Spatial and Corporeal Poetics of the Haunted House

A Female Gothic Reading of Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching

Abstract

The paper seeks to offer a Female Gothic reading of Helen Oyeyemi’s 2009 novel, White is for Witching. The dis/location of female identity and corporeality are examined within the context of Gothic space. Female Gothic corporeality and identity are explored through the themes of eating disorder, maternal hauntings, and the haunted house. The spatial and corporeal poetics of the haunted house are illustrated through the peculiar and symbiotic relationship that the female protagonist shares with the haunted house. Oyeyemi’s novel is interpreted as belonging to a Female Gothic tradition and as a narrative that embraces and reconfigures the classic Gothic trope of the haunted house.