The Old Nurse's Story and The Night Nurse's Story

This essay is based around two ghost stories, The old nurse's story and

the night nurse's story, I am to analyse these stories and talk about the

similarities in them, along with what is different about the two.

This essay is based around two ghost stories, "The old nurse's story"

and "the night nurse's story", I am to analyse these stories and talk

about the similarities in them, along with what is different about the

two, first I will look at similarities, including not only character

similarities but structure and writing styles too. The Old Nurse's

story was written by Elizabeth Gaskell and the Night Nurse's story was

written by Edith Oliver, these stories were written many years apart,

which means that their writing and structure are likely to be

different since these attributes change over time. Although this is

true, it is all too easy to consider "the night nurse's story" just an

adaptation, or another way of telling "the old nurse's story", I don't

think this is necessarily true, since there are too many differences

between them to be considered the same.

One of the more obvious similarities between the two stories, which

the reader can spot straight away, is the title. Only one word changes

between the two.

I think Edith Oliver did this intentionally, to bring to the attention

of the reader that these two stories are connected.

Both plots of the stories are centralised around nurses, back when the

first story was written, [the Old Nurse's Story], Nurses or "nannies"

were more common than in modern times, these were people who would

"keep house" or look after your children. This terminology changes in

the second story, "The Night Nurse's Story", because the nurse in this

story is an actual nurse of what we would consider it to be today.

This is one of the differences of the two stories right away.

I think the structure of the two stories is quite similar, since the

situation at the start of the story is fine, nothing really unusual

about it, then, towards the middle of the story, the scenario becomes

more suspicious, and the main characters lean towards something more

sinister than what was going on before, and finally, the end of the

story is filled with ghosts, the Old Nurse's Story has the dead mother

and child, the dead father and his ghostly organ, the Night Nurse's

Story has the entire household where the nurse is staying revealed to

be ghosts. Also, a male family member turns out to be "evil" or

sinister, in the Old Nurse's Story, this role was filled by the