October Reads: Weird Tales by Women

 

October is the time when with death and decay is so much more evident around us in nature. As the nights draw in and darkness dominates, cold and rainy days become more common, the spookiness of the world becomes more obvious to us. 

The ghost story, the supernatural, the weird begin to take over our imaginations and the long days of heat and indolence fade. 

As we approach the end of the month, Halloween heralds the beginning of a period where we think about the dead: the spirits that supposedly find the veil between worlds thinner at Halloween; our ancestors at All Souls Day; the war dead of the 20th and 21st centuries on Remembrance Sunday, up to Christmas when the traditions of the Christmas ghost story and the folk belief in Christmas Eve as another thin moment in the veil. 

In the spirit of the season, I have just finished reading an excellent collection from Handheld Press, with full notes and biographical detail, of weird stories by women in the 19th and early 20th century called Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890-1940 ed. Melissa Edmundson. I don’t think Handheld Press operate anymore which seems a shame because both of the books I’ve read by this publisher have been excellent with good selections, and excellent notes and analysis.

These stories concern frightening, or even fatal, events that can’t be explained by the normal laws of nature. Inanimate objects are impregnated with the malevolent or sometimes traumatised spirits of previous owners. 

Everyday objects become objects of fear. The past breaks into the present often with catastrophic consequences as generational trauma refuses to die and the bright, wholly modern world suddenly becomes a place of unnatural happenings. 

Often women are the victims of family violence or spousal abuse, sometimes they are the agents of their own downfall, occasionally the unwitting path for evil to enter the world. Themes range from the danger of meddling with the occult to unexplained dark shadows dogging a family. 

Many of the women are unknown today, although they were well respected in their time, with only a few famous names still familiar to modern readers making the cut, the excellent Edith Nesbit, May Sinclair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Edith Wharton.

One of the authors, Mary Butts, expresses the spirit of these stories thus: 

Their borders are sometimes indistinct, but the first order, implicitly or explicitly, assume theories of life existing beyond, or generally beyond our perception; theories which, in different make-up – some hideous, some lovely, some awful, some idiotic – are immeasurably old; and not all accounted for by our increased scientific knowledge of the world

Theories which suppose laws, a range of beings from gods and bogies to daimones and God, an atlas of unknown worlds, physically existing regions beyond the senses of man. 

In the spirit of an inquirer into many things, those worlds beyond our senses naturally fascinate but many of these stories also offer a warning to the dabbler or to someone who seeks to enrich themselves in this world with the help of the diabolical. 

If you venture out beyond the borders, make sure you can find your way home again.