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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Contemporary non-Christian & para-Christian cults & sects > Spiritualism
A highly original study that examines the central role played by
women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of
spiritualism in the late Victorian era, "The Darkened Room" is more
than a meditation on women mediums--it's an exploration of the
era's gender relations.
The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that
women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead,
offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential
to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home
and in society.
Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach,
Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened seance rooms,
theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and
regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the
medical and legal establishments over the issue of female
mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of
Victorian society.
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