Ghost-writing into eternity: Representations of the woman author as spirit/conjurer (Edith Wharton, Shirley Jackson, Alison Lurie, Joyce Carol Oates, Sylvia Plath)

A link between spiritualism and female authorship occurs frequently in both American and British literature of the twentieth century, revealing much about the social and psychological pressures on women writers. I have chosen to explore the life and work of a select group of authors whose relationship to the supernatural is particularly compelling and instructive: Edith Wharton, Shirley Jackson and Sylvia Plath and several contemporary authors, including Alison Lurie and Joyce Carol Oates.; Unlike most studies of female authorship, which describe the effects of patriarchy, this investigation focuses on the writer's highly-charged and ambivalent relationship to her own sources of creativity. Drawing from a variety of biographical, textual, critical and historical sources, I examine the reasons why these women were attracted to otherworldly phenomena and how their self-perceived roles as a “medium” and/or as a “ghost” reveal and enact the unique challenges of female authorial identity. In the course of this discussion, I offer fresh readings of key texts by each author.; Regardless of the genre or time period in which she is writing, each of these authors sees reflected in the spirit world her conflicted relationship to her own creative desires. At times, the “ghosts” seem to mirror the author's marginality.; At other times, the supernatural is a source of inspiration and hope, reestablishing a lost sense of community and transcending all constraints through the powerful endurance of the written word.