The Spectral Voice: In the Red Kitchen (Roberts, 1990), Affinity (Waters, 1999), Beyond Black (Mantel, 2005)

This chapter draws on the past, focusing on séances and spiritualism mostly in the contemporary period. Michèle Roberts’ In the Red Kitchen (1990), Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black (2005) and Sarah Waters’ Affinity (1999) reveal that while women’s labour, domestic or other service work, is largely invisible, with their work as spirit mediums the worlds of work, financial transactions and ghosts come together, bringing visible signs of security and status, based on transactions of the largely invisible, ineffable, invested in spirit contacts, trust, and money. These interactions often bring gender-based abuse by historically male managers and spirit guides guiding interactions between the female medium, her body the conduit between ghost and paying audience. The for-profit ghostly encounter links with women’s gullibility, hysteria and their position as manipulated body and voice, vessel, substantial in the shared world, and insubstantial, a medium through which others engage and speak. Each novel deals with investments and exchanges in terms of the visible, imagined and invisible, gendered economics, and the safety and control of women’s bodies.