The story centres on a young solicitor named Arthur Kipps. Kipps is summoned north to Crythin Gifford, a small market town, to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow. Drablow was an elderly and reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House. The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway. At high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland, surrounded only by marshes and sea frets.   

Kipps soon realizes there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale face and dark eyes, which a group of children are silently watching. Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs Drablow’s papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. In one of these instances, he hears the sound of a horse and carriage in distress, closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid, coming from the direction of the marshes.

Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are reluctant to reveal information about Mrs Drablow and the mysterious Woman in Black. Any attempts by Kipps to find out the truth cause pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs Drablow’s sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, but because she was unmarried, she was forced to give the child to her sister.

Mrs Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, called Nathaniel, insisting that he should never know that Jennet was his mother. The child’s screams that Kipps heard were those of Nathaniel.

Jennet went away for a year; however, after realizing she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an agreement to be able to stay at Eel Marsh House with him as long as she never revealed her true identity to him. One day, a horse and carriage carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all aboard, while Jennet looked on helplessly from the window of Eel Marsh House. This was particularly distressing for Jennet as she had become close to her son and was planning to run away and take him with her.

Jennet later died and returned to haunt Eel Marsh House, as well as the town of Crythin Gifford, with a vengeful malevolence, as the Woman in Black. According to local tales, seeing the Woman in Black meant that the death of a child would be sure to follow.

After some time, Kipps returns to London where he marries a woman named Stella, has a child of his own and tries to put the events at Crythin Gifford behind him. At a fair, while his wife and child are enjoying a horse and carriage ride, Kipps suddenly sees the Woman in Black once more. She steps out in front of the pony pulling the trap and startles it so greatly that it gallops away and collides with a tree, killing the child and fatally injuring Stella, who dies of her injuries ten months later. This is the Woman in Black’s vengeance.

CHARACTERISATION

Here are some quotes from two actors who have played the part of Arthur Kipps.

“What initially struck me about young Kipps was his integrity. He’s a highly principled man who at the outset relishes the prospect of performing his professional duties. I considered his upbringing – he’s not upper class as such, but would consider himself a gentleman and therefore bound by a code of honour. He’s also enthusiastic, optimistic and confident – he’s well settled with a respectable firm, is engaged to be married. I see him as a rational thinker with a deep respect for the law.”

Ben Deery, The actor in the West End company of THE WOMAN IN BLACK, 2012

“It’s complex but there’s a real stillness to Arthur Kipps. Everything has that sort of Victorian English withheld quality. He’s somebody who has been so completely destroyed by his wife’s death that he has found it almost impossible to live in the human world for the last four years. He’s been unable to connect with people and his relationship with his son. He loves him, but he’s not there for him as he should have been. He’s not been able to give him a happy childhood so far, because he doesn’t have that capacity for happiness. And also he’s struggling to hold down his job.

When we meet him at the beginning, he really is a man on the edge. There is a moment [in the 2012 film adaptation] where the first time you see him he’s got a cutthroat razor to his throat. It happens that he’s shaving, but I always thought that he had definitely stood there before, considering it. For me, absolutely, it was a very interesting character to get a chance to play. I always think that the most interesting characters are the ones that you like, but you don’t know why. There’s something different about him. Particularly in the context of the time, it was very unusual, and perhaps a social stigma, to be a single father, especially that young. There’s something about him being a very natural underdog.”

Daniel Radcliffe, as part of the release material for THE WOMAN IN BLACK movie

When writing about a poem it is best to follow a structure. Below are some numbered guidelines for you to follow, which are as follows:

1. Content. What is the poem about? Does it have one person speaking or possibly a character [or two]? From whose point of view is it written?

2. Themes. What are the themes of the poem? By looking at this, you are expected to make comments about a theme and the style of writing used, using any knowledge of stylistic devices [similes etc] that you have.

3. Ideas. You are to write about the ideas that you think the poet is trying to get us to think about as readers. Use quotes here to prove your point.

4. Words and phrases. Pick out a number [possibly three???] of key words and phrases that you think are particularly effective or good [sad, emotional, grim etc] and state why you like them and the effect they have on you as a reader of the poem. 

5. Your response. At the end, you are asked to write your response to the poem. You do not have to like the poem to be able to write about it. If you can understand the poem, then write about it, but do it in detail.

Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines non-fiction, horror and romance.

Its origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled (in its second edition) “A Gothic Story.”

The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole’s novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole.

It originated in England in the second half of the 18th century and had much success in the 19th as witnessed by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Another well-known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The name Gothic refers to the (pseudo)-medieval buildings in which many of these stories take place.

This extreme form of romanticism was very popular in England and Germany. The English gothic novel also led to new novel types such as the German Schauerroman and the French roman noir.

