Good English boys. Constructing the gender and the national in British ghost stories

Abstract

The article describes how gender and national aspects are constructed in late 19th–early 20th century British ghost stories. Both categories are seen within the context of the fearful Other so characteristic of the genre: deviations from the ideal of healthy British masculinity are perceived as potentially dangerous. It can be expressed as appearance of feminine or juvenile features gravitating towards heathen cults, and here gender is combined with the national: often a portion of non-British blood (e.g. Jewish or Italian) influences the choice of the particular cult and the way the protagonist’s appearance and manners change in the course of the narrative. All these phenomena are often complemented with the presence of animalistic features in the character, even if only metaphorically: any decline from masculinity and Christianity is perceived as a partial loss of humanity. Here, the influence of theories by Ch. Lombroso, M. Nordau, J. Fraser etc. is evident. But the authors of high quality stories (J. Buchan, A, Conan Doyle, E. F. Benson) do not preach these ideas straightforwarldly, they create original texts with quite ambivalent treatment of the topics discussed.