I re-read The Woman in Black recently after somebody online pointed out it was a Christmas story. The first chapter takes place on Christmas Eve, with family members gathering to tell ghost stories, a British tradition that sadly did not find its way to America. After that introduction, however, the story is decidedly non-holiday. No last-minute Ebenezer Scrooge redemption scene here, that's for sure.
I first encountered the novel in 2014 during an online literature class. Because I read it so quickly, revisiting it felt very much like a first encounter, albeit with intermittent deja vu.
The following remarks are from a paper I wrote after that initial reading. Viewing Susan Hill's novel from a postmodernist perspective isn't something I would have done on my own; it was a requirement of the prompt. Still, I'm not unhappy with the results.
There are spoilers aplenty below, so if you haven't read the book, beware.
***
The Postmodern Woman in Black?
… she was suffering from some wasting disease, for not only
was she extremely pale, even more than a contrast with the
blackness of her garments could account for, but the skin and, it
seemed, only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and
strained across her bones, so that it gleamed with a curious, blue
white sheen, and her eyes seemed sunken back into her head.
(Hill 45)
From this initial glimpse, the reader comes to anticipate — or perhaps dread — each subsequent appearance, recognizing the latest incarnation of the thing that goes bump in the night, the eternal bogeyman, not only of literature but of our worst dreams. Jennet Humfrye is another entry in the encyclopedia of supernatural horror figures, taking her rightful place alongside Dracula, Frankenstein (and his monster), Jekyll and Hyde, and the spectral duo of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw. Yet Susan Hill’s Woman in Black is also steeped in the postmodernist tradition, demonstrating the second-class status of women in the Victorian era and how easily they could be manipulated by a male-dominated society.
Humfrye’s backstory is tragic. As was customary for unmarried society ladies of the day, she must give her child, Nathaniel, to her married sister to raise. She lives under the same roof as the boy at Eel Marsh House, but is forbidden to tell him that she is his mother. On the day that she has planned to take Nathaniel and leave Crythin Gifford forever, a carriage accident in the local marsh — because every gothic story must have a local marsh — takes his life. Humfrye goes insane, and a physical wasting away accompanies her descent into madness. After her death, each sighting of her ghost is followed in short order by the death of a child, as if her spirit is exacting revenge for her own boy’s drowning.
If readers wait for a redemptive moment for Humfrye in the novel, they will wait in vain. She remains as unrepentant in death as in life, and Hill uses her unwavering nature to deliver a final shock to the protagonist, one she waits until the final page to deliver in a sleight-of-hand that is as dreadful as it is unexpected. Yet, in giving the ghost the last word, as it were, Hill concludes a process of postmodernist empowerment that that has characterized Humfrye from the start:
Jennet Humphrye, during her lifetime, refuses to be ostracized
from ‘respectable’ society, often returning to her sister’s house in
an attempt to reclaim her son. Later, in the form of a ghost, she
has complete freedom of space and time in which to wreak
vengeance against other parents by causing the death of their
children. In The Woman in Black, Jennet Humphrye plays the
role more often attributed to the wandering male Gothic
protagonist. She is neither locked out nor locked in, but has the
haunting power to ‘lock’ and open her son’s nursery at will in
order to torment Kipps. She might, therefore, be considered an
excessively transgressive Gothic ‘heroine.’ (Scullion 296)
The Woman in Black is also postmodernist in the way it seeks to emulate the traditional structure of a gothic tale. Oddly enough, the story that it most closely resembles, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, in many ways anticipates postmodernism in a way that The Woman in Black does not. In the latter novella, the governess may or may not be seeing ghosts; indeed, many critics have found ample evidence in her character to dismiss the notion that the two young children under her protection are truly being haunted. Instead, critics see the governess as suffering for any number of psychological ailments and that the “ghosts” are figments only of her imagination. The Woman in Black, by contrast, deals with its ghost unequivocally. The sanity of Arthur Kipps is never questioned, and his sightings of Humfrye are corroborated by similar stories circulated throughout Crythin Gifford. The woman in black is objectively there, something that cannot be said of the two alleged spirits in The Turn of the Screw.
Additionally, James takes great efforts to set the sightings of the ghosts at times and in situations that run counter to the traditional gothic tale. Hence, James has the governess spot the ghosts in broad daylight, under clear skies, with nary a rainstorm in sight. The same cannot be said of The Woman in Black, which uses deteriorating weather as a pathetic fallacy to indicate the waning of Kipps’s fortunes at Eel Marsh House and the ascendency of the ghost over his mental state. Few key scenes in Hill’s novel do not take place under at least the threat, if not the actuality, of a cold English rain.
Ultimately, then, the greatest postmodernist element of The Woman in Black is undoubtedly the title character herself. Despite the presence of a male first-person narrator, Hill allows Jennet Humphrye to drive the plot, even in scenes where she is not present. Merely her implied threat casts a pall over this neo-gothic nightmare, infusing a mother’s love with sinister intent, especially when said love is thwarted by staid Victorian standards of propriety. “I had seen the ghost of Jennet Humfrye and she had had her revenge,” writes Arthur Kipps. “The asked for my story. I have told it. Enough.” (Hill 164). Yet the message of Humfrye’s mistreatment and the gender inequality that drives it lives on, both for Kipps and the reader, long after the last page is turned.
The Woman in Black is also postmodernist in the way it seeks to emulate the traditional structure of a gothic tale. Oddly enough, the story that it most closely resembles, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, in many ways anticipates postmodernism in a way that The Woman in Black does not. In the latter novella, the governess may or may not be seeing ghosts; indeed, many critics have found ample evidence in her character to dismiss the notion that the two young children under her protection are truly being haunted. Instead, critics see the governess as suffering for any number of psychological ailments and that the “ghosts” are figments only of her imagination. The Woman in Black, by contrast, deals with its ghost unequivocally. The sanity of Arthur Kipps is never questioned, and his sightings of Humfrye are corroborated by similar stories circulated throughout Crythin Gifford. The woman in black is objectively there, something that cannot be said of the two alleged spirits in The Turn of the Screw.
Additionally, James takes great efforts to set the sightings of the ghosts at times and in situations that run counter to the traditional gothic tale. Hence, James has the governess spot the ghosts in broad daylight, under clear skies, with nary a rainstorm in sight. The same cannot be said of The Woman in Black, which uses deteriorating weather as a pathetic fallacy to indicate the waning of Kipps’s fortunes at Eel Marsh House and the ascendency of the ghost over his mental state. Few key scenes in Hill’s novel do not take place under at least the threat, if not the actuality, of a cold English rain.
Ultimately, then, the greatest postmodernist element of The Woman in Black is undoubtedly the title character herself. Despite the presence of a male first-person narrator, Hill allows Jennet Humphrye to drive the plot, even in scenes where she is not present. Merely her implied threat casts a pall over this neo-gothic nightmare, infusing a mother’s love with sinister intent, especially when said love is thwarted by staid Victorian standards of propriety. “I had seen the ghost of Jennet Humfrye and she had had her revenge,” writes Arthur Kipps. “The asked for my story. I have told it. Enough.” (Hill 164). Yet the message of Humfrye’s mistreatment and the gender inequality that drives it lives on, both for Kipps and the reader, long after the last page is turned.
Works Cited
Hill, Susan. The Woman in Black. New York: Vintage, 1983. Print.
Scullion, Val. “Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black : Gothic Horror For
the 1980s.” Women 14.3 (2003): 292. Literary Reference Center.
Web. 30 June 2014.
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