The Funeral Of Mrs. Drablow's 'The Woman In Black'

634 Words3 Pages
Susan Hill creates mystery by referring to her as “the woman in black”. This gives us a desire to find out more because her name doesn't give anything away. However, at the same time we feel fearful because we are given no other details by this about her character and how she may appear. “Black” gives a chilling feel because the colour black has connotations of death. The description of her appearance in the chapter “The Funeral of Mrs Drablow” creates an enigmatic tension. This is seen by: “A bonnet type hat covered her head and shaded her face.” The bonnet makes her face hidden so her features can't be seen clearly. It also hides any emotion she might show to give her position in the book away and this makes her mysterious, adding to…show more content…
The woman also creates a scary impression when we read: “For there was still some faint trace on her features, some lingering hint, of a not so inconsiderable former beauty;” This could mean that the woman used to be pretty, so was a good person. However, now that she's ugly, she may be the same in the inside. When this book was set, it was thought that beauty was a reflection of a person's inner beauty. This shows that now that the woman is ugly, she can be blamed for any terrible thing she might do, giving a chilling effect. Susan Hill also presents the woman as a figure of mystery and fear by first introducing us to her at a funeral. Kipps describes the woman as half dead when he says: “Who was perhaps only a short time away from her own death,” However, she is actually dead and is in ghost form (although the reader and Kipps don't realise this yet) and this is alluded to the fact she is a ghost by presenting her by an open grave which makes for a scary effect. Susan Hill makes many references to death throughout the whole introduction of the woman in black such as the use of the funeral and words like “grave”, “suffering”, “black” and “victim”. This is effective because it creates a semantic field of death which frightens the
Open Document