Of narpay faculty the department of the english language and literature course paper

2.2 Elizabeth Gaskell Lois the Witch / The Old Nurse’s Story
In Lois the Witch Gaskell takes the example of traditional gothic novels and sets her story in a distant place. However, as New England was at that time a new continent with little ancient history, there are no gothic castles or cathedrals to settle the narration of the plot. As a result, she develops and mixes elements of superstition, legends and witchcraft to achieve the same feeling of terror. Lois the Witch narrates the story of a young girl who is forced to travel to New England after the death of her parents. Her uncle accepts her at his house in Salem, whose inhabitants live in fear of superstitions, witches and black magic, and Indians. Moreover, the village seems wild and dark in comparison to her former home place in England: the darkness of the nights, the strange sounds or the white drizzle are elements which create a gothic atmosphere. Salem was, as it were, snowed up, and left to prey upon itself. The long, dark evenings; the dimlylighted rooms; the creaking passages, where heterogeneous articles were piled away, out of the reach of the keen-piercing frost, and where occasionally, in the dead of night, a sound was heard, as of some heavy falling body, when, next morning, everything appeared to be in its right place the white mist, coming nearer and nearer to the windows every evening in strange shapes, like phantoms the distant fall of mighty trees in the mysterious forests girdling them round; the faint whoop and cry of some Indian seeking his camp the hungry yells of the wild beasts approaching the cattle-pens - these were the things which made that winter life in Salem strange, and haunted, and terrific to many. Soon after her arrival, her uncle dies leaving Lois with her cousins and her strict puritan aunt who does not feel any sympathy for her. One day, an Indian woman is accused for having bewitched two young girls who suffer strange convulsions. Immediately, all the inhabitants start to organize gatherings to pray for their condemned souls. Prudence, Lois’ little cousin, whose innocent mind is replete of myths about witchcraft due to the stories told by their Indian servant, accuses Lois of having used a spell upon her. She proclaims her innocence but no member of her family comes to her aid. Finally, she is sentenced to death. The plot of the story revolves around the Salem witch trials carried out during the seventeenth century. Gaskell pictures a community of people who believes in myths and legends which create a feeling of generalized terror among the puritan inhabitants of the village. As the community is little and they know each other, the arrival of a stranger with different customs and beliefs, for she is Anglican, terrifies them. Even Grace Hickson, her cold aunt, treats Lois with suspicion after her first year in Salem: “a stranger like this girl” (Gaskell, 98). Therefore, an innocent girl dies because the unfounded fears of the whole population. The figure of Grace is gothic in herself. She represents the cold aunt in law who does not try to feel sympathy for her good natured niece. Gaskell could have been based on Mrs. Reed, Jane Eyre’s aunt, to create a similar character type. Both represent two proud women that feel indifference towards their respective kind nieces when they most need their help: Jane’s confinement in the charity school of Lowood and Lois’ sentence of death.
The element of the supernatural is present in the mind of Manasseh, Lois’ cousin. As she is a young and beautiful woman, he is quickly enchanted by her pretty looks. Moreover, due to his passionate desire of having her as his partner, he sees the vision of two spirits who warn him of Lois’ death if she does not marry him: “the colour of the one was white, like a bride's, and the other was black and red, which is, being interpreted, a violent death” Finally, several years after Lois’ hanging, Prudence recognizes that she had not told the truth concerning the supposed link of Lois to witchcraft. As a result, the hunts against witches are put to an end.