by Susan Hill
The Woman in Black
The following morning, I left the house. We were taken, in Mr. Samuel Daily’s motor, directly to the railway station. I had settled my account at the Gifford Arms by messenger, and I did not go into the town of Crythin Gifford again; it seemed altogether wise to take medical advice, for the doctor had been particularly anxious that I should not do anything, or go anywhere, to upset my still delicately balanced equilibrium. And, in truth, I did not want to see the town, or to risk meeting Mr. Jerome or Keckwick, or, most of all, to catch so much as a glimpse of the distant Marsh. All that was behind me, it might have happened, I thought, to another person. The doctor had told me to put the whole thing from my mind, and I resolved to try and do so. With Stella beside me, I did not see how I could fail.
The only regret I had at leaving the place was a genuine sadness at parting company with Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Daily, and, when we shook hands, I made him promise that he would visit us, when he next came to London—which he did, he said, once or, at most, twice a year. Moreover, a puppy was booked for us, as soon as Spider should produce any. I was going to miss the little dog a great deal.
But there was one last question I had to ask, though I found it hard to bring the matter up.
“I must know,” I burst out at last, while Stella was safely out of earshot and deep in conversation with Mrs. Daily, whom she had been able to draw out, with her own natural friendliness and warmth.
Samuel Daily looked at me sharply.
“You told me that night—” I took a deep breath to try and calm myself. “A child—a child in Crythin Gifford has always died.”
“Yes.”
I could not go on but my expression was enough, I knew, my desperate anxiety to be told the truth was evident.
“Nothing,” Daily said quickly. “Nothing has happened …”
I was sure he had been going to add “Yet,” but he stopped and so I added it for him. But he only shook his head silently.
“Oh, pray God it may not—that the chain is broken—that her power is at an end—that she has gone—and I was the last ever to see her.”
He put a hand reassuringly on my arm. “Yes, yes.”
I wanted above all for it to be so, for the time that had elapsed since I had last seen the woman in black—the ghost of Jennet Humfrye—to be long enough now, for it to be proof positive that the curse had quite gone. She had been a poor, crazed, troubled woman, dead of grief and distress, filled with hatred and desire for revenge. Her bitterness was understandable, the wickedness that led her to take away other women’s children because she had lost her own, understandable too but not forgivable.
There was nothing anyone could do to help her, except perhaps pray for her soul, I thought. Mrs. Drablow, the sister she blamed for the death of her child, was dead herself and in her grave, and, now that the house was empty at last, perhaps the hauntings and their terrible consequences for the innocent would cease forever.
The car was waiting in the drive. I shook hands with the Dailys and, taking Stella’s arm and keeping tightly hold of it, climbed in and leaned back against the seat. With a sigh—indeed almost a sob—of relief, I was driven away from Crythin Gifford.
My story is almost done. There is only the last thing left to tell. And that I can scarcely bring myself to write about. I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too. I have gone out and walked in the old orchard and further, across the country beyond Monk’s Piece, for mile after mile, but seen nothing of my surroundings, noticing neither animal nor bird, unable to tell even the state of the weather, so that several times I have come home soaked through to the skin, to Esmé’s considerable distress. And that has been another cause of anguish: she has watched me and wondered and been too sensitive to ask questions, I have seen the worry and distress on her face and sensed her restlessness, as we have sat together in the late evenings. I have been quite unable to tell her anything at all, she has no idea what I have been going through or why: she will have no idea until she reads this manuscript and at that time I shall be dead and beyond her.
But, now at last, I have summoned up sufficient courage, I will use the very last of my strength, that has been so depleted by the reliving of those past horrors, to write the end of the story.
