The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Just thought I'd get the thread ready to go!

Hi I'm new but I just thought I'd jump in and ask who was really, really scared by this book (me) and who wasn't - it's interesting that some people find the traditional ghost story pushes all their buttons with tried and tested techniques, while some people don't get such a big impact. So which group do you fall in and what do you think made you scared/yawn at the ghost?

Hi Bookgazing,

So glad you are going to join us for the discussion. It's always nice to see new members!

I read this several years ago and then reread it just this past week or so. I fall somewhere in between. The first time I read this I found it a 'chilling' story. I read the majority of it over the course of one winter day and I was in the right mood and thought it was one of the best/most effective ghost stories I had come across. Usually for me it's after I've read the story and have had time to think about it and let my mind go with things that I might get a momentary scare (usually when I'm in the basement of my house doing laundry, which is scary enough on its own). This time around as I was reading the story was coming back to me, so I knew what was coming, so I mostly thought it was very atmospheric. I think Susan Hill is very good at detail and slowly revealing the story and keeping the tension up!

Hi, I'm a newbie here, too. And I just recently read The Woman in Black for the first time, and really enjoyed it. And I agree that Susan Hill seems to be very good at creating tension with attention to detail and the building up of atmosphere. Also, I think one of the things I found really chilling about the book was that the ghost was so thoroughly malevolent, not just vaguely creepy. The Woman in Black was actually looking for revenge on the living – something "real" ghosts aren't supposed to do. I guess that's why I thought of it as classic "ghostly" fiction – like James's Turn of the Screw. That one scares me every time I reread it – guess I'll have to wait a couple of years and reread The Woman in Black to see if it still strikes me as really spooky.

Unfortunately I didn't find the book scary at all. I talk about it in my blog post, but while most ghost stories scare me or at least give me chills this one didn't. I thought there was too much foreshadowing and promises of horrors and when they finally began happening I was underwhelmed. I also figured out who the ghost was and why she was haunting the house as soon as Arthur found that packet of letters. I wanted to be caught up in the tension and creepiness of the story but I just couldn't manage it.

I felt scared in moments, but my experience was pretty uneven. I think this book should be read in a concentrated, short period of time if possible because then it's easier to get caught up in the mood and enjoy it more. I read it in bits and pieces, and that kept me distanced from the creepiness of it.

I'll admit, though that the thought of the carriage going down in the quicksand is pretty awful, and also the scene where Spider almost drowns is terrible too. The quicksand was more frightening than the ghost, I think.

I loved the landscape descriptions. What a place it must have been! Does every edition have the illustrations my edition has? I liked those a lot.

I was more worried about the quicksand and poor Spider too. Spider's fate made me turn the pages faster than anything else did.

My book had illustrations as well and I liked them too.

Yes, I loved the illustrations, too. I sort of wish all books had illustrations.

I did read the book in pretty much one long session. I think that helped me appreciate the foreboding atmosphere more than if I'd broken it up into several readings.

Also, I didn't really mind that I figured out what was going on, fairly early in the story. To me, ghost stories should be mysterious - but they're not the same as mysteries or whodunits, where you don't want to know the solution until the very end. I think ghost stories are more about atmosphere and setting up a feeling of general dread.

Mine didn't have illustrations, I wish it did!

I agree with Dororthy that it's better reading this book in a short space of time so the atmosphere can really take its hold on you and it's especially terrifying if you read it at night.

I agree that a familiar story isn't a problem -- I think it's right that they don't have to feel new like mysteries do because the emphasis is on creepiness, not figuring the story out. We can be scared by the same thing again and again, after all. But if the story feels cliche, on the other hand, that might knock a person out of the book's atmosphere and make the book irritating rather than scary. I didn't feel that way with this one, though.

What did you think about the fact that it's a mother whose "illegitimate" child was taken from her who causes all the trouble? I wondered if Hill was giving the ghost story a feminist twist by showing what havoc this cruelty causes in the town.

