The Spectralization of the Other 123 Enchantments, shades, haunts, sacred spots, the revivification (through memory) of a dead father, a perpetually mourning reader: the scene is tremulous with hidden presences Not, again, the vulgar apparitions of folk superstition—the ghosts entertained here are subjective, delicately emotional in origin, the subtle protrusions of a yearning heart No egregiously Gothic scenery obtrudes; we are still ostensibly in the ordinary world But the scene is haunted nonetheless, as Radcliffe's oddly hinting figures of speech suggest Home itself has become uncanny, a realm ofapophrades To be "at home" is to be possessed by memory, to dwell with spirits of the dead These passages epitomize a phenomenon in Radcliffe we might call the supernaturalization of everyday life Old-fashioned ghosts, it is true, have disappeared from the fictional world, but a new kind of apparition takes their place To be a Radcliffean hero or heroine in one sense means just this: to be "haunted," to find oneself obsessed by spectral images of those one loves One sees in the mind's eye those who are absent; one is befriended and consoled by phantoms of the beloved Radcliffe makes it clear how such phantasmata arise They are the products of refined sentiment, the characteristic projections of a feeling heart To be haunted, according to the novel's romantic myth, is to display one's powers of sympathetic imagination; the cruel and the dull have no such hallucinations Those who love, by definition, are open to the spirit of the other The "ghost" may be of someone living or dead Mourners, not surprisingly, are particularly prone to such mental visions Early in the novel, for instance, Emily's father, St Aubert, is reluctant to leave his estate, even for his health, because the continuing "presence" of his dead wife has "sanctified every surrounding scene" (22) The old peasant La Voisin, likewise bereaved, can "sometimes almost fancy" he sees his dead wife "of a still moonlight, walking among these shades she loved so well" (67) After St Aubert dies and Emily has held a vigil over his corpse, her fancy is "haunted" by his living image: "She thought she saw her father approaching her with a benign countenance; then, smiling mournfully and pointing upwards, his lips moved, but instead of words, she heard sweet music borne on the distant air, and presently saw his features glow with the mild rapture of a superior being" (83) Entering his room when she returns to La Vallee, "the idea of him rose so distinctly to her mind, that she almost fancied she saw him before her" (95) When she and Valancourt sit in the garden, she finds her father's image "in every landscape" (106) But lovers—those who mourn, as it were, for the living—are subject to similar experiences The orphaned Emily, about to be carried off by her aunt to Tholouse, having bid a sad farewell to Valancourt in the garden at La Vallee, senses a mysterious presence at large in the shades around her: As her eyes wandered over the landscape she thought she perceived a person emerge from the groves, and pass slowly along a moon-light alley that led between them; but the distance and the imperfect light would not suffer her to judge with any degree of certainty whether this was fancy or reality (115)