The Woman In Black Susan Hill Summary

How do the first three chapters of the woman in black prepare the readers for the ghost story to follow?

Susan hill uses many techniques, both original and traditional to increase the tension in the first chapters. The most obvious traditional one is that she frequently refers to the weather in her story, which, like it usually does in horror stories, reflects the mood of the main character at the time. For instance, at the beginning the weather is described “We had had rain, thin, chilling rain and a mist that lay low above the house,” which implies that something should be happening soon. It doesn’t actually herald the events themselves, rather the memory of the events. Needless to say, the weather at the start of the horror story is much…show more content…
Rather than taking an entirely neutral person, who exists outside of the plot, or by placing you very firmly inside the main character as a first person perspective, she chooses to make the main character the narrator, however he is looking back over his experience, so he alone knows what will happen at the end, but he also expresses the feelings of the main character perfectly, because that is who he is. For example “It would be easy to look back and believe that all that day I had had a sense of foreboding about my journey to come, that some sixth sense, some telepathic intuition that may lie dormant and submerged in most men, had stirred and become alert in me.” In this quote, the narrator is clearly looking back, and hints at events to come. However he also tells you about himself truthfully, for he admits that he had no knowledge of what was to come, but it would be easy to claim so. “I can remember the minutest detail of that day, for all that nothing untoward had yet happened, and my nerves were steady,” also shows that the narrator knows what will happen, and knows how it will affect the main character, but also on a personal level as it genuinely is his emotion that he feels. Lastly, the narrator reflects upon how he has changed and this adds another layer to the story. “Having, in my youthful and priggish way, summed up and all but dismissed him,” shows self-reflection, how he feels…show more content…
For example on a very small scale, when describing the London fog she writes “It was a yellow fog, a filthy, evil-smelling fog, a fog that choked and blinded, smeared and stained.” Now this is very clever, as she uses the word fog three times, she describes it three times in steadily longer phrases. It first describes the fog, then it adds to that description the second time, then it adds to it again a third time to create a detailed and firm description of something that would usually be rather trivial, but through careful structuring and description has become a major story element. It becomes harder to quote other examples, as many rely on long parts of text, whole pages or more on occasion. However on notable thing is the sentence structure, which varies to give as much impact as possible. She will use simple and short sentences to make a quick or simple point. She will use longer, more delicate sentences for vivid descriptions. Doing this, she can add to the tension much more fluidly, rather than simply stating how it is and why, such as using the above techniques very plainly, she moulds them into the text, which itself is flowing and subtle rather than being a certain way and getting very little feeling across. The final and probably most important aspect of structuring is that instead of using the same