In the following passage from Chapter 3, Wilde employs a wide range of figurative language, including imagery, personification, and simile, to evoke aspects of the Gothic for the reader. Each instance of figurative language in this sentence emphasizes the agency of the natural world, at times above or in contrast to the agency of human actors:
The owl beat against the window panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-tree, and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul; but the Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high above the rain and the storm [the ghost] could hear the steady snoring of the Minister for the United States.
Both the owl and the raven in this passage appear as portents of the ghost’s malicious midnight activity. Their presence is an important contribution to the Gothic imagery of the scene: often, in this literary tradition, the actions of animals—birds, in particular—parallel the actions of supernatural figures. In this passage, the ghost emerges as these animals emerge. Their nocturnal hijinks coincide with his own.
Even aspects of nature not commonly thought of as having life or agency take part in this Gothic nocturnal emergence. The wind, for instance, is personified in this passage through simile, with Wilde writing that it "wanders" like a "lost soul." Contrasting this agency of both natural and supernatural elements, the Otis family is passive, asleep, and little suspecting their "doom" (or so the ghost thinks).
In Gothic fiction, nature often has agency not only as a biological or physical phenomenon, but as a literal humanoid figure enabled to act through imagery and personification. Wilde evokes this element of Gothic style throughout the text by personifying the moon, who in the below passage from Chapter 3 “hides her face” behind a cloud, darkening the scene around her:
The moon hid her face in a cloud as [the ghost] stole past the great oriel window.
This personification helps establish the mood of the scene, signaling to the reader that some horrific event is scheduled to take place. If the moon, a force of nature with human agency, feels the need to turn away and hide her face from the horrors to come, then we, the human readership, should follow that same impulse.
Simultaneously, this personification reflects the Canterville Ghost’s own inner turmoil. He, like the moon, is a force of nature—albeit a supernatural one. As he grows weary of his tormentors and gradually retreats into himself, so do the forces of nature that surround and are beholden to his ghastly impulses. The moon hiding her face parallels the ghost’s self-consciousness at his lack of ability to adequately terrorize the American family.
In the following passage from Chapter 3, Wilde writes his ghost as alluding to Chanticleer, a fictional rooster who features prominently in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, specifically in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale:
[The ghost] ground his toothless gums together; and, raising his withered hands above his head, swore, according to the picturesque phraseology of the antique school, that when Chanticleer had sounded twice his merry horn, deeds of blood would be wrought, and Murder walk abroad with silent feet.
Chanticleer sounding “twice his merry horn” is therefore an elaborate way of evoking a rooster’s crow, considered in many cultures to be an omen or premonition. In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, the rooster Chanticleer dreams of his impending doom at the hands (or teeth) of a fox, and actively works to prevent this from happening. By invoking Chanticleer, the Canterville Ghost thus alludes to the tradition and history of premonition, using the “picturesque phraseology of the antique school” as a means of invoking his own supernatural power.
An extension of this power is the ghost’s control over the forces of nature, which he further asserts by personifying “Murder”—who, at his behest, will “walk abroad with silent feet” to inflict terror as the ghost sees fit.
