‘Author’s Ghosts’: Manifestations of the Supernatural in Spark’s Early Fiction

This chapter examines the treatment of spectrality in Spark’s debut novel, The Comforters, as well as in a selection of early (and otherwise realistic) short stories. It discuss some of Spark’s earliest attempts to realise – to quote from her preceding study of John Masefield – ‘how sharp and lucid fantasy can be when it is deliberately intagliated on the surface of realism.’ The first half of the chapter concerns what is classified as the textual haunting, whereby the supernatural encounter is treated as an instance of metalepsis – a violation, that is, of the text’s diegetic boundaries, which is in some ways analogous to the ghost’s traversal of ontological ones. The chapter’s second section examines the significance of the ghost story as a vital means of critiquing forms of patriarchal power, along with conventional gender roles and their attendant expectations.