3. Acknowledgement
• I would like to express my special thanks of
gratitude to my teacher Ms. Swati Sood as well as
our principal Ms. Gurnam Kaur Grewal who gave
me the golden opportunity to make this
PowerPoint presentation on the topic ‘The
Canterville Ghost ’, which also helped me in doing
a lot of Research and I came to know about so
many new things I am really thankful to
them!"secondly I would also like to thank my
parents and friends who helped me a lot
in finalizing this project within the limited time
frame.
4.
5. • The story is about a ghost which lives in a house. The ghost tries to scare
everybody who live in the house. He loves doing what he had done before to
all who live in the house. But everything is changes when a family from
America decided to live in the house. The family already knows that there is a
ghost in the house, but they do not believe in ghost. The family consist the
parents and their four children. The head of the family is Mr. Hiram B. Otis. He
is an American ambassador. The ghost plays many tricks to scare the family
but they do not work. The ghost does the same thing that he had done to all
families that lived in the house before. He thinks the family will get scared of
him and will move out from the house. All the tricks played by the ghost to
scare the family does not work, but the family plays the same game and the
ghost is scared by them. The only daughter in the family, Virginia is a kind-
hearted girl. She becomes a friend to the ghost. One day, the ghost says that
he wants to 'sleep‘ because he has not taken rest for three hundred years. He
considers death to be very peaceful. He takes Virginia along with him to the
Garden of Death.
6. • Finally, the family finds the skeleton in a
room. It belonged to Sir Simon. The
skeleton was finally buried in peace. As
asked by the ghost, Virginia always
visited the ghost's grave and prayed for
him.
7.
8. • This story can be defined as an inverted ghost story,
because a lot of elements are different from the
traditional ones. The main difference is the fact that
Mr Otis is not scared by the ghost, while usually
people should be. Moreover, the Ghost itself is
frightened by the Otis twins.
• There is also comic relief bordering on farce,
including buckets of water balanced on half-open
doors. But the story has a dark centre. The crime
and retribution which led to the haunting is ghastly,
and this is really not a comedy at all, but a tale of
redemption through the power of love. The
innocent girl of the family, appropriately called
Virginia, prays for the ghost and endures terrifying if
unnamed experiences to release the ghost.
• Also, The Canterville Ghost is both a parody of the
traditional ghost story and a satire of the American
way of life. Wilde obviously intends to satirize
American materialism, but he pokes fun at English
traditional culture as well.
10. • The ghost: he is the ghost of Canterville Chase. He was
Sir Simon de Canterville and died in 1584, his spirit still
haunts the Chase. His aspect is very terrible
• Mr. Otis: The head of the Otis family and father. He is a
middle-aged American ambassador; he is determinate,
inflexible, rational, practical and pragmatic, in
conclusion a true American.
• Virginia: The daughter is the only one in the family who
is scared by the ghost. She never speaks except to the
ghost, at the end of the story. She is fifteen years old
and very kind-hearted.
• Washington: the Otises' oldest son
• The twins: These children always play tricks on the
ghost and make him depressed and desperate. All along
the story, they imagine jokes and even dress up as
ghosts.
11. • Mrs Otis: The mother isn't scared of the ghost
and even asks him if he wants a remedy for his
stomach. “She is a very handsome middle-aged
woman with fine eyes and a superb profile. She
has a magnificent constitution and a wonderful
amount of animal spirits.”
• Duke of Chesire: He is a duke desperately in
love with the fifteen-year old Virginia Otis.
However, his guardians pack him off to Eton,
and he must wait to marry. When Virginia
vanishes, he insists on being part of the search
party. As soon as she reappears, he smothers
her with kisses. His devotion is rewarded, and
Virginia consents to become the Duchess of
Cheshire.
• Lord Canterville: He is a respectable
descendent of the Canterville family, that was
the owner of the Canterville Chase.
• Mrs.Umney: She is the old house-keeper of
Canterville Chase who is very terrified by the
ghost and tries to warn the family.
12.
13. • When the story starts, the American
minister, Mr Hiram B. Otis has purchased
Canterville Chase, an English country house.
Otis is warned by Lord Canterville that the
house is haunted, but he doesn’t believe in
ghosts.
• Washington applies some strong stain
remover – Pinkerton’s Champion Stain
Remover and Paragon Detergent – to the
blood stain, which disappears temporarily
and reappears the next day. As soon as they
remove the stain it reappears the following
day – bright red, dull red, purple and even
bright emerald green.
