Here and beyond

Here and Beyond is a collection of six short stories, which includes ghost stories, social dramas and character studies set in Brittany, New England, and Morocco. Two of these tales, The Young Gentleman and Bewitched, display distinct gothic leaning in their emphasis on looming architecture and the slow reveal of hidden secrets. The first story, Miss Mary Pask, pays strong tribute to Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher with the eponymous character suffering from a ‘cataleptic trance’ which leaves her with appearance of death. In the resolution, Wharton deviates from the more cataclysmic solution offered by Poe, but retains an emphasis on the fragility of the narrator.