A Haunted House

A Haunted House was first published in 1921 as a part of Virginia Woolf’s short story collection Monday or Tuesday. The collection, which contained eight short stories, was meant to emphasize Woolf’s philosophies surrounding modernist literature, as outlined in her 1919 critical essay Modern Fiction. Woolf believed that writers should focus less on trying to please sales-oriented publishers and the fickle public and instead write what inspired them. In her view, literature should focus on the mysteries and complexities of life rather than the material components. A Haunted House explores this philosophy by turning what initially appears to be a straightforward ghost story into a rumination on the nature of love, memory, life, and death. Woolf employs a stream-of-consciousness narrative style as the myriad thoughts and impressions of the narrator flow together with minimal separation. This style contributes to the sense that the story exists outside of a set timeframe, suggesting that the haunting of the house and its inhabitants is an ongoing occurrence.