Summary
Four days later, a magnificent funeral takes place and Sir Simon’s bones are finally laid to rest in the local graveyard. Lord Canterville comes to attend the funeral, and Mr. Otis asks about whether he would like Virginia to return the jewels she was given. Mr. Otis explains that he sees the jewels as being part of the Canterville family heritage and that he is uncomfortable with the decadence and luxury they represent, but Lord Canterville insists on Virginia keeping the jewels.
A few years later, she marries the young Duke of Cheshire and takes her place amidst the English aristocracy. Shortly after their marriage, the Duke and Virginia go to Canterville Chase and stop to visit Sir Simon’s grave. The Duke teasingly complains that Virginia is keeping secrets from him: she has never explained exactly what happened during the time she was missing. Virginia says that she cannot disclose her secret, but that she learned the meaning of life during her time with the ghost. The Duke agrees to let her keep her secret, but the story ends with him playfully suggesting that she might someday tell their children.
Analysis
The funeral and laying to rest of Sir Simon's bones symbolically mark the end of an era. He has finally achieved peace, but the burial also indicates an acceptance that a certain way of life and seeing the world has ended. The funeral itself, however, performs many ancient traditions and reflects the continuity of the Canterville family heritage. Virginia shows her special bond with the ghost by playing a prominent role in the funeral and laying flowers on the grave; part of why the ghost seems to have been able to achieve peace and redemption is because he was able to experience a real bond with another human being. When the only thing he cared about was scaring people, he could not be redeemed, but his affection for Virginia has set him free. Since his crime was committed against a woman, it also seems appropriate that another woman needed to be the one to redeem him and set him free.
The jewels clearly symbolize tradition, heritage, and the past; they are ancient, and were bestowed as a gift, rather than earned or purchased. Mr. Otis's discomfort with the jewels reflects his discomfort with the aristocracy, their traditions, and his dawning realization that these might be seductive to his daughter. He wants to see them taken away by Lord Canterville because he worries that their presence will somehow corrupt the practical, democratic values he has tried to teach to his daughter. Lord Canterville, however, operates by a system in which items can be freely bestowed and inherited: if Sir Simon chose to give the jewels to Virginia, then that was his choice to make and Lord Canterville will respect his ancestor by honoring those wishes.
Mr. Otis's suspicions about what the jewels might suggest about Virginia's future are confirmed when only three years later, she marries the Duke. When Virginia appears at court wearing the Canterville jewels, there is the impression of her having completed a process of assimilation that began when she first felt sympathies for the ghost. She is now going to participate in the very system of antiquated and possibly outdated traditions that it initially seemed like her family was totally at odds with. The note that her father at first opposed the marriage furthers this tension; however, the narrator's sly remark about the coronet being the reward of good little American girls suggests that the relationship to old traditions is not as clear-cut as it may have appeared. While "the spirit of Sir Simon represents an elite pushed now not simply past culture but beyond nature into vanishing point"( Platt pg. 12), there is something seductive about both first Sir Simon and then the Duke as representatives of that dying elite, even if they also seem allied to ancient patriarchal traditions that may prove dangerous to women.
The story's final scene offers an ambiguous interpretation of the nature of Virginia's interaction with the ghost. The Duke's teasing and Virginia's affection for Sir Simon position him almost as a former lover, as does Virginia's protective nature about the secrets he taught to her. By describing their interaction as a transformational moment where knowledge was revealed to her, there is the implication that the time she spent with the ghost somehow helped Virginia to mature from a child into a woman. Her blush at the end of the story is open to multiple interpretations; it may be the suggestion of children (linked to sexual activity) that still makes Virginia shy, or it may be that something about the nature of her secret provokes a blush. What is more important than the interpretation is that Virginia is left in possession of her secret; as Maureen O'Connor writes, Virginia's blush is a "multivalent and ambivalent erotic signifier, another moment of feminine silence, the space within which Virginia is finally allowed to maintain possession of her own story. She is not mastered by her husband's will to read and know her" (pg. 337).
