Scare Tactics identifies an important but overlooked tradition of supernatural writing by American women. Jeffrey Weinstock analyzes this tradition as an essentially feminist attempt to imagine alternatives to a world of limited possibilities. In the process, he recovers the lives and works of authors who were important during their lifetimes and in the development of the American literary tradition, but who are not recognized today for their contributions. Between the end of the Civil War and roughly 1930, hundreds of uncanny tales were published by women in the periodical press and in books. These include stories by familiar figures such as Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as by authors almost wholly unknown to twenty-first-century readers, such as Josephine Dodge Bacon, Alice Brown, Emma Frances Dawson, and Harriet Prescott Spofford. Focusing on this tradition of female writing offers a corrective to the prevailing belief within American literary scholarship that the uncanny tale, exemplified by the literary productions of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, was displaced after the Civil War by literary realism. Beyond the simple existence of an unacknowledged tradition of uncanny literature by women, Scare Tactics makes a strong case that this body of literature should be read as a specifically feminist literary tradition. Especially intriguing, Weinstock demonstrates, is that women authors repeatedly used Gothic conventions to express discontentment with circumscribed roles for women creating types of political intervention connected to the broader sphere of women's rights activism. Paying attention to these overlooked authors helps us better understand not only the literary marketplace of their time, but also more familiar American Gothicists from Edgar Allan Poe to Shirley Jackson to Stephen King.
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Editorial Reviews
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A very well written book. Its scholarship is excellent and it both fills a gap and leaves us asking more questions about what's hidden, what's coded, what's secretly influential in women's ghost stories of the era. Gina Wisker . . . Weinstock makes a cogent and compelling argument for the importance of these texts and demonstrates how women used the tropes of supernatural fiction to critique women's roles in Victorian and Edwardian American society. -Kathy Davis Patterson Weinstock's writing style is lively and accessible with the academic jargon kept to a minimum, so this book should be accessible to both scholars and those general readers willing to work a little at familiarizing themselves with the basic terminology of literary criticism. -Kestrell Rath
About the Author
JEFFREY ANDREW WEINSTOCK is Professor of English at Central Michigan University. He is the author or editor of six previous books.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Analyzing this genre's feminist roots,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Scare Tactics: Supernatural Fiction by American Women (Hardcover)
College-level libraries strong in either American women's fiction or supernatural fiction will find SCARE TACTICS in a fine addition, providing a scholarly assessment of supernatural fiction writings by American women and analyzing this genre's feminist roots. Between the end of the Civil War to about 1930, hundreds of such supernatural tales were published by women. Quotes from writings accompany a powerful analysis.
Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch
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Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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textual impulse, haunting spaces, uncanny fiction, ghostly dogs, ghostly house, supernatural fiction Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sir Rohan, The Ghost, Ghosts of Desire, Familial Ghosts, Queer Haunting Spaces, Ghosts of Progress, Ghostly Returns, Female Gothic, Ghost Story Number, Cap'n Brown, New England, Dead Vashti, Broken Glass, The Giant Wisteria, The Unburied, Edith Wharton, The Romance of Sunrise Rock, The Bell, The Shell of Sense, Alice Brown, Atlantic Monthly, Elia Wilkinson Peattie, Van Alstyne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Prescott Spofford Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
textual impulse, haunting spaces, uncanny fiction, ghostly dogs, ghostly house, supernatural fiction Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sir Rohan, The Ghost, Ghosts of Desire, Familial Ghosts, Queer Haunting Spaces, Ghosts of Progress, Ghostly Returns, Female Gothic, Ghost Story Number, Cap'n Brown, New England, Dead Vashti, Broken Glass, The Giant Wisteria, The Unburied, Edith Wharton, The Romance of Sunrise Rock, The Bell, The Shell of Sense, Alice Brown, Atlantic Monthly, Elia Wilkinson Peattie, Van Alstyne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Prescott Spofford Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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