Victorian ghost stories gave ignorant commoners privileged access to the supernatural

Evidence

For James scholars, contact with the anomalous was usually mediated by the “lower classes”, which he portrayed as lacking in intellect but in possession of a deeper knowledge of weird lore. As Lovecraft and James scholar S.T. Joshi observes: … The fractured and dialectical English in which [James’ array of lower-class characters] speak or write is, in one sense, a reflection of James’ well-known penchant for mimicry; but it cannot be denied that there is a certain element of malice in his relentless exhibition of their intellectual failings. […] And yet, they occupy pivotal places in the narrative: by representing a kind of middle ground between the scholarly protagonists and the aggressively savage ghosts, they frequently sense the presence of the supernatural more quickly and more instinctively than their excessively learned betters can bring themselves to do. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1120

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Eighteenth-century thinkers misattributed social phenomena to supernatural sources. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1416

Broader Connections

• Eighteenth-century thinkers misattributed social phenomena to supernatural sources. #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 1416