ABSTRACT
Gothic tales are political, Michel Foucault writes in Society Must Be Defended , “at once tales of terror, fear, and mystery … they are always about the abuse of power and exactions; they are fables about unjust sovereigns, pitiless and bloodthirsty seigneurs, arrogant priests” (211). In the frequently anthologized “The Old Nurse's Story” (1853), originally published in Household Words, Elizabeth Gaskell does indeed focus on tyrannical rule, of father over daughters, of wealth over poverty, and of the dominant discourse over the marginalized other. Most often read as a Gothic tale focused on interiority and subjective experience, the tale narrated by Hester, the nurse of the title, is laden with expected features of the Gothic mode: labyrinthine architecture and an isolated location, darkness and cold, eeriness and extrasensory occurrences. However, the story also offers a critique of power structures and gestures towards social justice. As Hester relates to her charges the tale of their mother's early years at Furnivall Hall, she details her fear of the happenings in the house, her devotion to the child Rosamond who would grow to be their mother, instructions on appropriate behavior, and a critique of social power structures. The old nurse juxtaposes elements of fear—the creepy house, music emanating from a destroyed organ—with those of care and critique: her loving attention to Miss Rosamond, her approbation of the haughty Miss Grace. Hester courageously keeps the living child safe from ghosts even as she reports on the hegemonic structures that caused these vengeful ghosts to exist in the first place.
