Gothic Tales (Penguin Classics)

A portrait inexplicably turned to the wall ... a mysterious child who lives on the freezing moors ... a doppelganger brought to life by a woman's bitter curse. These are some of the eerie elements Elizabeth Gaskell uses to masterful effect in Gothic Tales. A writer best known for books about middle-class life in country villages and the urban social problems of Victorian England, Gaskell was fascinated by the dualities in women's lives, by the tyranny men wield and the revenge women exact, and by the merging of fact and fiction, not only in literature but in everyday lives. In these nine spine-tingling tales, she adds another layer of intrigue: the abrupt appearance of the supernatural in the most ordinary of settings and the havoc it plays on human frailties.