In the following excerpt, Cohen examines numerous moral and religious dualities in "The Canterville Ghost."

The main action of "The Canterville Ghost" takes place in 1884, three hundred years after Sir Simon murdered his wife-and in the same year that Wilde married his. Whereas Wilde suggests his personal guilt, augmented by the betrayal of marriage, within Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, here they are present only through the correspondence of dates. Yet the transformation of life into confessional art is no less certainly his intention. He constructs this story, like so many of his other works, around the confrontation of saint and sinner. The distinguishing characteristic of "The Canterville Ghost" is its negative portrayal of the double life. Although Wilde might praise artificiality and the wearing of masks elsewhere, the ghost's experience reveals that this mode of existence is the lonely refuge of an anguished sinner, who gladly forsakes...