The Portrayal of Ghosts in Virginia Woolf's A Haunted House: Is it Really a Ghost Story?

Ismet Dilaver

Abstract: Virginia Woolf's short story A Haunted House (1944), published in her collection of short stories, reflects the early twentieth-century modernism displayed through two couples, one earthly, and another ghostly. It is a story that caused many questions for literary critics due to its mysterious setting and poetic, prose-like style of writing. Woolf's A Haunted House is a story of love, loss, death, connection, senses, fantasy, but more than anything else, it is a story of mystery, since it leaves its readers wondering whether it is a ghost story or not, where the borderline between real and imagined is wafer-thin. By relying on the latest research in the area of polysensory studies, this paper aims to prove that Virginia Woolf's A Haunted House does not necessarily need to be seen only as a ghost story, but it might be interpreted as a story where ghosts are just used as metaphorical representations displaying questions more important for our being.

Keywords: Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House, Ghosts, Fantasy, Polysensory