronizing to define these writers solely by their gender as it would be to do so based on race, class, or any other factor. However, it is noticeable that many female writers excel at writing a more thoughtful, psychological form of horror tale, with little or none of the gore and sadism that can be found in the work of some male authors. Violet Paget (who wrote as Vernon Lee) used the supernatural with such a light touch that it is not always easy to distinguish her horror tales from her social commentary.
Other writers embraced the supernatural with both hands. Mary Shelley could handle supernatural horror as deftly as the science fiction of Frankenstein. In “The Beckside Boggle,” Alice Rea brings a common piece of English folklore to hair-raising life, while Helene Blavatsky, best known as the founder of the spiritualist Theosophical Society, tells a very serviceable ghost story in “The Cave of the Echoes.”
Perhaps most interesting, though, are the unexpected tales by authors who became so famous for their work in other genres that their forays into the horror genre are all but forgotten. Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe are certainly not remembered for their horror tales, while only horror connoisseurs remember Edith Nesbit for anything other than The Railway Children. Edith Wharton’s great novel The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer Prize and she was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, yet her horror stories are known only to a comparative few.
Wharton is not alone. Many of the authors in this collection wrote across a range of genres, and here, perhaps, is the greatest contrast with their male counterparts. Writers like Poe, Lovecraft, and M. R. James tended to stay within their genre, assiduously feeding the audiences who brought them fame and fortune; on the other hand, many of the ladies whose work graces these pages wrote whatever they pleased, crossing boundaries and blending genres as each story required. If they refused to be confined by social ideas of feminine gentility, they were equally reluctant to embrace the literary restrictions of genre and market. They just wrote damned good stories.
THE TRANSFORMATION
by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1830
The daughter of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and the political philosopher, novelist, and proto-anarchist William Godwin, Mary is best known as the author of Frankenstein and as the wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, a friend of Lord Byron. It is hard to imagine a background and career further from the ideals of feminine gentility.
Mary never knew her mother, who died less than a month after her birth. She had a strained relationship with her father’s second wife, a neighbor named Mary Jane Clairmont, whom he married four years later, but she received a broad and unconventional education based around her father’s political theories.
Godwin
’s published works promoting justice and attacking political institutions won him many admirers, and among them was the poet Shelley. He was married when Mary met him in 1814, but they began an affair, which resulted in Mary becoming pregnant and the pair facing ostracism and poverty.
In 1816, Mary and Shelley famously traveled to Italy with Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori. It was on this trip that the idea for Frankenstein was born. They married later that year, after the suicide of Shelley’s first wife.
Mary was a prolific writer. In addition to Frankenstein, she wrote the post-apocalyptic tale The Last Man (1826), the historical novel The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), and several other novels as well as short stories, travelogues, and reviews. Gothic and weird themes characterized much of her short fiction: in “The Transformation,” Shelley anticipates Anne Rice’s The Tale of the Body Thief with a story of a dissolute youth tricked into exchanging bodies with a misshapen and blasphemous creature. The story is full of textbook Gothic elements: decadence, poverty, rebellion, and endangered virtue.
“Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench’d
With a woful agony,
Which forced me to begin my tale,
And then it set me free.
“Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told
This heart within me burns.”
—Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner
I have heard it said, that, when any strange, supernatural, and necromantic adventure has occurred to a human being, that being, however desirous he may be to conceal the same, he feels at certain periods torn up as it were by an intellectual earthquake, and is forced to bare the inner depths of his spirit to another. I am a witness of the truth of this. I have dearly sworn to myself never to reveal to human ears the horrors to which I once, in excess of fiendly* pride, delivered myself over. The holy man who heard my confession, and reconciled me to the Church, is dead. None knows that once—
Why should it not be thus? Why tell a tale of impious tempting of Providence, and soul-subduing humiliation? Why? answer me, ye who are wise in the secrets of human nature! I only know that so it is; and in spite of strong resolve,—of a pride that too much masters me—of shame, and even of fear, so to render myself odious to my species,—I must speak.
Genoa! my birthplace—proud city! looking upon the blue Mediterranean—dost thou remember me in my boyhood, when thy cliffs and promontories, thy bright sky and gay vineyards, were my world? Happy time! when to the young heart the narrow-bounded universe, which leaves, by its very limitation, free scope to the imagination, enchains our physical energies, and, sole period in our lives, innocence and enjoyment are united. Yet, who can look back to childhood, and not remember its sorrows and its harrowing fears? I was born with the most imperious, haughty, tameless spirit. I quailed before my father only; and he, generous and noble, but capricious and tyrannical, at once fostered and checked the wild impetuosity of my character, making obedience necessary, but inspiring no respect for the motives which guided his commands. To be a man, free, independent; or, in better words, insolent and domineering, was the hope and prayer of my rebel heart.
My father had one friend, a wealthy Genoese noble, who in a political tumult was suddenly sentenced to banishment, and his property confiscated. The Marchese Torella went into exile alone. Like my father, he was a widower: he had one child, the almost infant Juliet, who was left under my father’s guardianship. I should certainly have been unkind to the lovely girl, but that I was forced by my position to become her protector. A variety of childish incidents all tended to one point,—to make Juliet see in me a rock of defence; I in her, one who must perish through the soft sensibility of her nature too rudely visited, but for my guardian care. We grew up together. The opening rose in May was not more sweet than this dear girl. An irradiation of beauty was spread over her face. Her form, her step, her voice—my heart weeps even now, to think of all of relying, gentle, loving, and pure, that she enshrined. When I was eleven and Juliet eight years of age, a cousin of mine, much older than either—he seemed to us a man—took great notice of my playmate; he called her his bride, and asked her to marry him. She refused, and he insisted, drawing her unwillingly towards him. With the countenance and emotions of a maniac I threw myself on him—I strove to draw his sword—I clung to his neck with the ferocious resolve to strangle him: he was obliged to call for assistance to disengage himself from me. On that night I led Juliet to the chapel of our house: I made her touch the sacred relics—I harrowed her child’s heart, and profaned her child’s lips with an oath, that she would be mine, and mine only.
