I hope Olive lived happily ever after with Jem's mother, they seemed to get along well. Would it be better for her to learn the truth about Jem or to just be able to grieve her false image of him?

#AScareADay
4/4

But Olive doesn't find out the dark truth about Jem by the end of the story. Instead it is Jem who ends up inside the well, confronted with the dead body of the cousin who dared to blackmail him--and then presumably sharing his fate. (Why didn't they anchor the rope to a tree?)

#AScareADay
3/

We're back on the theme of lovers: Jem Benson has a goth gf Olive, who "has a taste for the morbid and horrible" and loves to sit on the edge of a creepy well. She jokes about falling in and making the acquaintance of Truth (referencing Gerome's famous painting).

#AScareADay
2/

Just under the wire before midnight, it's Day 14 of #AScareADay: "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs.

This author is famous for his short story "The Monkey's Paw," which I've read many times and referenced many more. But I don't think I've read anything else by him before. This was a fun one!

1/

V. Hunt #AScareADay
Is it truly living when presence replaces passion?
The couple's plight & sorrows call to mind E.B. Browning's "Love":
"But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love."

3/3 Jacobs #AScareADay
Some say that "All's well, that ends well". But not for Jem, Venerable Bard, not for him.
[I couldn't resist this.]

2/3 Jacobs #AScareADay
Jem hopes that the well's depths, a verticality of space, will conceal his crimes.
The well also symbolizes the immoral depths that Jem has fallen--& later will fall actually.
But Jem's plans go awry: his betrothed's bracelet falls accidently (fatefully?!) into the well.

Jacobs #AScareADay
Spatiality is no friend of secrecy. Jem tries to keep secret his covert love affair by creating a 2nd secret. The affair & body disposal involve types of proximity.
Seeking to suppress the disclosure of a lover's letters, Jem hides his 2nd secret in a nearby abandoned well.
1/3

But I’m with Adele.

“I am a woman, and I want to be loved.” Who doesnt?

#AScareADay
4/4

Surely one can still be a great artist without totally ignoring your wife all day and expecting her to be content with total isolation.

Sylvia is haunted by sympathy for the poor Adele, which is treated as a flaw she must be cured of through moral enlightenment.

#AScareADay
3/

Though their hair colors are reversed (in Poe, the dark-haired wife came first, then the blonde), we have the new wife either being possessed by or transforming into her predecessor.

But is it supernatural or just a shared despair at the same neglectful treatment?

#AScareADay
2/

Day 13 of #AScareADay is “Secret Chambers” by Mrs Wilson Woodrow.

Yesterday I was reminded of the First Wife trope. Today we dive into it fully.

The obvious comparison here is to Du Maurier’s Rebecca, but I found myself thinking more of Poe’s “Ligeia.”

1/

Today's #AScareADay read was Mrs Wilson Woodrow's 'Secret Chambers'.

I have to say... the main guy is a prick who is more willing to believe that his dead wife has possessed his new wife than consider, for even a second, that he might be at fault.

It's hard to find online...but worry not!

Woodrow #AScareADay
TBH given the story arc, I didn't expect a fairy-tale ending.
I expected the deceased 1st wife to haunt the 2nd wife. No.
Sylvia's over-powering curiosity re: her husband's secrecy led to a final crisis wherein he recognized her as his muse, thus joining art & love. [Loud cheers]

But where is the father in all of this? He just allows his children to be neglected and gives his new wife full reign over the household finances? Maybe he also deserves a good haunting from his dead first wife.

#AScareADay
5/5