De La
Mare’s Out of the Deep (1923) is
basically a ghost story, but it is also a subtle psychological profile of its
principle character, as many ghost stories seem to be. It is never certain whether the various apparitions
and effects in the tale actually exist separate from the character’s mind. This uncertainty leaves the narrative open to
interpretation, and makes it all the more haunting and disturbing.
Upon
the death of his uncle, a young man returns to the mansion where he lived as a
child. Jimmie—he keeps this
infantilizing name throughout the story despite his adulthood—is ambivalent
about living in the house and has no emotional attachment at all to its contents. He is soon stealthily selling off its
valuables to raise cash. It is clear
that his childhood in this vast mansion was fearful and unpleasant.
He
chooses to sleep in his uncle’s lavish bed. This is a kind of triumph, after
having been banished as a child for many years to a tiny attic room. He remembers “that high cupboard in the
corner from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at
him…crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared…” and “the window cold with menacing stars”. He has never been able to sleep very easily,
especially in the dark. He surrounds
himself with candles when he goes to bed.
De La Mare creepily describes how Jimmie likes to sleep in this
bed: laid out straight, as if in a
casket.
There
is a sense that Jimmie does not belong in this house, and perhaps that he never
did. The cold treatment he received from
his uncle, aunt, and one of the servants, and his lonely friendlessness might engender
sympathy. But the author has none for
him, seeing him mainly as an opportunist and a usurper, though trapped by childhood
memories of anger and fear. He has
inherited the home, but does he really deserve to own it?
So
much seems to depend on the pulling of various bell cords scattered about the
house. These were used to summon the
servants, now long gone. There is one
above his uncle’s old bed, and also one in the dark little attic room where he
was once forced to sleep. He obsesses
about these: if he pulls one, what might
it summon in this empty house? In one
oddly hallucinatory scene, he pulls the
bell cord above his uncle’s bed—it was earlier described as “the sumptuous
crimson pleated silk bell-pull, dangling like a snake with a huge tassel for
skull…”—and sees “the hidden fangs flickeringly jet out…”
A
servant does appear at his bedside—and the silent figure closely resembles him. Over several days other apparitions follow,
but they do not really interact with Jimmie much. They go about their business, as Jimmie grows
increasingly obsessed and agitated. Why
are they there? Whether in his own mind,
or manifested by the ringing of the bells, these ghosts are forces just beyond the
edge of his comprehension. Jimmie’s eventual
fate is foreshadowed from the very beginning of the story; he is doomed to return
to a place that he never truly escaped.
A haunted house can be seen emblematic of the haunted person’s mind and emotional state. Exploring forgotten or hidden rooms—or avoiding them as we do in nightmares—may signify a coming to terms with forgotten capacities, memories, interests, and traumas. Or might not. For one reason or another, the character in Out of the Deep, is not able to resolve his bitterness, and so he remains inside a tiny, four cornered nightmare.
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