Democratic Party

The Democratic Party appears in The Canterville Ghost as a marker of American political identity and modern social life, rather than as an organization with a developed role in the plot. Its few references help frame the contrast between the Otis family’s matter-of-fact American outlook and the inherited customs and history of Canterville Chase.

Political and Social Context

When Hiram B. Otis buys Canterville Chase, he identifies himself as an American Minister from a modern country confident in its capacity to acquire and display what money can buy. The narrative later notes that he resumes work on a history of the Democratic Party after the Ghost appears to have stopped his nocturnal expeditions. The political reference sits among details of the family returning to its usual activities: Mrs. Otis organizes a clam-bake, the boys take up games, and Virginia rides through the lanes. The party is thus associated with Mr. Otis’s ongoing work and the household’s ordinary American life, not with a political action in the haunting plot.

Virginia’s Customs-House Joke

The party receives a more pointed, comic mention when Virginia argues that the Ghost could succeed in New York as a family curiosity. She suggests that he would have no difficulty at the customs house because its officers are Democrats, turning her father’s political affiliation into the premise of a joke about passage into the United States. The remark belongs to Virginia’s attempt to persuade the Ghost to emigrate: she presents the country as a place where a family ghost might be valued, while he says he does not think he would like America. The exchange makes the party part of the story’s Anglo-American banter, without establishing any specific policy or political position.