The Fantastic and "The White Cat of Drumgunniol"

-not all white....but close ; )....outside Highgate cemetery

"The White Cat of Drumgunniol" by Sheridan LeFanu can be considered that of "the Fantastic". The characters see a girl in all white walking and then somehow walk across water and disappear, the ghost of a girl who has died recently. They also have this white cat association with death. Apparently this family has had this "curse" for some time now and they are considering it to be a hereditary cause. Every person in the family knows that there life will soon be over after seeing a white cat. It could easily just be a coincidence or maybe the cat really does foreshadow death for them.

The reason this is could be considered that of "the fantastic" is because the fantastic is nothing more than a matter of plotting for a story. The story is conflicted between a conclusion of a supernatural cause or a naturalistic one. This exact conflict is the distinct meaning of the fantastic. If there was no conflict of a supernatural or natural conclusion...there wouldn't be a fantastic plot.

The story is associated with would we think of as real people dealing with ghosts and this "white cat/death". The supernatural conflict is that this cat could be a symbol of death and may bring death to the members of the "cursed" family, it could also be the young girl ghost also...in a different form. The white cat magically appears by the dead body also...after the entire room is checked...the characters are always coming up with some excuse as to how the cat got in the room or how they must have missed it while searching. The characters themselves go back and forth with this conflict as well. The naturalistic conflict is the fact that it is just a white cat and that members of the family just happen to see it and as a coincidence die a week, month, days later. There is no way to actually prove that the white cat is bringing death to these people...but we are left at the end of the story never really knowing the real truth... it is left up to us to determine what we believe or want to believe.