• After the blood stain reappears the first
time, the Otis family conclude that there
must be a ghost. Mrs Otis is a modern day
woman and declares that she is going to
join the Psychical Society. Washington
decides to write to Messrs Myers and
Podmore, “on the subject of the
Permanence of Sanguineous Stains when
connected with crime.”
Otis family discovering the
blood stain
14. • The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde is mostly told
through the eyes of the very theatrical ghost, Sir Simon,
who appears in many different costumes and personas
– Red Reuben, Strangled Babe, Dumb Daniel, Suicide’s
Skeleton, Martin the Maniac, Masked Mystery, Reckless
Rupert, Headless Earl and so on. The first night Sir
Simon decides to haunt the Americans, Mr Otis greets
him with a container of Rising Sun Lubricator for him to
oil his manacled chains so he doesn’t make so much
noise and disturb the family’s sleep. The twin boys also
throw a pillow at him.
• The ghost quickly retreats to his hiding place and feels
quite insulted. Never in his three hundred years of
haunting people at Canterville Chase has he ever
received that kind of reception. The tables have been
turned on the ghost, and instead of him terrifying the
residents, they instead “terrify” him. The twins use
their pea shooters and discharge pellets at Sir Simon.
One night after he attempts to frighten the family with
one of his terrible laughs, Mrs. Otis lets him know that
he sounds quite terrible and offers him a bottle of
Doctor Dobell’s tincture.
OTIS TWINS PLAYING
PRANKS ON GHOST
15. • Sir Simon suffers great indignities at the
hand of the American family, who are not
afraid of him. He enters the twins’ room to
scare them and a large jug of water falls on
him, which just about does him in. He has a
grand plot to exact revenge against
Washington whom he bears a special grudge
for removing the blood stain with
Pinkerton’s Paragon Detergent. But once
again, the joke is on Sir Simon, when he
encounters, what he perceives as another.
The ghost has never seen another ghost and
is quite terrified and flees to his room.
When he regains his composure and
courage, Sir Simon seeks out the ghost to
form some sort of alliance. He discovers to
his chagrin, that the ghost wasn’t a real
ghost. In another instance, Washington and
the twins force him into the great iron oven,
which luckily wasn’t lit at the time, forcing
Sir Simon to escape through chimneys.
Sir Simon being scared
after seeing the
dummy ghost
16. • Sir Simon’s nerves begin to unravel because nothing is working and
he is becoming quite weak. He even decides not to bother with
replacing the stain on the floor in the library. He doesn’t think very
highly of the Otis family “They were evidently people on a low,
material plane of existence, and quite incapable of appreciating the
symbolic value of sensuous phenomena. The question of
phantasmal apparitions, and the development of astral bodies, was
of course quite a different matter, and not really under his
control…”
• The ghost resigns to the fact that he will not be able to frighten the
“rude” American family. The twins lay in wait for Sir Simon on
several occasions laying traps for him but he never appears. The
family concludes that the ghost has left Canterville Chase. All
during this time, Virginia was the only one in the family that did not
play a trick on, or even approach the ghost.
17. • One day while out riding, Virginia tears her riding
habit quite badly and decides to enter Canterville
Chase through a back door. She is surprised to
discover the Canterville Ghost sitting by a window.
His disposition is that of someone suffering from
depression and she feels sorry for him. An interesting
dialogue takes place between them and during that
time, he admits that he killed his why and why, and
Virginia tells him that it is wrong to kill. She is also
upset because he stole her paint to replace the blood
stain and hence the mystery of the different colours
of “blood” is solved.
Virginia discovers
Canterville Ghost
Sitting by a window
18. • Virginia tries to convince Sir Simon to go to America
because they would appreciate a ghost there, but he
doesn’t want to go to America. Sir Simon is weary
because he hasn’t slept in over three hundred years.
He wants rest, but is terrified of the Garden of Death.
He believes that through Virginia he will receive
forgiveness and allowed to rest. He believes that
through the purity of a child, hell cannot prevail.
• She takes him through the portal, and doesn’t tell her
parents, so when they cannot find her they panic. But
no one even thinks about Sir Simon, because they
believed he had left. Virginia appears the next day
after her family had searched for her everywhere and
couldn’t find her. She relates what happens and
shows them the gift of jewels she received from Sir
Simon. Mr Otis tries to return the jewels to Lord
Canterville who refuses them and is convinced that
should he take them, Sir Simon would return.
Virginia taking Sir Simon
through portal
19. • The story ends when Virginia is married a
few years later, and the reader gets the
sense that something profound took
place with her encounter with Sir Simon
that she has never revealed.
