Spectres of Virginia Woolf: Rhythmic and Heterotopic Haunting in “A Haunted House”

Abstract

In this paper I offer a reading of Virginia Woolf’s story “A Haunted House” from the perspectives of hauntology and heterotopic spatiality. I argue that, initiating with this story, spectrality prevails in Virginia Woolf’s writing and haunts her literary corpus. By examining the mystical element rhythmic practice brings to the story, and by linking it to thencept of haunting and spectrality, I discuss the use of haunting and spectres to question modernity’s connection to the past. I emphasize that Woolf questions the relation of modernity to the past, which does not necessarily mean that the past has always negative connotations for her, but rather that she distrusts modernity and suspects that it might betray her. By focusing on the quintessential role of the house, I claim that the house transforms into a heterotopic place where boundaries between spaces and times blur and the past, the present, and the future merge, as a result of which the house becomes a space of encounter, which is a way of resisting the rigid conceptualizations of spatio-temporality.