Stella and I returned to London and within six weeks we had married. Our original plan had been to wait at least until the following spring but my experiences had changed me greatly, so that I now had an urgent sense of time, a certainty that we should not delay, but seize upon any joy, and good fortune, any opportunity, at once, and hold fast to it. Why should we wait? What was there beyond the mundane considerations of money, property and possessions to keep us from marrying? Nothing. And so we married, quietly and without fuss, and lived in my old rooms, with another room added, which the landlady had been more than willing to rent to us, until such time as we could afford a small house of our own. We were as happy as a young man and his bride may possibly be, content in each other’s company, not rich but not poor either, busy and looking forward to the future. Mr. Bentley gave me a little more responsibility and a consequent increase in salary as time went on. About Eel Marsh House and the Drablow estate and papers I had expressly begged him that I be told nothing and so I was not; the names were never mentioned to me again.
A little over a year after our marriage, Stella gave birth to our child, a son, whom we called Joseph Arthur Samuel, and Mr. Samuel Daily was his godfather, for he was our sole remaining tie with that place, that time. But, although we saw him occasionally in London, he never once spoke of the past; indeed, I was so filled with joy and contentment in my life, that I never so much as thought of those things, and the nightmares quite ceased to trouble me.
I was in a particularly peaceful, happy frame of mind one Sunday afternoon in the summer of the year following our son’s birth. I could not have been less prepared for what was to come.
We had gone to a large park, ten miles or so outside London, which formed the grounds of a noble house and, in the summer season, stood open to the general public at weekends. There was a festive, holiday air about the place, a lake, on which small boats were being rowed, a bandstand, with a band playing jolly tunes, stalls selling ices and fruit. Families strolled in the sunshine, children tumbled about upon the grass. Stella and I walked happily, with young Joseph taking a few unsteady steps, holding onto our hands while we watched him, as proud as any parents could be.
Then, Stella noticed that one of the attractions upon offer was a donkey, and a pony and trap, on both of which rides could be taken, down an avenue of great horse-chestnut trees, and, thinking that the boy would find such a treat to his liking, we led him to the docile gray donkey and I endeavored to lift him up into the saddle. But he shrieked and pulled away at once, and clung to me, while at the same time pointing to the pony trap, and gesturing excitedly. So, because there was only room for two passengers, Stella took Joseph, and I stood, watching them bowl merrily away down the ride, between the handsome old trees, which were in full, glorious leaf.
For a while, they went out of sight, away round a bend, and I began to look idly about me, at the other enjoyers of the afternoon. And then, quite suddenly, I saw her. She was standing away from any of the people, close up to the trunk of one of the trees.
I looked directly at her and she at me. There was no mistake. My eyes were not deceiving me. It was she, the woman in black with the wasted face, the ghost of Jennet Humfrye. For a second, I simply stared in incredulity and astonishment, then in cold fear. I was paralyzed, rooted to the spot on which I stood, and all the world went dark around me and the shouts and happy cries of all the children faded. I was quite unable to take my eyes away from her. There was no expression on her face and yet I felt all over again the renewed power emanating from her, the malevolence and hatred and passionate bitterness. It pierced me through.
At that same moment, t
o my intense relief, the pony cart came trotting back down the avenue, through the shaft of sunlight that lay across the grass, with my dear Stella sitting in it and holding up the baby, who was bouncing and calling and waving his little arms with delight. They were almost back, they had almost reached me, I would retrieve them and then we would go, for I didn’t want to stay here for a second longer. I made ready. They had almost come to a halt when they passed the tree beside which the woman in black was still standing and, as they did so, she moved quickly, her skirts rustling as if to step into the pony’s path. The animal swerved violently and then reared a little, its eyes filled with sudden fright, and then it took off and went careering away through the glade between the trees, whinnying and quite out of control. There was a moment of dreadful confusion, with several people starting off after it, and women and children shrieking. I began to run crazily and then I heard it, the sickening crack and thud as the pony and its cart collided with one of the huge tree trunks. And then silence—a terrible silence which can only have lasted for seconds, and seemed to last for years. As I raced toward where it had fallen, I glanced back over my shoulder. The woman had disappeared.
They lifted Stella gently from the cart. Her body was broken, her neck and legs fractured, though she was still conscious. The pony had only stunned itself but the cart was overturned and its harness tangled, so that it could not move, but lay on the ground whinnying and snorting in fright.