• The teenage Jennet discovers that she is pregnant

• Jennet’s old-fashioned parents react badly

• Jennet is sent to live away from her family and away from the boy who got her pregnant

• Jennet receives a letter, telling her that the child is to be adopted. She has no say in the matter

• The child is born and taken away from her. She can’t stand to be without him. The child, Nathanial, is adopted by Jennet’s older married sister Alice

• Jennet runs away to be with the child, renting a poky one-roomed flat to be near to him

• Jennet threatens violence when her sister will not allow her to see her child

• Eventually, Jennet is allowed to visit occasionally, but she is not allowed to see him alone or to say who she really is

• Nathanial turns out to look like Jennet and the bond between them grows

• Nathanial begins to act increasingly coldly towards Alice

• Jennet begins to make plans to steal the boy away to live with her

• A fatal accident occurs in which the child is killed. Jennet watches the accident but is Unable to do anything to prevent it.

“Ghost stories have to have a point beyond frightening.”

Susan Hill

“Darkness is a powerful ally of terror; something glimpsed in a corner is far more frightening than if it’s fully observed.”

Stephen Mallatratt

“When you see horror stories, particularly those about aliens, we know they couldn’t exist, so ultimately they don’t frighten us.”

Susan Hill

“As the play progresses, the tension tightens so that the pauses become more terrible than anything you actually see.”

Sarah Crompton, Daily Telegraph, 03 June 2004

“The fear is not on a visual or visceral level, but an imaginative one.”

Stephen Mallatratt

“A fictional ghost has to have a raison d’etre otherwise it is pointless and a pointless ghost is the stuff of all the boring stories about veiled ladies endlessly drifting through walls and headless horsemen riding by – and riding by – and riding by…for no good reason, to no purpose. My ghost cannot let go of her grief or her desire for revenge, she has to go on extracting it…”

Susan Hill

THE WOMAN IN BLACK – CHAPTER 1: CHRISTMAS EVE

It was nine-thirty on Christmas Eve. As I crossed the long entrance hall of Monk’s Piece on my way from the dining room, where we had just enjoyed the first of the happy, festive meals, towards the drawing room and the fire around which my family were now assembled, I paused and then, as I often do in the course of an evening, went to the front door, opened it and stepped outside.

            I have always liked to take a breath of the evening, to smell the air, whether it is sweetly scented and balmy with the flowers of midsummer, pungent with the bonfires and leaf-mould of autumn, or crackling cold from frost and snow. I like to look about me at the sky above my head, whether there are moon and stars or utter blackness, and into the darkness ahead of me; I like to listen for the cries of nocturnal creatures and the moaning rise and fall of the wind, or the pattering of rain in the orchard trees, I enjoy the rush of air towards me up the hill from the flat pastures of the river valley. Tonight, I smelled at once, and with a lightening heart, that there had been a change in the weather. All the previous week, we had had rain, chilling rain and a mist that lay low about the house and over the countryside.

From: The Woman In Black. Chapter 1. Kindle Edition

Questions

1. What can we infer or deduce from the given text above?

1. The word “happy” on line 3 should make the reader think in opposite as this is a ghost story. What can you infer from the author’s use of the weather at the beginning of the story?

1. Kipps’ mood changes towards the end of this extract. How do we infer or deduce this? 

Q: In regards to Eel Marsh House, how does Hill show that each of the characters are not telling Kipps all they know?

After Arthur Kipps arrives in Crythin Gifford, there are a number of times when he asks about Mrs Drablow and Eel Marsh House and he is confronted with what appears to be a joint silence from all concerned.

For example, as he speaks with Mr Daily and is asked if he is going to the funeral, Kipps’ response, in the affirmative, results in a negative response where Mr Daily says “You’ll be about the only one who is.” Daily is stating the obvious in that there is not a person in the village who would want to attend the funeral but he is not prepared to let Kipps in on the local legend that is Eel Marsh House. This is either because he feels Kipps will not really understand and think it nonsense, or because he wants to protect Kipps from the death inducing stare of the woman in black.

And even though Kipps wants to find out more about the woman and the house, out of professional curiosity, the responses from Daily are short and without any real intent; one or two word answers with little detail. Even when Kipps tries to inject humour into the dialogue by asking ‘Come’, you’re not going to start telling me strange tales of lonely houses?’ the answer he receives is definite and negative.

This continues when he meets with the Landlord of the pub where he is staying. Kipps mentions he is in the village to attend the funeral of Mrs Drablow and there is a response in the face of the landlord. Kipps thinks it may be “alarm” or “suspicion” but is not sure at that time, but he knows that the very mention of her name causes a pained reaction in this grown man, enough to make him frightened.  His response is again a short one, where he says “I knew of her.” When we are afraid we do not usually enter into lots of dialogue, so the landlord here is showing his fear. Hill is using this technique of short responses to get an effect from the reader, one of suspended anticipation where further questions are being asked by the reader.

