Men, Women, and Ghosts

Men, Women, and Ghosts

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward's Men, Women, and Ghosts gathers a sequence of separate tales narrated by different voices, several of them supplied with editorial framing by unnamed acquaintances of the people involved. The collection opens with the story of Dr. Myron Sharpe and his bride Harrie Bird, married by her father, Mr. Bird, in a ceremony built on his own unusual marriage covenant. The young couple settles at the seaside town of Lime, where Harrie swims, rows, and dreams away idle hours while her husband builds his medical practice. After children arrive, the old tenderness fades into routine; Dr. Sharpe grows used to solitary evenings while Harrie is absorbed in nursery duties. The visit of Harrie's school friend Pauline Dallas deepens the rift: Pauline's polish and leisure make Harrie feel dowdy and ignorant, and Dr. Sharpe, unaware of his own drift, spends his time walking, sailing, and talking politics and philosophy with Pauline instead of his wife. On the night before Pauline is to leave, she and the Doctor take a sunset sail and are caught in a storm; meanwhile Harrie, feverish and distraught, rows out alone, capsizes, and is nearly lost in the marsh mud before struggling home half-drowned. Her husband collapses on the beach believing her dead. Through weeks of illness the narrator and Dr. Sharpe nurse her back to health; Pauline departs, and husband and wife finally confess their neglect and insecurity to each other and reconcile. A second story shifts to the mill city of Lawrence. Asenath Martyn, a crippled, scarred factory girl who lives with her old shoemaker father, is engaged to Richard "Dick" Cross, a young workman who once took her in from pity and grew to love her. Asenath discovers, by chance, that Dick is drawn to her pretty, shallow friend Del Ivory, and spends a tormented winter deciding whether to release him from their engagement, unable to bring herself to speak the words. On the tenth of January the Pemberton Mill collapses without warning while the girls are at their looms. Asenath is pinned in the wreckage along with Del, a child named Molly, and many others; as rescuers cut through the ruins, a dropped lantern sets the debris ablaze. Only one more victim can be pulled free before the fire spreads, and Asenath sends Del out in her place with a message of forgiveness for Dick. Dick, absorbed in Del's safety, forgets Asenath in the crowd's relief, and her father crawls over the burning bricks trying vainly to reach his "little gal." Asenath, resigned, sings a hymn with the trapped Molly in her arms as the flames close in, her voice carrying on after the other voices around her fall silent. A lighter, comic sketch follows, narrated by a self-described good-natured insomniac named Keturah. She recounts her nightly war against sleeplessness — futile remedies of dull reading, alphabet recitations, and midnight raids on the pantry — and two particularly disastrous nights: one spent battling swarms of June beetles and driving off a neighbor's cats and stray cows with pine knots, and another in which she and her brother Amram chase off two supposed burglars who vanish without a trace, to the skepticism of her devout neighbor Miss Humdrum. She closes with a mock list of morals drawn from her sleepless ordeals. The next tale is told by Fred Hotchkiss, who describes a winter of spiritualist disturbances after his family moves to a new house and is joined by his wife Alison's cousin, Gertrude Fellows, a nervous medium. Rappings, moving furniture, bent silver, a child tied fast in a tree, and a sheeted apparition plague the household; messages purportedly from the spirit of a former resident, Timothy Jabbers, claim a debt owed to Alison's late father. After Gertrude leaves, Fred, now fascinated despite himself, consults medium after medium and is told independently by seven of them that he will die on the second of May at one o'clock. He conceals the prophecy from Alison, quietly settles his affairs and will, and spends the following months anxiously treasuring his family, expecting death at the appointed hour. When the moment finally arrives at the dinner table, nothing happens, and Fred reports that he still lives. Another story follows a boy street-musician, Tommy, who wanders into a nearly empty railway car playing his fiddle. There he unknowingly plays upon the conscience of a fellow passenger, J. Harmon, a failed photographer and speculator fleeing by train to Colorado to desert his wife Annie and their five children rather than watch their poverty continue. Tommy's tunes — "Annie Laurie" and "Home, Sweet Home" — stir Harmon's memories of his courtship and of Annie's patient devotion. Overcome, Harmon leaves the train at the next stop, empties his purse into Tommy's cap, and walks back through the cold night to his home, telling Annie only that business had delayed him, resolved that she shall never learn what he nearly did. The final piece introduces Amos and Martha Ryck, an elderly farm couple keeping a bitter, silent vigil on the birthday of a daughter who left home in disgrace years before. Amos, a stern deacon, refuses to speak her name or entertain hope of her return, while Martha secretly keeps the child's baby clothes and toys and prays for her. On that same stormy night, in the city, a sick and friendless woman named Meg pauses outside a fashionable, brightly lit church, drawn by a choir singing of Christ "wounded for our transgressions." She slips inside and listens from the shadows, wondering whether the words of comfort could possibly be meant for her, until the cold brings on a fit of coughing that draws the notice and whispers of the well-dressed congregation, and a small child reaches out toward her before being pulled quickly away by its mother.

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.

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

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