Men, Women, and Ghosts

Men, Women, and Ghosts

Men, Women, and Ghosts collects several distinct tales narrated in turn, opening with the story of Dr. Myron Sharpe and his wife Harrie, whose father, old Mr. Bird, marries them with his own covenant service. Living at Lime on the coast, the couple's early happiness fades under the strain of children, illness, and money; when Harrie's school friend Pauline Dallas visits, Myron grows absorbed in her company and neglects Harrie, who feels shabby and unloved beside her. After Myron and Pauline share a near-declaration during a sunset sail, a storm strands Harrie in the marsh trying to reach him; she is found half-drowned and delirious, and the narrator, Miss Hannah, and the sailor George Hansom help search for her. Harrie survives a long illness, Pauline departs, and Myron confesses his fault and his love, reconciling with his wife. The second tale follows Asenath Martyn ("Sene"), a disfigured factory girl in Lawrence who lives with her old father and loves Richard "Dick" Cross, her father's boarder, who once rescued her from despair. Sene discovers Dick has fallen for her pretty, shallow friend Del Ivory, and struggles through despair and near self-destruction before resolving to release him. Before she can, the Pemberton Mill collapses on the tenth of January, trapping Sene, Del, and hundreds of workers. Sene helps free others, sends Del out first with a message of forgiveness for Dick, and is left behind as fire spreads through the wreckage; her father claws through the rubble seeking her while she sings amid the flames as rescuers are driven back. A comic interlude follows: Keturah, a chronic insomniac, recounts two farcical sleepless nights — one spent battling June beetles, prowling cows, and neighbor Miss Humdrum's cats, another spent chasing imagined burglars with her husband Amram — before drawing mock-serious morals about sleeplessness. The next narrator, Fred Hotchkiss, describes moving into a new house in Nemo's Avenue with his wife Alison, their children Tip and the baby, and Alison's cousin Gertrude Fellows, a Spiritualist medium recovering her health. After Gertrude's arrival, the household is plagued by rapping, moving furniture, vanishing and reappearing linens, bent spoons, a sheeted apparition, and messages purportedly from the spirit of one Timothy Jabbers concerning an old debt. Fred investigates skeptically alongside his clergyman friend George Garth, who concludes the phenomena are real but not benevolent. A medium eventually predicts Fred will die on the second of May at one o'clock; he secretly settles his affairs and spends anxious final months with Alison, but the appointed hour passes without incident, and he lives to tell the story. Another tale follows a small violinist, Tommy, playing in a railway car where a despairing man, J. Harmon, sits with his head hidden, having resolved to abandon his wife Annie and five children in the East for Colorado after repeated business failures and drink. Tommy's tunes, including "Home, Sweet Home" and "Annie Laurie," awaken Harmon's conscience; he empties his purse into the boy's cap, leaves the train, and walks home through the cold to Annie, telling her only that business delayed him, resolved that she will never learn how close he came to leaving. The final narrative introduces Amos and Martha Ryck, an aging farm couple mourning a long-vanished, disgraced daughter whose name Amos will not speak, though Martha secretly keeps relics of her infancy and prays for her return; Amos, a stern deacon, insists there can be no hope for her, even as his hardness plainly masks unhealed grief. That same cold night in the city, a sick, homeless woman named Meg, roused from a sickbed, is drawn by a hymn about Christ's suffering into a fashionable church, where she sits apart from the wealthy congregation, is recognized and told to leave by the sexton, and lingers afterward trying to grasp what she has heard about one who was "wounded for our transgressions." The text breaks off here, mid-scene, before her story's outcome is given.

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward · First published 1892 · Genre: Short Stories, Fiction, Supernatural · 10 chapters · 100,577 words

First lines

None at all. Understand that, please, to begin with. That you will at once, and distinctly, recall Dr. Sharpe -- and his wife, I make no doubt. Indeed, it is because the history is a familiar one, some of the unfamiliar incidents of which have come into my possession, that I undertake to tell it.

My relation to the Doctor, his wife, and their friend, has been in many respects peculiar. Without entering into explanations which I am not at liberty to make, let me say, that those portions of their story which concern our present purpose, whether or not they fell under my personal observation, are accurately, and to the best of my judgment impartially, related.

What this Textopian page supports

Men, Women, and Ghosts is listed on Textopian as a novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, dated 1892 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Discussion starters

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

American Literature · Feminist Fiction · Ghost Stories · Supernatural Fiction · Romance · Social Commentary · Women's Rights · Marriage · Family Dynamics · Spirituality · Psychological Insight · Character Study

Contents

More by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward