J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Squire Toby's Will: A Detailed Summary and a Literary Analysis

Revenge is one of the most persistent and potent themes in J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s supernatural fiction. Whether delivered by spectral agents such as Ultor de Lacy or “The Familiar,” or meted out as divine justice in tales like The Tyrone Family and Mr. Justice Harbottle, retribution in Le Fanu’s world often emerges from the shadows of the afterlife to punish transgressions left unatoned. His stories warn that those who stray beyond the moral boundaries of mortal life will inevitably provoke a reckoning from the liminal realms that lie just beyond the veil.

“Squire Toby’s Will” powerfully exemplifies this pattern, but it also invites a deeper political reading. Beneath its chilling Gothic surface lies a biting allegory for the historical and cultural rift between the Anglo-Irish Protestant class—of which Le Fanu himself was a member—and the rural, often impoverished, Catholic Irish population.

The story can be interpreted as a dark parable of British colonialism in Ireland, a tale in which familial conflict mirrors national trauma. In this light, the tyrannical, wrathful Squire Toby becomes a grotesque emblem of the British Crown—imperious, irrational, and bloated with pride—while his favorite son, Handsome Charlie, plays the role of the conflicted Anglo-Irish heir: caught between loyalty to a patriarchal power and a moral obligation to those from whom that power was wrested. Charlie’s older brother, scorned and disinherited, may be seen as an avatar of the native Irish population—cut off from their rightful legacy, treated with disdain, and ultimately returning in a spectral form to demand reparation.

II.

Le Fanu’s own political biography enriches this reading. In 1847, during the height of the Great Famine, he supported a liberal, Catholic-led nationalist effort that criticized the British government’s neglect. Yet just five years later, in 1852, he suffered a humiliating defeat in his bid to become a Tory Member of Parliament for County Carlow. This political failure—arising from the suspicion of Irish liberals and the scorn of Protestant conservatives—left him estranged from both camps, and arguably deepened his sense of disillusionment.

It’s not difficult to see the echoes of this personal and political alienation in the tale’s family dysfunction and moral bleakness. The toxic relationship between Charlie and Squire Toby is laced with a kind of psychological sadomasochism—one fueled by pride, cruelty, and deep emotional repression. Charlie, though handsome and favored, is stunted by a legacy of selfishness and rage inherited from his father.

His failure to reconcile with his brother or to act on repeated supernatural warnings reflects not ignorance, but a conscious refusal of grace. He is offered every opportunity to act with compassion—through dreams, fears, strange visitations, and pangs of conscience—but each time he chooses the path of bitterness, clinging to an inheritance of power that is paltry in material value but immense in symbolic weight.

In this, the story becomes more than a tale of ghosts; it becomes a condemnation of spiritual decay, an allegory for a class that chose domination over solidarity, and pride over penitence. The horrifying final scenes—among the most unsettling in Le Fanu’s canon—are not merely Gothic climaxes, but prophetic visions. They forecast the spiritual and societal doom that would eventually fall upon the Anglo-Irish community who, like Charlie, refused to acknowledge the humanity and rightful inheritance of their long-estranged brothers. “Squire Toby’s Will” stands, then, not only as one of Le Fanu’s darkest stories, but also as one of his most politically charged and morally resonant.

SUMMARY

The story is set in Ireland during the early 19th century, where the brutal Squire Toby enjoys pitting his two sons against one another. The younger son, Charlie, is tall, handsome, and athletic while his older brother, Scroope, is swarthy, stooped, and frail. Toby is a violent man given to gluttonous alcoholism, and enjoys fighting his own sons when in his cups. One night he attacks Charlie, trying to strangle him with his cravat, but when his younger sons beats him, he gains a respect for the boy’s own willful nature, seeing himself in his boy’s ruthlessness. Shortly after this, Toby is found dead one morning – his face blackened by the alcohol-driven stroke that strangled life from him in the night. Upon reading his will, the family learn that he has given his estate over to Charlie instead of his weaker, older brother (as custom would normally dictate). Not only this, but Scroope is left without a penny – completely at his brother’s mercy. Instead of showing pity, Charlie casts Scroope out, leaving him to fend for himself while he enjoys their father’s wealth.

His happiness is short-lived however, when he is critically injured in a riding accident, and begins to lose his own health. While recuperating, he dreams that his father comes to him – face black with death – and directs him to the family safe. Remembering Scroope’s claim to the lawyers that his father had hidden a more favorable will somewhere in the house, he suspects that his father is trying to reveal the location of the documents to relieve his torment in hell, but he doesn’t follow through on the specter’s hints. Soon after, a bizarre dog makes an appearance at Squire Toby’s grave: strangely shaped with a white body and black head, its face reminds Charlie of his father, and – despite the servants’ hatred of the grotesque animal – he brings it to live with him.

Although he finds himself compelled to keep the dog, he is disturbed by dreams of it crawling into bed with him and morphing into his father’s body, and pleading with him to make amends with his ailing brother. Its constant howls so terrify the servants that he eventually becomes convinced that it is his father’s avatar come to guide him to the will enfranchising Scroope, and finally follows its instructions: searching in the closet of a disused room, he finds the will, but decides to keep this information a secret, and has his servant shoot the monstrous dog (which he is only too glad to do).

Charlie later dreams that his father and Scroope are standing at the foot of his bed, discussing what ought to be done to such a treacherous brother, deciding that he should be hanged like a dog. That morning news arrives that Scroope has died from his infirmities, and when he is buried in the cemetery, Charlie refuses to send his respects. But the servants say that they notice two strange men in mourning dress enter the house without a word, and from that moment on the entire manor is haunted by the ghosts of Scroope and Toby.

Charlie is constantly tormented by the sight of them glowering at him in their black mourning clothes and crepe-swathed hats, and feels their grip tighten around him. Only one servant can bear to stay in the house, and he is also hounded by the grim specters of his old master and the hunchbacked Scroope. Pestered by voices and visions, Charlie tries to change his ways: he becomes religious, gets engaged to a pretty local girl, and tries to participate in human society more.

But it is all for naught: he keeps seeing the ghosts peeking at him around doors and from corners, talking to him about his past sins and about death and darkness and hell. One night Charlie leaves his bed and is not to be found in the morning. A thorough search is made of the home and the servant almost gives up before discovering the door to the closet in the upstairs room is jammed. Forcing it, he finds his master’s body had been blocking it. He is found hanging by his cravat (the same one his father had tried to strangle him with years before) in the room where the now-destroyed will had been hidden. Horrified by these events, his servant flees the country, becomes a regular church attender, and manages his finances with careful frugality.

ANALYSIS

“Squire Toby’s Will” is one of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s darkest and most psychologically charged ghost stories, exploring themes of patriarchal tyranny, unnatural favoritism, sibling rivalry, and the lingering weight of guilt and inheritance. Set against the backdrop of Anglo-Irish landed gentry and their decaying moral authority, the story dramatizes a household torn apart by the volatile relationship between a cruel father and his two sons—one dutiful and despised, the other adored and morally compromised. Le Fanu, himself an Anglo-Irish Protestant writing during a time of political uncertainty and waning aristocratic power, imbues the tale with a distinct social and historical resonance, suggesting a corrupt legacy passed from father to son in both personal and political terms.

The spectral bulldog—a grotesque doppelgänger of the deceased Squire—haunting the favored son’s bedchamber is both a literal ghost and a symbol of guilt, inheritance, and unnatural affection. The story's ambiguity, eerie domestic setting, and suppressed emotional undercurrents mark it as a precursor to later psychological horror and gothic fiction, with unmistakable influence on writers like M.R. James. Its spectral intrusions and domestic unease can be felt particularly in James’s “The Tractate Middoth,” “The Residence at Whitminster,” “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” and “The Haunted Dolls’ House,” where legacies and wills unleash supernatural consequences. Le Fanu’s subtle suggestion of a warped father-son dynamic and the unnatural inversion of primogeniture enrich the tale’s unsettling atmosphere and lend it a deep allegorical potency.

II.

A sophisticated study of guilt, “Squire Toby’s Will” continues to perplex and disturb readers today. It is both a moral meditation and a political parable, which seems to deeply consider the role of character and sin in the distressing relationship between the occupied Irish, the imperial English, and the hybrid Anglo-Irish faction. The story largely follows the sins of a family polluted to the very roots by the Seven Deadly Sins: hubristic pride, greed, lust, malicious envy, gluttony, inordinate anger, and sloth. In some way or another, each of these capital vices is relished by the three remaining members of Squire Toby’s family.

The eponymous pater familias – easily interpreted as a port-bloated, filicidal, tyrannical Father England – shares with his younger son (the dashing, spirited Handsome Charlie, a possible stand-in for the Anglo-Irish faction to which the Le Fanus belonged) a taste for heavy drinking and indulgent eating (gluttony), an unreasonable and merciless stubbornness (pride), and an outrageous temper which stupefies even his most corrupt lackeys (anger). Dark-complexioned (read: Celtic), infirm, and destitute, the elder brother, Scroope – impossible to miss as a metaphor for the Irish people – lacks the athleticism of his huntsmen brother and father, and is thus charged with sloth (a common stereotype of the Irish), though his inaction is more due to infirmity of body than infirmity of character.

As Father England fades away from the Irish landscape (coyly transplanted to the North Countree), which I interpret as symbolic of the migration of English landholders (called “absentee landlords”) from Ireland to Britain, our Anglo-Irish Charlie is endowed with the inheritance that should by rights belong to his older, more destitute sibling; but as in Anglo-Irish politics, favoritism prevails, and the less needy Charlie is granted a double portion while his brother suffers in penury until his demise.

What follows is both a Lefanuvian reflection on the source, effects, and desserts of sin, and a premonition of what will befall the Tory, Anglo-Irish class to which he belonged. Enjoying the lavish gifts of a distant national Father while their elder siblings (elder in that the native Irish clearly have a greater claim to their land as a birthright than the “younger,” transplanted Anglo-Irish), Le Fanu muses that Irish Protestants are ignorant of the reckoning that they will ultimately face. History proved him correct.

III.

One might be tempted to ask: “We’ve seen six of the Seven Deadly Sins play out across Le Fanu’s fiction—but where is Lust?” While not always foregrounded, lust is a persistent and insidious force in Le Fanu’s work, frequently taking unsettling forms. Erotic tension, sexual repression, and at times overt acts of assault or violation haunt his supernatural tales as much as his specters do. Even in a story like “Squire Toby’s Will,” where women are conspicuously absent, the theme of lust simmers beneath the surface—encoded symbolically rather than expressed through conventional desire.

One of Le Fanu’s favorite emblems of eros—the bed—figures prominently, as does the grotesque spectral bulldog, which seems not merely a ghostly doppelgänger of Squire Toby, but also a symbolic intrusion into private, intimate space. The spectral canine in Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Squire Toby’s Will” functions as a deeply symbolic and unsettling figure—a psychosexual totem that embodies buried guilt, distorted power dynamics, and the grotesque legacy of patriarchal domination.

On the surface, the dog is a ghastly, animal-like ghost, but its meaning deepens considerably when viewed in light of Le Fanu’s recurring themes: familial conflict, repressed desire, and the uncanny intrusion of the past into the present. Physically, the bulldog bears an eerie resemblance to Squire Toby himself—bloated, heavy-jawed, and unnaturally discolored—suggesting it is not merely a haunting beast but a familiar or doppelgänger of the Squire’s vengeful spirit. Its nocturnal presence near the son’s bed, and its repeated appearances in the domestic, private space of the bedroom, hints at something more intimate and troubling.

The bulldog’s elongated neck and persistent "worrying" of the bed introduce an almost phallic grotesquerie—a nightmarish echo of the father’s sadistic power and his fixation on male dominance. In this light, the bulldog is not only a symbol of posthumous revenge but a distilled embodiment of toxic inheritance, an unconscious projection of the father’s violated authority into the next generation’s most vulnerable spaces.

Le Fanu frequently maps spiritual or moral decay onto physical or animalistic forms, and in this case, the bulldog encapsulates the warped legacy of a family poisoned by favoritism, violence, and Oedipal tension. It becomes a totemic representation of patriarchal corruption, its return from death a manifestation of unresolved sin, denied justice, and distorted affection. Like many of Le Fanu’s ghosts, the bulldog resists clear categorization—it is part animal, part spirit, part metaphor—and that ambiguity is precisely what gives it its unsettling power.

IV.

While explicit homoeroticism is rare in Le Fanu, it is not absent. Stories like Green Tea have been read as containing latent homosexual symbolism—particularly in the form of guilty self-surveillance and isolating secrecy—and several of Le Fanu’s most unnerving villains, from the corpulent Judge Horrocks to the sinister Sir Dominick, project a stylized, decadent masculinity that reads as distinctly queer.

In “Squire Toby’s Will,” the relationship between Squire Toby and his son Charlie is fraught with ambiguous affection and disturbing favoritism. The Squire admires Charlie’s physical dominance, beauty, and athleticism with an intensity that verges on fetishistic, and his affection seems rooted in a twisted sado-masochistic power dynamic. Charlie’s inheritance—moral and material—comes not by birthright but through manipulation and a morally ambiguous intimacy with his father that supersedes his elder brother Scroope’s claim.

Read allegorically, this dynamic reflects Le Fanu’s political anxieties surrounding Anglo-Irish identity and colonial complicity. The sexual and familial distortions in Squire Toby’s Will may mirror what Le Fanu saw as an incestuous relationship between England (“the father”) and the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendancy (“the favored son”), who betray their moral and national kin (symbolized by dispossessed Irish Catholics or sidelined siblings like Scroope) for personal gain.

In this reading, lust is not confined to the bedroom—it manifests politically and spiritually, as a perverse craving for power, validation, and dominance, cloaked in patriarchal affection and colonial loyalty. Just as Jacob, with his mother’s aid, stole Esau’s blessing through a morally suspect act of deceit, Charlie’s ascent comes at the cost of tradition, justice, and natural order. Le Fanu thus transforms lust into a broader metaphor for imperial greed, familial betrayal, and the collapse of moral authority—a sin woven deep into the bedrock of both haunted houses and haunted nations.

You can read the original story HERE!

And you can find our annotated and illustrated collection of Sheridan Le Fanu's best ghost stories HERE!