BACKGROUND

The ghost story: The Canterville Ghost is a ghost story.Ghost stories belong to the genre called horror literature, whose purpose is to scare the reader with situations that cause horror or fear. The most common technique is suspense, the slow insinuating of a doubt or of a frightening revelation, which keeps the reader interested. Horror stories were born in the nineteenth century

because there was a growing interest in the fantastic and the supernatural. The most important literary production of this period belongs to the English, American and Nordic writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Philip Lovecraft, nowadays considered the fathers of this

genre. Among the current writers one of the most famous is Stephen King, who wrote a lot of best-sellers. However, this story can be defined an inverted ghost story, because a lot of elements are different from the traditional ones. The main difference is the fact that Mr Otis is

not scared by the ghost, while usually people should be. Moreover, the Ghost itself is frightened by the Otis twins. There is also comic relief bordering on farce, including trip wires, butter on the top of the stairs and buckets of water balanced on half-open doors. But the story has a

dark centre. The crime and retribution which led to the haunting is ghastly, and this is really not a comedy at all, but a tale of redemption through the power of love. The innocent girl of the family, appropriately called Virginia, prays for the ghost and endures terrifying if unnamed

experiences to release the ghost from his purgatory.

American vs. British society: Wilde compares the behaviour of the American Otises with that of the British upper classes. It is a study in the differences between the English, with their ghosts and their history, and the practical Americans, with their commercial remedies to all

problems, even the supernatural, and the money to buy what is left of Europe.