Janet Beer

Southern Hauntings: Kate Chopin’s Gothic

Long regarded as a brilliant regional realist writer, Kate Chopin also used Gothic effects in her fiction but until now this aspect of her work has not been fully explored. There are no zombies, vampires or ghosts in her tales but they are full of secrets, the abject, the repressed and the uncanny. In this chapter, Beer and Horner argue that Chopin’s exploration of the legacy of slavery and colonisation defines her as a postcolonial writer who used Gothic effects in order to convey how past horrors continued to impact upon Louisiana in the 1880s and 1890s. Chopin challenges segregation and reveals it to be based on spectral boundaries redolent of past powers. In this respect, her stories illustrate her commitment to the process of enlightenment and rapprochement.

Edith Wharton's Social Register@@@A Forward Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton

This collection focuses on questions of biography, autobiography and aesthetics in Whartons works, with particular attention to gender, race and class. The volume high-lights previously unpublished manuscripts and letters - notably, an unfinished short story in Italian and Whartons correspondence with her niece Beatrix Farrand.