It takes two to make belief go right
The narrator of Edith Nesbit's "Man-Size in Marble" (1887) challenges us directly to accept the fantastic.
Tellers of ghost stories love to break the fourth wall to render the fantastic into something more real.
Take the most-told ghost story of all time, “A Christmas Carol” (1843), which begins: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” We’re told he’s not just dead but “dead as a doornail.”
And then, to make sure we’re really listening, Dickens’ narrator beats us over the head:
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Settle down, Charles. You’re going to strain a metaphor!
So, what’s the point of reaching out to us directly? And how does the story benefit? To make the fantastic seem truer, a ghost-story writer purposefully enlists our help in deciding what’s real and what’s not. And if we can be tricked into thinking, just for a readerly second, that the narrator is individually telling that story just to us, it makes the narrator a bit more real—and the possibility of ghosts also being real that much more so. The strategy suspends our disbelief.
I read a lot of ghost stories, but I have come to learn that I rarely noticed intrusive narrators: the ones who interrupt the telling of a tale to tell us how to judge the facts. I just go with convention and rarely second guess. The fantastic nonsense they’re telling me is of course true. Why would an author lie? We’re friends. Why would I be incredulous? There’s no fun in being the reader who persistently interrupts the author with, “Well, actually ….” That guy is the worst.
I’m getting older, so of course I’m getting worse. My incredulity grows. Most recently, while reading Edith Nesbit’s “Man-Size in Marble” (1887) I wondered why her narrator needed to be so, well, me-me-me. Unlike the narrator of “A Christmas Carol,” who interjects to make sure we really get what’s happening, Nesbit’s protagonist narrating the story tells us that we probably just won’t get it. That we’re not ready for the fantastic.
“Man-Size in Marble” begins:
Although every word of this story is as true as despair, I do not expect people to believe it. Nowadays a “rational explanation” is required before belief is possible. Let me then, at once, offer the “rational explanation” which finds most favour among those who have heard the tale of my life’s tragedy. It is held that we were “under a delusion,” Laura and I, on that thirty-first of October; and this supposition places this whole matter on a satisfactory and believable basis. The reader can judge, when he, too, has heard my story, how far this is an “explanation,” and in what sense it is “rational.”
I can just picture Nesbit reading to an audience flashing up full-on air-quotes. Not only is she mocking fuddy-duddy positivism, but she is also daring us to trust her. Do we even have the guts to be scared?
If Nesbit’s goal was to provoke me into believing, well done. “Man-Size in Marble” is about a couple that moves to strange cottage. In a nearby church, it’s said that effigies of a menacing pair of haunted tombs come to life on All Saints’ Eve. From its provocative opening to a clever ending, I gave the story my stupid all.
So, again, why do ghost stories often call our attention to the relationship between author and reader?
Calling out the reader to “believe it or not” is a rhetorical sleight of hand that lends greater authority to the reader. By not expecting anyone to believe her story, and then proceeding to tell a really good one, Nesbit is inviting the reader to be an even better judge of the truth than her. The author is saying, “All that’s left for my scary story to be great is for you to believe it. Are you brave enough?”
In other others, it takes two to make belief go right.
Secondly, no doubt Nesbit was fully aware this narrative device was used well by other writers. By choosing it for “Man-Size in Marble,” she’s taking a creative risk: “You’ve heard Charles tell you a scary story before, but wait, come closer to the campfire: I got something better.” She could mimic the greats because she was one of them.
Lastly, when was the last time you envisioned the campfire as a place where you willfully swallowed lies as truths? When were you good at believing ghost stories?
I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7. My bedroom was at the top of a two-story house that leaned too far to one side. At night, in the moonlight, the long, shadowy fingers of great oak trees scraped at my window screen.
One day, not far down the backyard hill, I noticed one of those oaks had been cut down. Its stump remained. I avoided that stump. It seemed hostile.
Later, on a dark and stormy night, I awoke to find myself outside. I stood near the stump. The tall grasses surrounding it swayed in a moonlight séance. From the stump’s rings slowly rose the upper half of a naked goblin. It had angry eyes. Long, shadowy fingers from its slender arms reached out to me, scraping at the wind.
Was it a nightmare? Reader, I dearly hope so. Those long, shadowy fingers reaching for me in the night … that vision was almost too fantastic to be true.
Image credit: Edward Gorey’s illustration for “Man-Size in Marble,” collected in Edward Gorey’s Haunted Looking Glass, Avenel Books: 1984.