earticle

영어

Ghosts, Wharton's final collection of short fiction, establishes her as a key figure in the tradition of American Gothic stories succeeding Hawthorne, Poe, and James. Wharton uses the old ghost story genre in a new way as a device of exploring the 'woman question.' The Gothic becomes the ideal vehicle for Wharton's perception, that hidden within social structures, are ugly secrets. For her, "the Gothic spirit is the utterance of the unutterable." Among Wharton's Ghost stories, "The Lady's Maid's Bell,""The House of the Dead Hand," "Kerfol," and "Mr. Jones" deal with women who are raped through language and silenced by a cruel husband or father. To ensure male supremacy, Wharton suggests, language must be kept out of the hands of women. Thus, women's language in patriarchy is oppressed by a form of silence or mimicry without their own language. However, Wharton's women such as Anne de Corneau, Juliana, Mrs. Brymton, and Cybilla revolt against the oppression executed by male power. Wharton's novels in general show that for women in a patriarchal society the real struggle is between a dependent and an independent self. In her Ghost stories, she portrays the desire of a woman persuing her independent self. To obtain an independent self, a woman's own language is essential. Wharton criticizes patriarchy which confines a woman's own language.