ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Agatha Eure's haunting and subversive mortality through a detailed analysis of Louisa May Alcott's use of mesmerism as a signifier of the female artist's aesthetically and culturally 'different' vision. In 'A Pair of Eyes' Alcott draws on the contemporary vogue for mesmerism to explore the artistic and sexual struggle for mastery that takes place between a painter couple. The chapter argues that in this neglected metafictional story, Alcott invoked mesmerism as a symbol of the potential of female creativity in order to interrogate masculinist attitudes to the woman artist and to plead for an aesthetic that accommodated both male mythology and feminine 'magic'. Alcott's spiritualist ending – a male narrator haunted by his dead wife – is thus emblematic of the force of the female spirit which haunted contemporary America. By the time Alcott wrote the story, the association of mesmerism with the peculiar psychic sensibilities and creative faculties of the artist was well established.
