Susan Hill is an english author of fiction of the 20th century. She writted a lot of novels like The Mist in the Mirror, I’m the King of the Castle. Most of the time,  her works are written with a descriptive gothic style, specially her ghost story, The Woman In Black. This story has been written in 1983. In 2012, an adaptation of the novels is released by James Watkins. This is the fifth adaptation of the story, after theater, radio, and tv.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Susan Hill has called this short novel « a ghost story » and « a story about evil », she is perfectly in the gothic tradition.


The Woman In Black, takes place in a small english town at the end of the 19th century. Arthur Kipps is a widowed lawyer and father. He has one son. A day, he is charged to the sale of a very strange house, the Eel Marsh House. The extract that I present you is about the first visit of the house.


The narrator is alone in the Eel Marsh House, he is walking and awakened by strange sounds. This is the moment, when he released the presence of the woman in black and the nature of the evil.


This story is a typical gothic story because of the ghoulish atmosphere. In fact, the setting is very important in this extract. The house is called the Eel Marsh House and she is deserted. Around the propriety, there is nothing, just a little town in few miles away. The house is surounded of a lake. The weather is bad in all the scene. The structure of the house is very old, and the main character has to use a canddle. All the elements are very disturbing.


The theme of the death is very aborded in the story because of the strange death of a lot of children who lived in the little town.

 

In this extract, we feel that the main character is a little affraid. He is alone in this big house, where nobody never go. But he feels a certain presence in this mysterious house. He has the sense of someone just having passed close to him and gone away. He heards some sounds very strange. A lot of elements makes that the conditions are very stressful like the torch that doesn’t work, In gothic story, the imanigation of the character are very important because it makes all the paranormal and the stress of the story.