Eel Marsh House Description

No reader of ‘The Woman in Black’, can be left in doubt about its conscious evocation of the Gothic. It is full of motifs and effects associated with that genre. ‘ How far would you agree with this statement of the novel? There is absolutely no doubt that Susan Hill consciously evocates the Gothic in ‘The Woman in Black. There are many obvious conventions she uses that create a great Gothic effect throughout the novel. It is clear that this novel contains most of the elements that constitute the genre, for example, an eerie atmosphere full of mystery and suspense, and a character feeling high or overwrought emotions.

This concludes the novel into a sub-genre of the Gothic, a ghost story. The Gothic has been active since the eighteenth century; the genre was especially popular within the years of The French Revolution and The Great Terror, which fell between 1789 and the 1790s. The Gothic can also be traced back to the original Goths, who were believed to have been around in the last days of the Roman Empire.

However, there is no substantial proof as the Goths left almost no written records, and were mostly unheard of until the ‘first Gothic revival’ in the late eighteenth century.

In Britain, this revival involved a series of attempts to ‘return to roots’, in contrast to the classical model revered in the earlier eighteenth century. It is believed that the very first Gothic novel was invented solely by Horace Walpole when he wrote ‘The Castle of Otranto’ in 1764.

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This novel was imitated throughout the following centuries because it contains essentially all the elements that comprise the Gothic genre. It is also believed to have influenced writing, poetry and filmmaking to the present day.

Other key Gothic novelists of this period that would also have contributed to this influence are Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein, which has had many film adaptations within the last century produced from it. And also Bram Stoker who wrote Dracula, which I think has an influence in ‘The Woman in Black as the narrator ‘Arthur Kipps’, has many similar characteristics to the narrator of Dracula, ‘Jonathan Harker’, such as them both being portrayed as commonsensical, rational, successful lawyers on a mission to single-handedly unravel the mystery they’re faced with.

Ann Radcliff’s idea of Gothic horror has also clearly influenced ‘The Woman in Black’ too because we notice our narrator on several occasions, contracts, freezes and is nearly annihilated by some unknown supernatural force. Arthur’s first encounter with The Woman in Black is a prime example of Gothic horror; he explains ‘It was as though I had become paralyzed. ‘ This reveals to us that Mr. Jerome must have been feeling this same sensation in the churchyard because just after Arthur tries to explain his sighting of ‘the sick-looking woman’ he describes that ‘Mr. Jerome looked frozen, pale, his throat moving as if he were unable to utter.

‘ There is another incident of Gothic horror where Arthur is thrown into darkness and again his emotions start to increase, probably even more so than ever as he is staying at the extraordinarily addictive and extremely mysterious Eel Marsh House. He tells us ‘I was lost to everything but my own fears, incapable of decisive, coherent thought, let alone movement. ‘ This may be psychologically scarring for Arthur as he elucidates earlier in the novel, ‘I could not move, it had, for the moment paralyzed me, just as it had always done, it was a long-forgotten, once too-familiar sensation.

‘ This was how he felt being forcefully plunged into darkness with no choice of hearing ‘silly tales’ conjured up by his stepchildren. He then later says ‘I dreaded the hours of darkness that lay ahead. ‘ His experience at Eel Marsh House has clearly mentally damaged him in a way to cause him to feel so emotionally overwrought about being in the dark, especially in his own home.