The Amber Gods and Other Stories

by Alfred Bendixen

A widely-held vision of nineteenth-century American women is of lives lived in naive, domestic peace - the girls of Little Women making do until father comes home from the war. Nothing could be less true of Harriet Prescott Spofford's stories - in fact, her editor at the Atlantic Monthly at first refused to believe that an unworldly woman from New England had written them. Her style, though ornate by our 20th century standards, adds to its atmosphere, like heavy, Baroque furniture in a large and creepy house. The title story presents a self-centered and captivating woman who ruthlessly steals her orphan cousin's lover. In "Circumstance," a pioneer woman returning home through the woods at night is caught by a panther; her husband, who has come to save her, can only watch from the ground as she sings for her life, pinned in a tree. A train engineer hallucinates again and again that he is running over his wife. And Mrs. Craven, who's a bit "weak" in the head, mindlessl

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Horror, Classics, Gothic, Literature, Literary Fiction

222 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1989

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

I may sink this rating down a star further on out, but in light of today's bout of reading leaving me rather pleased, I'd rather hold on to what remaining good will I have for the moment. For this is yet another work hailing from a severely underread author, one who smacks far more of Poe and the gothic than of Alcott and the domestic, but due to a bout of rather desperate socioeconomic forces, submitted her writing prowess to first capitalism and then religion. A tale frequently told during certain areas of the world during certain centuries, I imagine, but I must admit, Spofford bears up better than most examples I've come across, if sometimes merely in terms of a single singularity rather than an overarching quality. For if the Poe didn't tip you off, this author delights in unloading a sea of syntax and a Mariana's Trench of dictionary terms at every point, and of the ten tales represented here, more than half risk completely losing themselves to overly indulgent, and thus borderline nonsensical, froth. And yet, give Spofford a structure, as is the case with "Old Madame" and a certain family history of several centuries prior, and narratological purpose weds to evocative prose so splendidly and so profoundly that one wishes it had been a novel in its own right. So, certainly not to everyone's tastes, but for those who don't mind sinking (although in an admittedly hit or miss fashion) for a time into the writing of someone who, were circumstances different, could may have well been an early crafter of horror or science fiction in her own right, this is rather a rare treat.

As I said, this collection is rather hit or miss. The introduction rhapsodizes about "In a Cellar" and "The Amber Gods" and gives "Circumstance" and "In the Maguerriwock" their due, but I personally found the tales' respective mixes of non-watertight mysteries and blowsy dramas compounded by not too small a measure of white othering too filmy to leave a lasting impression. "The Black Bess," and "Her Story" both heavily rely on the hazy voluptuousness that literature loves to use as demarcation between sanity and madness, and I much preferred it to when the writing fully committed to its traversal of the unknown, whether unexplored continent as in "The Moonstone Mass" or supernatural hauntings in the case of "The Godmothers," for at least there's some tangible death that a reader can sink one's teeth into. In comparison to the rest of the collection, "Miss Susan's Love Affair" is almost entirely straightforward and thus suffers heavily for it, leaving "Old Madame," the second of the last of the collection, to wear the crown in my personal estimation. Bombastic a claim as this is, that particular piece reminded me of nothing so much as Wuthering Heights with its socially strangled romances and hellishly damned family lines, albeit showing far more clearly the historical bones infusing the story's flesh in a way that I, indulger in well written nonfiction that I am, found deliciously compelling. Certainly not one of the florid thrusts that Spofford composed whilst she was still Prescott, but the older I grow, the more I recognize the value of tempering when it comes to writing in a way that hedges one's strengths and bears up one's weaknesses (although I could do without the selfish holier-than-thou conservatism so many readers seem to confuse that with). It's not enough to make me go track down everything else that's survived of the writer's work (indeed, there doesn't seem to be much beyond this selection of stories), but it does make me think about potentials, especially if a writer of today were to take on the tale in as richly infused a manner as it deserved without attempting to stuff an 800 page work into 400 printed sheets. Certainly not a thought I expected to be dwelling upon at the close of this collection, and sufficient for me to give the entirety a higher rating, leastwise for now.