This continues when Kipps meets with Mr Jerome, the local lawyer. Kipps asks if Mrs Drablow is to be buried in the local graveyard and Mr Jerome responds with a sideways glance, itself a sign of fear. Again, his responses are short and to the point. He does not want to answer why the local churchyard is “unsuitable” for Mrs Drablow to be buried in but the reader is left to ask the question as to why this is the case. Perhaps she is so dangerous that the locals think that her curse can exist after death, so they make it so that she cannot share the ground that their loved ones inhabit? Or, more likely, it is due to the fact that there is a patch of earth that is purely hers, for her family usage in these instances?

Either way, the fear is evident for the reader to see and this continues later, as Kipps is with Keckwick, the pony and trap driver. He sees the fear exhibited in one more of the locals as he asks more about Mrs Drablow and Eel Marsh House. Something very strange and disconcerting happens to Kipps and he wants to discuss the matter with Keckwick, but Keckwick turns away and climbs “into the driving seat” of the trap. The fact that he looks straight ahead of himself, almost like the soldier’s thousand yard stare” in modern PTSD victims, allows the reader to see that he fears something that maybe cannot be explained, something that is dangerous and malevolent, supernatural in its entirety and something that is best left alone.

All this action and dialogue shows the fears of the residents of Crythin Gifford as they come to terms with the death of Mrs Drablow, but it also shows how an author like Hill can use a lack of dialogue in her novel when the subject turns to Mrs Drablow and Eel Marsh House, so that the reader is left in little doubt that there is something definitely wrong across the causeway at the house. Each character responds in such a vague manner that the reader, by this point, is asking questions at the turn of every page. Hill is very successful in showing the fear of these extremely superstitious people who live in Crythin Gifford. 

Praise Song For My Mother

Grace Nichols has in one very short poem, put together a number of thoughts and emotions about her mother, just after she has passed away. Nichols has said in numerous articles and videos that she wrote this poem in honour of her mother and in doing so, she has created a song of praise to the one person she sees as the best Mother in the world.

For example, she begins in stanza one by writing “you were water to me” reflecting just how when her mother was alive, she was the one thing that the young Nichols could not do without, just like we cannot do without water in life. She then continues and adds the phrases “deep and bold and fathoming” to add depth to her meaning about her mother. The word “deep” is an ambiguous word in that it can mean her mother was a deep person, with lots of things to understand, or perhaps even that she was the sort of mother who had a depth of love for all her children. This use of metaphor and personification allows the reader to see a person being described who is better than the best and immediately makes the reader feel an attachment to the mother depicted.

In stanza two, this style and technique is repeated [indeed it is repeated throughout the poem] with the words “you were moon’s eye to me,” which in a sense, is a typically Caribbean turn of phrase, but also one that is difficult to grasp the meaning. We are left thinking if Nichols is referring to the light that the moon shines in a darkened world, or even the way that in dark times, her mother was always the one she could turn to, as she pulled you towards her for comfort in times of need. With the words “pull and grained and mantling” this difficulty continues because they are deliberate attempts to use the actions and description of the moon to make the mother shine as much in the firmament of her memory.

And if this is not enough, Nichols continues the honouring of her mother’s memory by sharing these positive emotions in ways that show just how much she loves her mother. She says in stanza three that her mother was to her like a “sunrise” in that she was “warm and streaming” with love and affection. Clearly, this is a positive emotion being shared and one that reflects the nature of their relationship together.

But then, Nichols goes one step further and uses imagery from the Caribbean that she remembers and she merges them into this description of her mother. She says “you were the fishes red gill to me” reflecting something of the colour of her homeland. Coupled with the idea that her mother was “the flame tree’s spread” to her as well as the smells and images of food, what is created is an image of a mother who is simply supreme in her memory. It is this positive image of the mother that makes this poem extremely effective in portraying such a positive emotion as love for one’s mother.

And just as we get to the end of the poem, we see one piece of advice that is given to the young Grace Nichols. She shares how her mother once told her to “go to your wide futures,” when she was young. Living in Guyana in the Caribbean, a poor island in that region, life would not have been easy, but Nichols describes her mother in such a positive way that the reader is left with an equally positive image of her homeland as well.

The use of that one element of advice from the mother at the end is the thing that for me, makes this poem such a lovely, positive poem in that her mother wanted when she was alive the very best for all her children and was prepared to tell them all to go out into the world and grasp hold of the nettle of life with gusto, searching and achieving anything they hoped for even though she knew that this may separate her from her children. As a parent myself, I want the very best for both my children and rejoice when they succeed in something or another, so when I read a poem like this I am left thinking just how much I can relate to its content. As a song of praise to her mother, it is simply stunning. As a way of expressing her emotions for and toward her mother, it is equally effective.