Our baby son had been thrown clear, clear against another tree. He lay crumpled on the grass below it, dead.
This time, there was no merciful loss of consciousness, I was forced to live through it all, every minute and then every day thereafter, for ten long months, until Stella, too, died from her terrible injuries.
I had seen the ghost of Jennet Humfrye and she had had her revenge.
They asked for my story. I have told it. Enough.
Reading Group Guide
Questions for discussion
1. As Mr. Bentley describes Mrs. Drablow and Eel Marsh House, Arthur feels that it “was beginning to sound like something from a Victorian novel, with a reclusive old woman having hidden a lot of ancient documents somewhere in the depths of her cluttered house” [this page]. In what ways is Susan Hill employing and perhaps playing with the conventions of the Victorian novel?
2. Looking out over the marshes, Arthur feels that he had “fallen under some sort of spell of the kind that certain places exude and it drew me, my imaginings, my longings, my curiosity, my whole spirit, toward itself” [this page]. Why is he so drawn to the marshes? Has he fallen under a spell?
3. Arthur Kipps decides to write his “ghost story” in order to exorcise it, so that he can “finally be free of it for whatever life remained for me to enjoy” [this page]. Does Arthur free himself from the trauma he suffered at Eel Marsh House? Why would the act of telling a deeply painful or traumatic story have such healing power?
4. Why might Hill have chosen to frame the main narrative of The Woman in Black with Arthur’s experience of spending Christmas Eve with his family, at the beginning, and contemplating his own death, at the end? What effect does this frame have on how the story is read?
5. By what means does Hill build and sustain a high level of tension and suspense throughout The Woman in Black? What are some of the novel’s most terrifying moments?
6. Arthur reflects that before the events at Eel Marsh House, he was in “a state of innocence” and that, even though he is happy now, “innocence, once lost, is lost forever” [this page]. In what ways was Arthur innocent before he encountered the woman in black? Why does the experience rob him of his innocence?
7. Why does Arthur ignore the many hints and warnings, as well as his own misgivings, about staying at Eel Marsh House? What is it in his character that impels him to press on? Is there some unconscious motivation or is Arthur acting rationally? Is he guilty of a kind of hubris in ignoring the warnings?
8. As a “healthy young man of sound education, reasonable intelligence and matter-of-fact inclinations” [this page], a man of prosaic imagination not given to flights of fancy, Arthur Kipps did not believe in ghosts. But after the strange events at Eel Marsh House, he is convinced he has indeed seen—and heard—ghosts. How does Susan Hill want readers to understand the apparently supernatural phenomena presented in the novel?
9. Why doesn’t it occur to Arthur that the curse of a child dying after every time the ghost of Jennet Humfrye is seen might apply to his own child? Are readers more aware of the dangers Arthur faces than he is?
10. What is the significance of Arthur associating the sounds he hears coming from the nursery with pleasant sounds and feelings from his own childhood?
11. Why would the dreadful experience of the pony and trap, along with driver, mother, and child, need to be repeated in what Arthur describes as “some dimension other than the normal, present one”? [this page]. What purpose would this ghostly reenactment serve?
12. In what sense is Jennet a victim of the social and religious conventions of her time? How much sympathy does she elicit?
13. While he’s recuperating at Mr. Daily’s, Arthur observes a robin on the balustrade outside his widow and watches it with a feeling of great absorption and contentment. Before coming to Crythin Gifford, Arthur says that he would “never have been able to concentrate on such an ordinary thing so completely but would have been restless to be up and off, doing this or that busily” [this page]. Why would the terrible events at Eel Marsh House have this positive effect on Arthur? In what ways have those events changed him?
Suggested Reading
Louis Bayard, The Black Tower; Sarah Blake, Grange House; F. G. Cottam, The House of Lost Souls; Michael Cox, The Glass of Time; Mark Frost, The List of Seven; John Harwood, The Ghost Writer; Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale.