![]() The supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events are a key theme in the Gothic genre and “The Woman in Black” is no exception. Arthur describes its ‘air of remoteness and isolation which makes us feel ourselves to be much further from civilization.’ The first attribute acknowledged by the reader as a common Gothic element is the setting of ‘The Women in Black.’ overall, there are two main settings of the story, one being Monk’s Piece where Arthur begins the story of ‘The Women in Black.’ Initially, Monk’s Piece is presented as place from out of reach from civilisation, an area of remoteness and isolation, a place really distant. The referential quality of text like Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto or Lewis’s The Monk, with their nods in the direction of medieval manuscript, Shakespeare, graveyard poetry and so on, finds full measure in the pages of her text. This is also agreed by most Enlish critic like (1)Alan Jones who says Hills novel also shows an eclectic indebtedness to other text. These thoroughly present intertextuality continuously imprints on the reader the elements of the novel, the ghost story. Another example of the novels intertextuality is one of the chapters actual name ‘Oh whistle and I’ll come to you’ which is taken from an M.R. Here both are lawyers and both are very rational which is exemplified when Arthur describes himself as a ‘commonsensical’ man. In addition the intertextuality of the novel is emphasised with the striking resemblance between Arthur Kipps and Jonathon Harker in Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (1897). It is a convention of the ghost Story were in the ‘festive season’ people gather by the fire and make up ‘lurid inventions’ about ‘vampires’ to even ‘rats’ and ‘bats’. Indisputably, the Christmas Eve opening of ‘The Woman in Black’ echoes the opening of Henry James’s ‘Turn of the Screw’. ‘I was seized by something I cannot possibly describe, an emotion, a desire- no, it was rather more, a knowledge, a simple certainty, which gripped me,’ This is initially used in the opening chapter ‘Christmas Eve’ when Arthur states The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the nursery of the deserted Eel Marsh House, the eerie sound of pony and trap, a child's scream in the fog, and, most dreadfully, and for Kipps most tragically, the woman in black.The Woman In Black is both a brilliant exercise in atmosphere and controlled horror and a delicious spine-tingler - proof positive that that neglected genre, the ghost story, isn't dead after all.Therefore, slowly but gradually the reader becomes attached to Arthur due to the sense of immediacy that they experience with the unfolding of emotions, thoughts and events when Arthur does. ![]() Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero one Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north to attend the funeral and settle the estate of Mrs. What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first-class thriller - one that chills the body with foreboding of dark deeds to come, but warms the soul with perceptions and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story by Jane Austen.Austen we cannot, alas, give you, but Susan Hill's remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as the late twentieth century is likely to provide.
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