Take a photo of a barcode or cover
aniskywalker_98 's review for:
The Woman in Black
by Susan Hill
“For I must confess I had the Londoner’s sense of superiority in those days, the half-formed belief that countrymen, and particularly those who inhabited the remoter corners of our island, were more superstitious, more gullible, more slow-witted, unsophisticated and primitive, than we cosmopolitans.”
When Mrs. Drablow, the recluse widow of the eerie Eeel Marsh House dies of old age, a young and ambitious lawyer from London is sent to the small town of Crythin Gifford to sort out her affairs. Arthur Kipps dismisses the rumors surrounding Eel Marsh House as country superstition, but as he spends time in the isolated, lonely mansion, he begins to question his own sanity and his own superstition. Years later, he writes down the story of what he saw at Eel Marsh House -who he saw - and how it has wreaked terrible consequences on his own life.
I have previously read and loved Susan Hill's 'Strange Meeting' and was not disappointed with this one. All the classic ghost story tropes were well executed (haunted house, wary townspeople, abandoned nursery, dead children, ghostly apparitions), especially Eel Marsh House as the setting surrounded by fog and mist to illustrate the themes of trauma and isolation. The novel is set in Edwardian England, a time between the archaic traditions of Victorian propriety and modern liberalism. The Woman in Black, a victim of her time's social conventions still haunts the rapidly modernizing England, proving a humbling lesson in Victorian treatment of women and children. However, I found it a but too obvious that a story about a scorned woman who seeks revenge features said woman being the harbinger of children's death. Many women in literature are allowed to be angry and resentful only when they have lost a child or a lover. However, since this was published in the 80s, and because it made sense for this story, it gets a pass. Overall, this classic ghost story is indeed classic.
When Mrs. Drablow, the recluse widow of the eerie Eeel Marsh House dies of old age, a young and ambitious lawyer from London is sent to the small town of Crythin Gifford to sort out her affairs. Arthur Kipps dismisses the rumors surrounding Eel Marsh House as country superstition, but as he spends time in the isolated, lonely mansion, he begins to question his own sanity and his own superstition. Years later, he writes down the story of what he saw at Eel Marsh House -who he saw - and how it has wreaked terrible consequences on his own life.
I have previously read and loved Susan Hill's 'Strange Meeting' and was not disappointed with this one. All the classic ghost story tropes were well executed (haunted house, wary townspeople, abandoned nursery, dead children, ghostly apparitions), especially Eel Marsh House as the setting surrounded by fog and mist to illustrate the themes of trauma and isolation. The novel is set in Edwardian England, a time between the archaic traditions of Victorian propriety and modern liberalism. The Woman in Black, a victim of her time's social conventions still haunts the rapidly modernizing England, proving a humbling lesson in Victorian treatment of women and children. However, I found it a but too obvious that a story about a scorned woman who seeks revenge features said woman being the harbinger of children's death. Many women in literature are allowed to be angry and resentful only when they have lost a child or a lover. However, since this was published in the 80s, and because it made sense for this story, it gets a pass. Overall, this classic ghost story is indeed classic.