"... the female of the species is more deadly than the male," said
Rudyard Kipling and he might have meant writers excelling in frightening
us with tales of supernatural horror and terror. In fact, the horror
genre was one where women authors held their own against their male
counterparts and even outpaced them - especially in the Victorian era.
But virtually all have been forgotten except by a few truly devoted
aficionados and deserve to be brought back into the limelight.
Rooted
in folklore and religious tradition, and focussing on death, afterlife,
evil and the demonic, horror fiction in English began with the Gothic
(originally only a sub-genre of Gothic fiction with the name derived
from the architectural style of buildings these stories are usually set
in).
The pioneer was Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto"
(1764), the first modern novel to encompass supernatural elements, but
it was Clara Reeve (1729-1807) who moved the genre forward. In "The Old
English Baron" (1777), she took Walpole's plot only but balanced the
fantastic elements with realism to make it more believable.
Giving
the genre respectability with her technique of "the explained
supernatural" or a final rational explanation of seemingly supernatural
events, was Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), author of "The Mysteries of
Udolpho" (1794) and "The Italian" (1796).
Radcliffe, who
influenced among others Sir Walter Scott, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Daphne du Maurier - and Jane Austen (who parodied her in
"Northanger Abbey"), also differentiated between literary terror and
horror, or the dread before the actual experience and the revulsion
afterward respectively - criticising the emphasis on the latter.
Both
Reeve and Radcliffe influenced Mary Shelley (1797-1851), who created
one of the best-known supernatural characters - Frankenstein's monster
in the eponymous novel of 1818 though it is more science fiction than
horror.
But it was the Victorian era, spanning most of the 19th
century that the genre caught popular interest. The epoch saw
unprecedented scientific advance but also keen interest in the
supernatural and many authors - a large number of women among them -
catered to it. The stories were slow and suspenseful, but guaranteed to
send a chill down your spine.
Known for her novels of society,
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865) occasionally penned the scary
stuff, one of which was "The Ghost in the Garden Room" - an entry in
Charles Dickens-helmed story "The Haunted House" featured in the 1859
Christmas issue of his weekly literary periodical "All the Year Round".
This
also included "The Ghost in the Clock Room" by Hesba Stretton --
pen-name of Sarah Smith (1832-1911) who otherwise wrote children's books
--, and "The Ghost in the Picture Room" by poet-philanthropist Adelaide
Anne Procter (1825-1864), who was Queen Victoria's favourite poet.
More
famous than Dickens in her time, Ellen Wood (1814-1887) also
contributed to the genre with her most-known and often-anthologized
"Reality or Delusion?" among others.
Margaret Wilson Oliphant
(1828-1897) also had several works of supernatural fiction, including
the long ghost story "A Beleaguered City" and other shorter tales, among
her 120 books, while Countess Wilhelmina FitzClarence (1830-1906), who
only took up writing when 60, produced "Ghostly Tales" (1896), largely
forgotten now, but quite popular then.
Journalist, traveller and
Egyptologis Amelia Edwards (1831-1892) also found time to write mystery
and horror fiction, with "The Phantom Coach" most known.
Then
there was Rhoda Broughton (1840-1920), niece of renowned author Sheridan
Le Fanu and known as the "Queen of the Circulating Libraries" due to
demand for her works - not limited to ghost stories. Equally prolific
were Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915), also not limited to the
supernatural, and Henrietta Dorothy "H.D" Everett (1851-1923).
"The
Shadow on the Blind and Other Ghost Stories" was by Louisa Baldwin
(1845-1925), mother of British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and aunt
of Kipling, while Edith Nesbit (1858-1924), who authored over 60
children's books including "The Phoenix and the Carpet" and "The Railway
Children", also wrote "Something Wrong" and "Grim Tales" (both 1893),
and "Tales Told in Twilight" (1897).
Charlotte Riddell
(1832-1906), who wrote as J.H. Riddell, was one of the period's most
popular and influential writers including of horror, producing some most
startling and original ghost stories, set in a range of sinister
locales including hell!
A unique contribution was the exploits of
occult detective Flaxman Low - created by the mother-son combination of
E.& H. Heron (Kate O'Brien Ryall Prichard and Major Hesketh Vernon
Prichard - born in Jhansi in 1876).
Wordsworth Classics' Tales of
the Mystery and Supernatural series published most of these (though
quite a few now seem out of print) but almost all are available online.
If you decide to read one tonight - well, you might want to keep the
light on till dawn!
(19.04.2015 - Vikas Datta is an Associate
Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at
[email protected])
