Woman in Black: QUOTATIONS

If a question comes up in the exam that involves one of the key themes you need to know quotes that can be used as evidence.

ISOLATION
Across the Causeway chapter 5
·  “Minutes later, they were receding across the causeway, smaller and smaller figures in the immensity and wideness of marsh and sky…”

Even though Keckwick is a tight-lipped kind of fellow, it must still be hard on Arthur to see him go. He's another normal living soul, after all.

·  “But for today I had had enough. Enough of solitude and no sound save the water and the moaning wind and the melancholy calls of the birds, enough of monotonous grayness, enough of this gloomy old house.”

The empty and lonely surroundings at Eel Marsh House are starting to get to Arthur. Guess that's what happens when you're wandering around an ancient burial plot by yourself.

The Sound of the Pony and Trap Chapter 6

·  “Behind me, out on the marshes, all was still and silent; save for that movement of the water, the pony and trap might never have existed.”

The setting is having an effect on the narrator. The marshy, creepiness of Eel Marsh House adds to the tension that we feel as Arthur goes exploring.

·  "I wouldn't have left you over the night," he said at last, "wouldn't have done that to you."

Even though Keckwick's taciturn and not really all that friendly, Arthur is delighted to see him again after being left alone at Eel Marsh House.

In the Nursery Chapter 9
·  “I sat up paralyzed, frozen, in the bed, conscious only of the dog and of the prickling of my own skin and of what suddenly seemed a different kind of silence, ominous and dreadful.”

Being alone offers Arthur zero consolation. It actually makes the whole thing worse. This is not a peaceful old Victorian house in a children's book; it's a creepy old Victorian house in a ghost story.

·  “there was only emptiness, an open door, a neatly made bed and a curious air of sadness, of something lost, missing, so that I myself felt a desolation, a grief in my own heart.”

Even the house feels lonely. This uses personification.

REVENGE

Across the Causeway

·  “It was one of what I can only describe… as a desperate, yearning malevolence…”

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the woman in black has definitely been scorned by someone. So expect some fury. Malevolence= wanting to harm others.

A Packet of Letters

·  “Moreover, that the intensity of her grief and distress together with her pent-up hatred and desire for revenge permeated the air all around.”

The woman in black wants to make someone, anyone pay for what she's been through—and she wants it so badly that it leaves a mark on the whole house.

·  “There was nothing else the woman could do to me, surely, I had endured and survived.”

See that "surely"=foreshadowing. When Arthur says "surely," we immediately know that the woman isn't done with him yet.

The Woman in Black (Last chapter)

·  Her bitterness was understandable, the wickedness that led her to take away other women's children because she had lost her own, understandable too but not forgivable.

Arthur gets it. He's a sensitive, modern man, and he can understand why Jennet is sad and bitter. But that doesn't mean he approves. (Especially when it's his child)

·  “There was no expression on her face and yet I felt all over again the renewed power emanating from her, the malevolence and hatred and passionate bitterness. It pierced me through.”

The hatred she has pierces Arthur= metaphor. The final revenge comes next when his own child is killed. The final revenge!

SUPERNATURAL

The Funeral of Mrs Drablow

·  “she would have been branded as a witch and local legends and tales were still abroad and some extravagant folklore still half-believed in.”

Arthur dismisses the villagers as steeped in silly folklore, but who's the one believing in ghosts by the end?

Across the Causeway

·  “Who she was—or what—and how she had vanished, such questions I did not ask myself.”

The ‘what’ leads us to believe there is something more sinister on the horizon.

·  “I did not believe in ghosts. Or rather, until this day, I had not done so, and whatever stories I had heard of them I had, like most rational, sensible young men, dismissed as nothing more than stories indeed.”

Even though the facts are staring him in the face, Arthur refuses to believe that the woman is a ghost.

In the Nursery

·  “But no one had been there. The room had been empty. Anyone who had just left it must have come out into the corridor and confronted me…”

A Packet of Letters

·  “Now, I realized, there were forces for good and those for evil doing battle together and that a man might range himself on one side or the other.”

If Jennet is an evil ghost, does that mean there are good ghosts? Is Aurther being tempted to be on the evil side?

SETTING

Christmas Eve

·  “It was] a modest house and yet sure of itself, and then looking across at the country beyond. I had no sense of having been here before, but an absolute conviction that I would come here again.”

Arthur makes serious real estate decisions based off of how much he likes the way the outside of a cottage looks. Impulsive. Conviction= strong belief.

A London Particular
·  “The business was beginning to sound like something from a Victorian novel, with a reclusive old woman having hidden a lot of ancient documents somewhere in the depths of her cluttered home.”

This little quip is a joke on Arthur, because (1) it's supposed to show us how Arthur thinks of himself as oh-so-modern even though the Victorian era is probably only a few years behind him, and (2) it turns out that he is in a Victorian-esque novel.

Across the Causeway

·  “… I realised this must be the Nine Lives Causeway-this and nothing more- and saw how, when the tide came in, it would quickly be quite submerged and untraceable.”

The journey to Eel Marsh House triggers ideas to the reader about the level of isolation.

FEAR

The Funeral of Mrs Drablow

·  “Doubtless, in such a place as this, with its eerie marshes, sudden fogs, moaning winds… any poor old woman might be looked at askance; once upon a time, after all, she would have been branded as a witch…”

At first, Arthur thinks that people were afraid of Mrs. Drablow because she was an old woman. Surprise! She's not the one they're afraid of.

The Sound of the Pony and Trap

·  “I stood absolutely helpless in the mist that clouded me and everything from my sight, almost weeping in an agony of fear and frustration, and I knew that I was hearing… appalling last noises of a pony and trap, carrying a child in it…”

Arthur feels completely helpless and frozen with fear when he hears the pony and trap, which he assumes to be real. But it's even scarier when he realizes that the sounds aren't real.

·  “For how long I sat there, in extremes of despair and fearfulness, I do not know.”

Eel Marsh House sure draws out some extreme emotions in Arthur. Is any job really worth this kind of despair?

Mr Jerome is Afraid

·  “I had been as badly frightened as a man could be. I did not think that I would be the first to run from physical risks and dangers, although I had no reason to suppose myself markedly braver than the next person.” (7.3)

Arthur's been pretty shaken up by the whole affair at Eel Marsh House and he wants out ASAP. No more Mr. Brave Guy.

·  “In a curious way, it was her fearfulness that persuaded me that I must retain control of myself…”

Arthur pulls himself together for the dog. How manly of him.

In the Nursery

·  “My fear reached a new height, until for a minute I thought I would die of it, was dying, for I could not conceive of a man being able to endure such shocks and starts…”

That door at the end of the hallway that was locked this whole time is now mysteriously open—never a good sign. But is it more frightening to see what's in there, or to go downstairs and not know? Fear of the unknown, uncontrollable.