In Toni Morrison’s Beloved the ghost of Beloved haunts each character whom she meets in a different way. She fills Sethe with a sense of motherly affection and Denver with a desperate feeling of companionship, and she torments Paul D. Beloved, a baby who died to escape slavery, represents every horror of Sweet Home that Paul D thinks he left behind. Everywhere he looks he sees Beloved, the girl whom he believes is preventing him from finally achieving happiness and starting his new life. Though he is no longer at Sweet Home it’s memory will continue to haunt him and no matter how much he tries to repress his pain he will constantly be reminded of it in the form of Beloved. He thinks he can “keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be,” yet Beloved opens emotions in him that he has not explored in years (86). He feels an irresistible urge to have sex with Beloved and after she tells him to say her name he says “red heart,” indicating that to him, she is the embodiment of the pain and memories that he had previously stored in the “tobacco tin” of his mind (138).
The fact that he feels compelled to have sex with her while he is regularly having sex with Sethe shows that he cannot have one without the other. With the new life that he envisions with her comes his pain from Sweet Home as well as Sethe’s, which ultimately drives her to kill her own baby. Paul D hates this haunting girl, believing that if she were gone he could start anew with Sethe and live a life together. Beloved in turn is spiteful towards Paul D and his attempts to rid the house of her because she, as a symbol of the toils of slavery, refuses to be ignored. She will resonate with Paul D and remind him that he can never truly be free, because though the physical shackels binding his legs are gone, he will always be plagued with the emotional damage from years of abuse.
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The notion of a home, typically a place of warmth, comfort, and safety, is inverted when a haunting occurs and fear permeates this space. Though frightening phenomena does occur as in the case of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, there is no physical danger except for the violent outbursts of the inhabitants as a result of fear. Jackson’s ghosts cannot interact with the physical world, they can only affect the senses; and James’s ghosts are arguably a mere manifestation of the governess’s imagination. The deaths that occur in these stories are not caused by the spirits, but are caused by the haunted as a result of the effect that fear has on the mind. The governess, desperate to be praised by her peers for protecting her children, is so afraid of failure that she embraces Miles to death in an attempt to save his soul. Eleanor is desperate to belong and is afraid of being lonely, so she clings to the house that calls to her and kills herself to join the spirits that inhabit it.
The monsters in these stories act as warnings against the absurdity of fear. In the case of The Haunting of Hill House, this warning is reflective of a societal issue as suggested by “Thesis I: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body” in Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture.” Since the novel was written at the time of the Red Scare when paranoia about the spread of communism was present, Jackson is warning society about the detrimental effects of mindless terror. Ironically, these authors are scaring readers against being afraid, thus showing the manipulative power of fear and the power it has to control others. Though Jackson and James attempt to use fear for good purposes, it can just as easily be used for destruction. A home is a place in which a person spends most of their time and acts most freely like themselves. Whereas the homes in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw are more traditional places of living, complete with kitchens and bedrooms, the office in Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is arguably the narrator’s less conventional home because of the time he spends in it and his comfortability when he is there. It is more a part of who he is than where he legally lives, as he seldom mentions the building in which he sleeps but frequently discusses events in his office space. Because of the amount of time an individual spends in his or her home and building of employment it becomes an integral part of his or her being, and vice versa. The individual adopts the traits of his or her surroundings, such as the dull personality of the narrator of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” arising from years of being enclosed by the monotony of his office space. He is entrapped in a building with no window showing the outside world save one that provides a direct view of a brick wall, and thus he becomes a flavorless, passive being. One’s home can also be affected by the individual who dwells in it, such as Usher’s diseased, sickly body and mind dilapidating his house. He is incestuous and his soul is ruined, and so therefore his house is too, eventually crumbling with the weight of his sin. A home and its inhabitant can also affect each other simultaneously, as is the case in The Turn of the Screw. The madder the governess becomes, the more frequently she sees evil apparitions infesting the house, which in turn only makes her more insane. Whether the apparitions are actually there or not makes little difference- they exist in the governess’s mind, so they therefore exist in her own version of her home. The cycle of one infecting the other continues until her insanity reaches its peak and makes her a murderess.
Because of the interlocking of building and inhabitant, the hauntings that occur in these places are a direct representation of the people who are there. Bartleby’s robotic actions represent the monotonous nature of the workers of Wall Street. The governess’s sinful ghosts are a reflection of her own sexuality, and her fear of them corrupting the children are her fear that her own lust will stain her purity. The ghost of Roderick’s sister who dies from the same corruptive disease that all of the Ushers die from, an apparent disease of soul arising from sin, haunts Roderick as punishment for his incestuous tendencies. These hauntings, as “Thesis I: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body” of Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture” suggests, are a reflection of the ideals of a culture. Usher’s ghost is a warning against taboo sexual behavior, using disease and death (two primal fears of mankind) to deter people from exploring their sexuality outside the realm of social norms, demonstrating that sinful actions will corrupt the body. Bartleby’s unanimated, mechanic mannerisms reflect the lack of character and diversity of the inhabitants of Wall Street (save food preferences and temperament) and questions if humanity can be sustained in the monotony of the workplace, a question that many people with office jobs ponder. The governess’s ghosts reinforce society’s views of sinful sexual behavior (as both Quint and Miss Jessel, participants in an inappropriate sexual relationship, die) yet also reflects the author’s unique views about the danger of absolute repression. The more that the governess, a woman who has been deprived of any form of sexual exposure, clings to the innocence of the children and of herself, the closer these apparitions appear until she drives herself mad and kills Miles, becoming more evil than the apparitions whom she shuns. Though these hauntings occur in a physical space, they are in actuality the haunting of the individuals that occupy that space as well as the society who reads about them. |
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