Ghosted? Reading Female Agency in Victorian Ghost Stories by Women Writers through a Gothic Lens

This thesis showcases selected Victorian ghost stories by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte Riddell, and Edith Nesbit in order to examine agency and ghostliness. In the Victorian period, separate gender spheres were largely upheld by oppressive patriarchal structures in society that often subordinated women into a ghost-like state of passivity and invisibility. The aim is that by analysing several works alongside each other, the thesis will contribute to the scholarly discussion of locating female agency through the subversiveness of the ghost story format. To do so, a close reading through a Gothic lens will be undertaken in order to locate various forms of female agency, restricting factors, and how agency is affected by ghostliness