Love
Love is the central strand of Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House,” bringing comfort and happiness to everything from the undead to the titular haunted house itself. Far from being a typical ghost story, “A Haunted House” details a much gentler kind of haunting. In the story, two ghostly lovers glide through the house where they once lived, searching for a “treasure” that they had buried there before death. In the end, it seems that the…
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Happiness and the Home
The title of the story, “A Haunted House,” demonstrates the importance of the house to the story’s narrative. The story takes place almost completely within the house’s walls, as a ghostly couple drifts quietly through the house they once lived in hundreds of years ago. As the ghosts recall their fond memories of things that happened at the house and admire the living lovers who now inhabit it, Woolf suggests that the concept of home…
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Death
Though the concept of a “haunted house” assumes a certain degree of tragedy and horror—the death of the people who previously lived there and who have taken to harassing the house’s new residents—Woolf presents an entirely different depiction of death and haunting “A Haunted House.” Through the ghostly lovers that gently float through the house’s halls, reminiscing about their past life, Woolf suggests that death is not the tragic or terrifying end that most people…
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