A Haunted House

Hello, I'm Lucy,

are Met and professor of contemporary English

literature at the University of Lincoln.

I'm going to talk to you today about Sarah Waters,

a little stranger first published in 2009.

I'm going to try and give you a series of

different approaches to the novel and think about different aspects of it.

But one of the threads that you'll find running all the way

through the sections that I'm giving you is that I'm going to argue

that Faraday, an aerator, is completely unreliable

and in ways that make us rethink

the assumptions we might have about the novel.

So when I'm starting, today is going to think about

a little stranger

as a haunted house narrative

and notice. I'm using the phrase haunted house.

I'm not

going to call the little stranger

a ghost story,

and I'll explain why.

What is hundreds or haunted by? That's the big question.

We think there are ghosts there,

but are they really there?

Is it actually a story about mental illness?

Or

is it a story about greed

and manipulation

by an unreliable narrator who has wormed his way into the family home?

And he's looking to capitalise on their misfortune.

The little stranger is, I think, a Gothic novel

and Gothic novels worked by decoy narratives. And by that I mean

they tell one story

as a way of avoiding telling another.

The story that sits on the surface of the little stranger is a ghost story

containing at least one and possibly two ghosts.

Susan Mrs airs first daughter,

died at seven from Diptheria

and an unnamed poltergeist

that seems to attack Roderick or at least Roderick Room

on the night of the fated party. When the baker hides Come around,

I'll say more about that in a later lecture.

But that, I think, is a decoy narrative.

And it's a decoy narrative that conceals the real plot

if you like, and is a plot

in the sense that Dr Faraday

wants to get his hands on hundreds hall

and he's our first person narrator. He tells us a story. He frames the story,

so we feel that we have to believe what he tells us

Ghost stories more generally usually work through

a kind of gossip or hearsay structure.

There's usually a frame narrator,

but that frame narrator is also a character

But the character who tells the story in a

traditional ghost story isn't in the ghost story.

They usually invite people round and then tell them the story,

and they've learned that story.

I heard that story or come across that story

via a manuscript or a letter or something similar,

and the events that they're telling us about have told,

have taken place at an earlier time.

It's hearsay, then it's a hearsay structure, and that's really important.

Also important are the qualities

of the person who's telling the story, even though they're not in the story.

That story has to has to convey authority and in order for it to do so.

All kinds of assumptions are made about that storytelling character. He

and it often is a he,

and we need to think about the sexist assumptions of assuming

that an authoritative storytelling character might be. He

is often middle aged,

middle class,

respectable,

probably professional.

Typically, he'll also tell us that he doesn't believe in ghosts

because that makes the account more

incredible. I suppose he's less likely to be swayed.

So how does the little stranger work in relation to that? Well,

to some extent, Dr Faraday is a typical

ghost stories storytelling character.

He's middle aged, his mail,

his middle class. He's professional,

and he seems to be

both respectable and rational.

He's a doctor.

He's a scientist.

He's also an outsider looking in on the heirs family,

And that might seem to give his account greater credibility to

and importantly, he's dismissive about ghosts.

Every time he's told as a ghost in the House,

he starts checking the wires and offering possible scientific explanations

to counter the assumption that ghosts of air

at the same time. And this is crucial.

He doesn't comply with the traditional storytelling structure

of a ghost story in one key way.

He's in the story

as well as telling the story.

And most important of all,

he's the beneficiary of the story.

I'm going to argue

that, actually,

Dr Faraday brings the haunting to hundreds Hall.

Although he's called in at first by Betty, the maid

pretending she's ill because of the creepy backstairs,

there's not enough in her suggestion alone

to convince us that there are ghosts there.

She's young, remember, she's 14,

only 14

and a maid.

She's never lived in a big house like this before,

and she's never been away from her parents before.

She's frightened because it's a big old house

that doesn't make it haunted.

By the end of the novel, those stories have started to accrue around hundreds Hall,

and those seem to have attached themselves

because of what happens in the little stranger

and that serves Farraday well,

because ghost stories will keep other people away from the house.

So on the face of it, then we ought to be able to trust Dr Faraday. He's a local GP.

He's a pillar of the community.

But Waters makes sure that the first thing we learn about him

is that he can't be trusted.

Remember, he first comes into 100 tall as a child. His mom takes him into the house.

She's a servant in the house, and she trusts him.

She brings her son into the house.

He's not supposed to be there,

and he betrays her trust.

He prizes a plaster, a corn from the decorative plasterwork

and steals it in his pocket.

He takes it home.

In doing so.

Not only does he betray the trust of his mother,

he puts her employment in potential jeopardy.

He's a thief.

He's greedy,

he's inquisitive and he's selfish.

That early act unsettles us. Surely

it makes us feel we're walking on unsteady ground, entrusting him.

That kind of uncertainty leads, I think,

to another kind of uncertainty that we call the uncanny.

Our modern understanding of the word uncanny is often

attributed to an essay simply titled The Uncanny,

written by Sigmund Freud 100 years ago

in 1919.

It's important to realise that Freud writes, That s a first in German,

but its later translated into English

and the original term Freud uses

that we translate as uncanny

is the word on Heimlich

or to give a more literal translation.

Um, homely.

Hi, I'm being the German word for home.

The uncanny comes, Freud says,

when something

that we're used to consider as homely or familiar

suddenly shifts ever so slightly

and become suddenly unsettling,

creepy,

uncanny.

One instance that many of you would have experienced at home is the first night

that you spend alone in your parental home.

You might well have been looking forward to it,

having the place to yourself,

but suddenly you hear a noise on the landing

and before you know it.

You're opening cupboards and looking under the bed to see what's there.

That's exactly the experience that Betty the maid has

later on.

In the book,

on the night that Caroline airs falls from the upper landing to her death,

having gone to bed at the same time as Caroline.

Just as usual,

she's woken

in the early hours of the night

by the creak of footsteps on the stairs

at Caroline's Inquest, the coroner ads,

possibly the house

being large and lonely, was an unnerving one at night.

Certainly, hundreds Hall is old

Mrs airs. The mother voices her pleasure that it's Georgian 18th century

rather than a great Victorian. I saw, as she calls it.

That age, however,

will lend itself more obviously to a sense of sense of haunting

as houses carry the secrets of previous residents within their walls.

By the end of the novel,

the new council house residents of which I'll talk more in a minute

have erected a war to screen off hundreds or

from site because it gave them the creeps.

What I'm going to consider, though, in the next lectures

as to what extent we can take this so called haunted status

of hundreds hall

at face value