“Winter Stories — Ghost Stories. . . Round the Christmas Fire”: Victorian ghost stories and the Christmas market

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dc.contributor.authorEhnes, Cary
dc.date.accessioned2026-02-06T23:54:35Z
dc.date.available2026-02-06T23:54:35Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.description.abstractUsing the publication of Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” in the 1852 Christmas number of Dickens’s Household Words as a case study, this paper examines how the publication of Victorian ghost stories in Christmas numbers redefines the ghost story, transforming it from a modern text participating in contemporary debates on spiritualism into a social text participating in the broader cultural project of reaffirming the nation’s (religious) traditions in the face of (secular) modernity. While the themes of Christmas ghost stories explicitly address social issues and secular, middle-class cultural values, the morals and social traditions promoted by Christmas fiction cannot exist outside of the era’s contemporary conversations about the place of religion in a modern, industrial society. The ghosts and goblins of Dickens’s Christmas fiction address and attempt to correct the social ills of modern society through a secularised application of Christian values and behaviours.
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduate
dc.identifier.citationEhne, C. (2012). “Winter Stories — Ghost Stories. . . Round the Christmas Fire”: Victorian ghost stories and the Christmas market. Illumine, 11(1), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.18357/illumine.ehnesc.1112012
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.18357/illumine.ehnesc.1112012
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1828/23260
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherIllumine
dc.rightsCC BY-NC 4.0
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
dc.subjectVictorian literature
dc.subjectElizabeth Gaskell
dc.subjectCharles Dickens
dc.subjectChristmas
dc.subjectfiction
dc.subjectspiritualism
dc.subjectghost story
dc.subjectHousehold Words
dc.subjectreligion
dc.subjectsociety
dc.subjectculture
dc.subjectIllumine
dc.subjectCSRS
dc.subjectUVic
dc.subjectUniversity of Victoria
dc.subjectCentre for Studies in Religion and Society
dc.subject.departmentDepartment of English
dc.title“Winter Stories — Ghost Stories. . . Round the Christmas Fire”: Victorian ghost stories and the Christmas market
dc.typeArticle

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Illumine, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2012)
 
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