Question

The canterville ghost is an inverted ghost story? comment

Answer 1

The Canterville Ghost is more of a funny story than a scary story because it deals mostly with the plight of the ghost who feels as if he is under siege from human beings, that is, the Otis family and especially, the twins. Wilde plays upon the conventional images of how a ghost has been represented in popular imagination and literature to draw his portrait of the ghost. His work incorporates the stereotypical picture of the old manorial ghost in a suitably haunted house, playing on key elements from gothic and supernatural stories but also shows him as an egotistical artist interested in the art of scaring people. For the ghost, it is more of a performance than any real malevolent intention to scare people. The blood stain, the back-story of the ghost and usage of the tropes from this genre add to Wilde's object of stereotyping the ghost. In spite of the fact that the ghost had come to this state by murdering his wife, Wilde did not let the story become macabre or sinister. He maintained the humour by making the ghost an object of humour, the narrative offered by the ghost himself. The ghost was actually quite benevolent as is reflected by his treatment of Virginia. Also, he had been harassed and hassled more than the human beings in the story. As a ghost he is portrayed as ineffectual in scaring the human beings away, instead the human beings force him to beat a hasty retreat.