'"The cursethe curse!" I looked up in terror. In the great
mirror opposite I saw myself, and right behind, another wicked,
fearful self' An encounter with the supernatural in an everyday
setting accentuates its strangeness; a truth used to eerie
effect in Gaskell's Gothic tales. A portrait turned to the wall,
a hidden manuscript, a mysterious child that lives on the
freezing moors, a doppelganger formed by a woman's bitter curse:
all of these things hint at male tyranny and woman as avenging
angelor devil. Gaskell was fascinated by the dualities in
women's lives and the way in which fact and fiction merge.
'Disappearances', a mix of gossip, legend and fact, relates
stories of mysterious vanishings, 'Lois the Witch', based on an
account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and
jealousy lead to communal hysteria and persecution, while 'The
Grey Woman' explores a common Gothic theme, the way in which the
ghosts of the past always return to haunt us. This edition
includes an introduction, chronology,