To see Atherton really take on the shibboleths of her time, you have to turn to the non-supernatural stories in Bell: “A Monarch of Small Survey” makes fun of the self-important rich, while “Crowned With One Crest” disposes of the notion of there being just one and only one person you can ever truly fall in love with. Oh, there are touches of satire in “The Caves of Death” and “When the Devil Was Well,” and “The Dead and the Countess” is primarily a satire on the old Christian view of burial, but none of these are very striking. Unfortunately, neither shows up well in Caves. Which one do you think more effective?ĭespite the conventionality of the spiritual views she offers in these stories, Atherton was both a feminist and social critic. These can range from simple considerations about the survival of the soul, as in the very effective “The Striding Place,” in which the protagonist tries to save someone from drowning, to the elaborately allegorical, as in the “The Caves of Death,” a description of the afterlife. “Death and the Woman,” which features a young wife sitting up alone with her husband on her deathbed, is a prime example “A Tragedy,” featuring a woman who wakes up after being rejected by a suitor to find that things have changed a great deal, is another.ĭespite voicing opinions that would align her with materialists, Atherton was fond of using spiritualism as a starting place for supernatural stories. A great deal of her supernatural horror is psychological, more akin to Bierce than James in its simplicity. Atherton was on friendly terms with both Ambrose Bierce and Henry James (to whom Bell was dedicated), and it shows. Two Joshi says were previously uncollected five come from her 1905 collection The Bell in the Fog (which includes five non-supernatural stories as well). Sebald Beham (1500-1550) tackled it at least twice, once chastely. “Death and the Woman” is also a common artistic motif.

The striding place gertrude atherton