A Lady’s Guide to Spectral Etiquette

Despite its dubious subject matter, the spiritualist movement of the nineteenth Century developed new languages of materiality and methods of scientific inquiry in order to prove the material existence of spirits. This article compares the methods employed by male spiritualists in tackling new questions of spectral materiality, which took the form of “objective” reports and research papers, with those of female medium Georgiana Houghton, who utilizes the more intimate form of the séance diary to mask her scientific interests in domestic imagery, intriguingly blending both life writing and scientific inquiry in a careful negotiation of “gender-appropriate” genre

Aesthetics · Art · Etiquette · Literature · Negotiation · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Subject matter · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices