Who Is The Ghost Duchess In The Novel?

Question

Spoilers welcome. Is she a vengeful noble spirit haunting the narrative, a central figure tied to the cursed family's backstory or just a tragic legend?

Ioana Cian-Tarba · Answer

This ghost duchess is actually the main character’s late grandmother, come back to help her through the treacherous waters of the noble court. Much of her advice is delivered via a series of cryptic comments on hidden family betrayals. As the story is driven by an unexpected inheritance and a ghostly mentor, in ‘The Heiress Who Came Back’ a young woman returns to her family’s home to claim her title, only to discover that her legacy is haunted by a centuries-old pact between the living and the dead.

Flynn · Answer

The ghost duchess in this novel is such a fantastic character! Normally I’d expect a ghost to be some sort of exceptional, paranormal occurrence, stuck between worlds forever, but this duchess is so much more than that. The author provides an incredibly rich history behind this woman and ties it in so expertly with the rest of the novel that she feels completely real. She’s more of a fully developed character than a plot device.

Her presence is elegant but fractured, regal but sorrowful. It reminds us of the corruption and loss of love that this kingdom was founded upon. Her appearance is a pause in the story to let us mourn with her her lost life. It is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Mia · Answer

I LOVE the ghost duchess in this novel. She is so elegant and tragic. I pictured her as a high status lady of old days in mystery surrounding her death. She now roams the old palace, spiritually intact and dignified. I like how her appearances are timed for maximum impact, rather than cheap jump scares, to create foreboding moments.

However, the bits and bobs of her past life are slowly revealed and are just heart-breaking, given the current circumstances of the main characters. Her interactions with the living, especially the main protagonist, are so wonderfully written and really make her so much more than just a ghost. She is a tool to help drive the story forward with her subtle insights and hints at what is going on.

Yvette · Answer

The ghost duchess is one of those characters that will stick with you long after you finish reading the book. The way that the author has portrayed the ghost duchess is of an eerie yet graceful figure walking around in tattered silks. I love how the author has portrayed the duchess in that she is slowly revealed to the reader through her conversation with the protagonist and also through flashbacks of her past. We learn of her death and why she is lingering on earth and how her unfinished business with the living affects the protagonist.

The ghost duchess is another beautifully drawn character in this novel. Her poetry is beautifully set out in her speech, making her scenes read like a ghost story mixed with a historical novel. The contrast between the ghost duchess’s faded, decaying splendor and that of the living court is brilliant. The ghost duchess is a symbol of lost power, of love that has been cruelly betrayed. She is a reminder of the past and how it refuses to die.

Charles Garnett · Answer

From a writing craft perspective, the ghost duchess is a great example of a mystery driving a story and a symbol in a story driving a theme. The fact that the duchess is a ghost and we don’t know who she was in life is the driving force behind many of the pages of the book. But every time she does appear, she is a constant reminder of the past and how it is alive and well in the present. So each time she appears the plot advances and her presence reinforces the theme of the book, i.e. the past is not dead. I would highly recommend the ghost duchess to any writer as a fantastic example of storytelling. The information that we receive about her is drip-fed to us in casual conversations, in property deeds, in descriptions of her clothes, in the descriptions of the house and its interior. Everything about her is skillfully and seamlessly woven together to create a very efficient and elegant story.

Tony Kidwell · Answer

The ghost duchess is kind of overrated. I thought the concept was interesting enough, but it was just so slow and often so underwhelming. Her appearances were so fleeting and kind of vague, which was a bummer because I wanted more of her interacting with the current duchess and having more defined appearances and rules for her haunting. But instead most of the book is spent with the duchess dealing with her family's financial troubles, and the supernatural aspect feels like an afterthought. I was sort of excited to get to the big reveal in the end, but even that was sort of a letdown and kind of predictable. The writing was pretty, but that wasn't enough to make up for the rest of the book. I know I'm in the minority on this one, but the ghost duchess just sort of dragged on for me.

Mary Ann Fajardo · Answer

I found the romantic plotline added to the ghost duchess's back story to be a really unpleasant addition to her already terrible circumstances. It is not necessary to portray a wronged woman in order to explain how she was wronged in order to make her story more palatable. A woman can be wronged for all sorts of reasons (greed, power etc) without the storyline being 'tragic' if she has also been wronged in love. The discovery of the portrait of her secret lover in the locket (the final clue for the duchess's ghost) actually undermined my more brutal interpretation of her story. Instead of a story of a woman dispossessed of her title and her home for political reasons it became a story of a woman who was forced to give up love for political reasons. A very traigic but very common story for the period. Instead the author could have stuck to the story of a wronged woman in a more unique and unpalatable way.

Marlon L. Ramos · Answer

The ghost duchess is, for Gothic purposes, a skeleton in the closet of the family’s capital. Her return as a ghost is coincident with the family’s finances dipping irreversibly below the edge of financial sustainability. She is the return of the socially and economically repressed, the cost to the family of their capital over the decades. The money they used to build their strange house and to purchase and display their art, to create and to maintain their social standing—-all of it was paid for by her disinheritance. The novel implies that such injustices create a kind of spiritual debt that is repaid with great interest. Her unrest is that of stolen capital. Ill-gotten gains carry a curse in this Gothic novel. The modern heir of the family makes amends by funding a hospital with the duchess’s name on it, and the ghost is finally at peace. This is far more interesting than the typical romantic reading of the novel’s Ghost.

Who Is The Ghost Duchess In The Novel?

8 Answers

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