Spiritualism in Neo-victorian fiction

Abstract

The paper explores the theme of spiritualism in two neo-Victorian texts: In the red kitchen by Michèle Roberts and “The conjugial angel” by A. S. Byatt. In recreating the Victorian setting, both writers self-consciously draw on the late nineteenth-century belief in the possibility of establishing communication between the living and the dead by means of spiritualist practice. In Roberts’s novel, the presentation of spiritualism is combined with issues of gender and includes a modern perspective. While Roberts models her heroine on the historical medium Florence Cook, some of Byatt’s characters are based on literary figures, which adds a metafictional dimension to the metaphysical one.