"Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds": Scare Quotes in "The Jolly Corner"

Scare quotes usher in a word's figurative use and distance it from its literal meaning, making their frequent occurrence in "The Jolly Corner" fully appropriate, introducing a ghostly aspect to individual words that corresponds to the story's thematic premise. If Spencer Brydon inaugurates the plot by granting the "ghost" of a chance to Alice Staverton's conceit, the haunting that then occurs reflects this tension in literal and figurative usage. For the supplement invoked by scare quotes corresponds to Brydon's unlived life come alive. Yet even as Brydon generates his double by actualizing a figure of speech, the story reveals an ironic inversion, in the ghost's all but literal defiance of Brydon's weakly figurative existence.