Well, those days passed away. Torella returned in a few years, and became wealthier and more prosperous than ever. When I was seventeen, my father died; he had been magnificent to prodigality; Torella rejoiced that my minority would afford an opportunity for repairing my fortunes. Juliet and I had been affianced beside my father’s deathbed—Torella was to be a second parent to me.
I desired to see the world, and I was indulged. I went to Florence, to Rome, to Naples; thence I passed to Toulon, and at length reached what had long been the bourne† of my wishes, Paris. There was wild work in Paris then. The poor king, Charles the Sixth, now sane, now mad, now a monarch, now an abject slave, was the very mockery of humanity. The queen, the dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, alternately friends and foes,—now meeting in prodigal feasts, now shedding blood in rivalry,—were blind to the miserable state of their country, and the dangers that impended over it, and gave themselves wholly up to dissolute enjoyment or savage strife. My character still followed me. I was arrogant and self-willed; I loved display, and above all, I threw off all control. My young friends were eager to foster passions which furnished them with pleasures. I was deemed handsome—I was master of every knightly accomplishment. I was disconnected with any political party. I grew a favourite with all: my presumption and arrogance was pardoned in one so young: I became a spoiled child. Who could control me? not the letters and advice of Torella—only strong necessity visiting me in the abhorred shape of an empty purse. But there were means to refill this void. Acre after acre, estate after estate, I sold. My dress, my jewels, my horses and their caparisons, were almost unrivalled in gorgeous Paris, while the lands of my inheritance passed into possession of others.
The Duke of Orleans was waylaid and murdered by the Duke of Burgundy. Fear and terror possessed all Paris. The dauphin and the queen shut themselves up; every pleasure was suspended. I grew weary of this state of things, and my heart yearned for my boyhood’s haunts. I was nearly a beggar, yet still I would go there, claim my bride, and rebuild my fortunes. A few happy ventures as a merchant would make me rich again. Nevertheless, I would not return in humble guise. My last act was to dispose of my remaining estate near Albaro for half its worth, for ready money. Then I despatched all kinds of artificers, arras, furniture of regal splendour, to fit up the last relic of my inheritance, my palace in Genoa. I lingered a little longer yet, ashamed at the part of the prodigal returned, which I feared I should play. I sent my horses. One matchless Spanish jennet‡ I despatched to my promised bride: its caparisons flamed with jewels and cloth of gold. In every part I caused to be entwined the initials of Juliet and her Guido. My present found favour in hers and in her father’s eyes.
Still to return a proclaimed spendthrift, the mark of impertinent wonder, perhaps of scorn, and to encounter singly the reproaches or taunts of my fellow-citizens, was no alluring prospect. As a shield between me and censure, I invited some few of the most reckless of my comrades to accompany me: thus I went armed against the world, hiding a rankling feeling, half fear and half penitence, by bravado.
I arrived in Genoa. I trod the pavement of my ancestral palace. My proud step was no interpreter of my heart, for I deeply felt that, though surrounded by every luxury, I was a beggar. The first step I took in claiming Juliet must widely declare me such. I read contempt or pity in
the looks of all. I fancied that rich and poor, young and old, all regarded me with derision. Torella came not near me. No wonder that my second father should expect a son’s deference from me in waiting first on him. But, galled and stung by a sense of my follies and demerit, I strove to throw the blame on others. We kept nightly orgies in Palazzo Carega. To sleepless, riotous nights followed listless, supine mornings. At the Ave Maria we showed our dainty persons in the streets, scoffing at the sober citizens, casting insolent glances on the shrinking women. Juliet was not among them—no, no; if she had been there, shame would have driven me away, if love had not brought me to her feet.
I grew tired of this. Suddenly I paid the Marchese a visit. He was at his villa, one among the many which deck the suburb of San Pietro d’Arena. It was the month of May, the blossoms of the fruit-trees were fading among thick, green foliage; the vines were shooting forth; the ground strewed with the fallen olive blooms; the firefly was in the myrtle hedge; heaven and earth wore a mantle of surpassing beauty. Torella welcomed me kindly, though seriously; and even his shade of displeasure soon wore away. Some resemblance to my father—some look and tone of youthful ingenuousness, softened the good old man’s heart. He sent for his daughter—he presented me to her as her betrothed. The chamber became hallowed by a holy light as she entered. Hers was that cherub look, those large, soft eyes, full dimpled cheeks, and mouth of infantine sweetness, that expresses the rare union of happiness and love. Admiration first possessed me; she is mine! was the second proud emotion, and my lips curled with haughty triumph. I had not been the enfant gâté§ of the beauties of France not to have learnt the art of pleasing the soft heart of woman. If towards men I was overbearing, the deference I paid to them was the more in contrast. I commenced my courtship by the display of a thousand gallantries to Juliet, who, vowed to me from infancy, had never admitted the devotion of others; and who, though accustomed to expressions of admiration, was uninitiated in the language of lovers.
