The Private Seance - An Introduction
Most séances were held in the domestic setting of the parlor belonging either to the medium or to her hostess (who usually also acted as the medium’s patroness). As the pronouns of the preceding sentence indicate, the private home séance was an environment often dominated by female presence and authority: it is logical and radical that Victorian women took the very domestic spaces men used to confine their female relations and, through spiritualist practices, reoriented them into places of power and authority. At the same time, as some of the texts in this section will show, men did find ways to assert their hegemonic authority within this overtly feminine space.
The private séance was a space of domestic intimacy well suited for connection to family spirits and personal questioning. Of course, the medium could not guarantee what spirit would appear or what it would say, but the privacy of the space certainly provided a kind of safety for the séance participants. Or rather, it provided the illusion of safety and privacy. As these published sources implicitly reveal, the private séance was really not a private affair at all. The proceedings of domestic séance parties were often published and widely distributed. Still, this space remained the most popular for séances throughout the century. Perhaps the popularity had something to do with control: hosts and mediums could feel safe knowing that they owned and controlled the environment in which unpredictable and chaotic supernatural forces appeared. Or perhaps it had to do with signifying status: a host who could afford to bring in a medium would also display his or her social status through the room itself.
Whatever the reasons, domesticity and initial privacy was a key feature of the séance in Victorian England. These homes were often the residence of the middle and upper classes, and could include aristocratic, even royal, residences. The class of the mediums themselves is often ambiguous; though the examples of Houghton and Berry would lead us to believe mediums were often from the lower and sometimes middle, classes. While less commonly spoken of, race relations were also implicitly discussed as spirits of deceased slaves played a fascinating role in séance proceedings. An séance turned the Victorian middle-class parlor into a space where gender, class, and race intersected in surprising ways.