Baker, Jen (2021) Guardian hosts and custodial witnesses : In loco parentis in women’s ghost stories, 1852–1920. Women's Writing, 28 (4). pp. 548-568. doi:10.1080/09699082.2021.1985291 ISSN 1747-5848.

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Abstract

In the mid nineteenthcentury, a subgenre of ghost stories emerged that had roots in a hybrid tradition of institutional religious doctrine and oral folkloric expressions of anxiety over the fate of the child’s soul in the afterlife. Given the persistently high infant mortality rates and increased public awareness of child abuse across the classes, the growing presence of stranded child ghosts in literary fictions of the period represents, I suggest, doubts or fears over the newly dominant liberal insistence that all children would attain peace in heaven and would be reunited and cared for by their family, as well as looked after by God. The child in this period represents the completion of the domestic and gendered ideal and various non-fiction and fiction literatures urged a sense of community care and guardianship over the living child that was extended to its dead spirit. In a great number of ghost stories by well-known and obscure Anglophone women writers, childless female and male protagonists and narrators act as witnesses for, or saviours of, the orphaned ghost child in ways that reframe or interrogate prescribed ideals regarding motherhood, fatherhood, the spinster, and the bachelor, but which simultaneously project concerns over childlessness and childhood more widely.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies
SWORD Depositor:	Library Publications Router
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Ghost stories , Ghost stories -- Women authors, Ghost stories -- Women authors -- 19th century, Ghost stories -- Women authors -- 20th century, Ghosts in literature, Children in literature, Children -- Death
Journal or Publication Title:	Women's Writing
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1747-5848
Official Date:	23 December 2021
Dates:	Date Event 23 December 2021 Published 24 January 2020 Accepted
Volume:	28
Number:	4
Page Range:	pp. 548-568
DOI:	10.1080/09699082.2021.1985291
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights):	This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Women's Writing. Jen Baker (2021) Guardian Hosts and Custodial Witnesses: In loco parentis in Women’s Ghost Stories, 1852–1920, Women's Writing, 28:4, 548-568, DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2021.1985291. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.”
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Copyright Holders:	Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
Date of first compliant deposit:	6 September 2022

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