I suppose, considering everything I've said previously in this review, that it would be fair to classify this as a "hidden gem." The phrase is a bit too uncritically positive for my liking, especially in a case of writing where the quibbles are plain to see, but when Spofford does something well, she does it very, very well, to the point that, from thereon out, I'll have a hard time taking seriously anyone who proclaims themselves to be some sort of disinterrer of the unfairly buried in the halls of literature but doesn't have some awareness of her work. It certainly has me craving well written pieces of a more than eerie quality that doesn't devolve as lazily into jump scares, eugenics, or general bigotry as so much tends to do these days, but when my choices seem to be confined to Lovecraft and his myriad gutless offspring, I can barely even muster the strength necessary to even begin the search. That sort of inured despondency may be why Spofford did so well in my estimation on an instinctual level, if less so on a critical one, and in this particular case, I'll take what I can get. The author may prove less enticing and more soporific to most, but there really isn't any quite like her, and in these days of endless derivatives, it's always good to engage with writing that did its own thing for better or worse.

[Brenda Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't actually read this whole book yet, but the two stories I read were fantastic. "The Amber Gods" involves a fairly self-centered narrator, but the style is so much fun. Spofford's descriptions are lush and vivid and the ending is a bit of a shock. "In a Cellar" is a detective story to rival Poe or Doyle. It's a real shame that her stories are out of print and I can only get them in e-books.

[Stetson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harriet Prescott Spofford’s The Amber Gods and Other Stories (1863) has been revived by feminist scholars and places in the 19th century American literary tradition as a substitution for Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, etc. My exposure came through an American literature survey course, which featured only female authors, which, in retrospect, feels like being the victim of a theft of some kind. I have, of course, read many of the other, more eminent authors on my own, but the Canon Wars has casualties.

These collections were popular in the 19th century, though they were understood as sensationalistic. The sensationalism of that era is more sophisticated than today's, but this isn't an argument for the merit of canonical inclusion. Yes, this collection blends Romantic and Gothic tropes like obsession, vanity, moral allegory, and exoticism to entertain, but these were existing troupes Spofford could simply draw from at-will. For instance, Shelley's Frankenstein: The 1818 Text precedes this work by at least four decades and is significantly weightier.

Some will try to argue that Spofford's stories have innovated within the canonical tradition, but this argument is entirely premise on a very narrow representationalism. I'm obviously not persuaded by this argument. Such a rationale would be reasonable for inclusion in a history of 19th century American female literature course, but this is not how my exposure came about.

The titular story in the collection is the most famous, featuring Giorgione (Yone, an exotic and flaw protagonist, who recounts how she deliberately sabotages the budding romance between her gentle, orphaned cousin Louise and the artist Vaughan Rose, deploying her beauty, charm, and a set of supposedly cursed string of amber beads inherited from a “little Asian” slave. Though Louise embodies quiet devotion and domestic virtue, Yone succeeds in captivating Vaughan and marrying him. The triumph proves hollow, unsurprisingly, as Vaughan soon becomes consumed not with Yone herself but with rendering her beauty on canvas, reducing her from a living partner to a mere aesthetic object. As his artistic obsession deepens and his emotional attention drifts back toward the soulful, steadfast Louise, Yone, neglected and increasingly isolated, begins to waste away. The story culminates in a macabre revelation when Yone, mid-narrative, realizes she has already died; glancing at a clock, she understands that she has been recounting events as a ghost, transforming her tale of rivalry and vanity into a posthumous confession. So, as you can see, pretty tired tropes that look like many other more impressive works of literature.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't read this collection in years, though I remembered loving it. I just read it again last night, and now I remember why. It's fantastic! Spofford remains one of my favorite 19th century authors. If you check it out, I highly recommend "The Amber Gods" and "Circumstance."

[kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title story alone will haunt me forever,

[Ryan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

rating based on:
- The Amber Gods
- Her Story

[izzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for class, i really enjoyed the gendered aspects of the story

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*In a cellar --
*The amber gods --
Circumstance --3
*In the Maguerriwock --
The moonstone mass --2
The black Bess --
*Her story --
Miss Susan's love affair --
Old Madame --
The godmothers --1
***
The conquering will
D'Outre Mort
The mount of sorrow
Mr. Furbush --2
The ray of displacement

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Messa da parte dalla storia letteraria, la Spofford invece avrebbe il diritto di essere ricordata.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The Amber Gods"