Well, I felt there was a definite feminist aspect to the story, although I'm not sure Hill really intended it to be there. I think Susan Hill is one of those authors who's been raked over the coals by the feminist critics because they think her work tends to be anti-feminist.

Ah, I did not know that about her being seen as anti-feminist. Interesting. I suppose with this book it comes down to whether you see Jennet as unfairly wronged and getting her vengeance on the community and showing how messed up the culture is for having done what they did to her, OR whether you see Jennet as an example of angry womanhood gone entirely crazy and needing to be contained. Or other possibilities?

Very interesting, I did not know that she had been criticised for that. I can see how things like the illegitimate baby dying could be construed by some as Hill punishing a woman who was seen to have sinned. Not sure about that, when I looked back on reading it the one thing I noticed the most was really the absence of any comment on gender, or the roles women and men played at the time.

What a great discussion! I think it was typically a grieving mother as they are culturally expected to have the most ferocious emotions. The double whammy of having her son taken away by her sister and then his death, means that she is vengeful, not just a figure of fear. But it is also a very classic move to have icons switch from their light side to their dark. The devoted mother figure is closer to the murderous harridan simply because they are both extremes.

On the other question, I wasn't frightened, but then I read this in bits, in daylight, and as an alternative to a truly harrowing book I was reading about the Holocaust. So, context is everything!

One thing to think about is how much the book is like the classic ghost stories of M.R. James. One of the chapters in The Woman in Black is even titled "Whistle and I'll Come to You," – which seems like a pretty obvious reference to one of James's most famous stories, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." And in James's stories, the evil spirits are frequently female. So the fact that the malevolent spirit in Hill's book is a woman may just be her way of following the classic scenario.

I liked the tension Hill created and while I wasn't literally scared, I could feel what Hill was trying to do and I thought it was pretty effective (at least for me). I had read it before, though, so I knew what was coming more or less. My book didn't have any illustrations, which is a pity as I'd love to see what the house looked like. And I think context really is everything. In the right setting, reading this straight through, the story might possibly take on a more uneasy feeling.

Out of curiosity--when was this story supposed to have taken place. I was thinking it must be in the 30s or 40s, but I may be way off. Though with the attitudes about a woman bearing a child out of wedlock--perhaps it was even earlier. Arthur mentions Victorian attitudes (or something Victorian anyway), but I couldn't quite place the period.

Interesting about MR James--I really must read more of him. I think Sarah Waters was really influenced by his work when she was writing her most recent book.

Just a quick note -- if you are interested in seeing the illustrations, you will find them here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=y9_Fdk-JUYUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=susan+hill+woman+in+black&client=firefox-a#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Or if that doesn't work, a search on Google Books for The Woman in Black will call them up.

Yes, that's an interesting point about the time period of the story. I don't think there's really anything specific about that in the book, and I assume that was deliberate on Hill's part. Sort of makes it almost timeless - it's just set sometime "in the past." Another of her books, The Man in the Picture, is also a ghost story and makes very nice use of the time aspect. When I read it I assumed it was set in the past, too - until the very end of the book when I realized it was actually present-day (won't say what tipped me off because it's really sort of a spoiler).

It was probably a good thing that I just got the book in the mail on Thursday. I was forced to read it at (almost) one sitting, which I think held my interest. The book does move a little slowly, but I didn't mind it much. As a scary ghost story, this didn't work for me. But as a dark atmospheric novel it did. Like other Slaves, once Arthur started reading Mrs. Drablow's letters, I figured out who the ghost was and who the child in the pony trap was. But instead of being afraid of the woman in black, I felt sympathetic toward. I wanted to reach out and comfort her. I have experienced grief of all kinds. Somehow we ovecome. Only twice have I experienced a grief I did not believe would ever mend - and, in fact, in many ways never has mended. Both involved the death of a child. I can't imagine ever wishing that grief on anyone - no matter who. And so my sympathy turned to disgust at the end of the book. Malevolence at its very worse. This is the first thing I've read from Susan Hiill. The book was well written enough to prompt me to pick up something else by her.

I've never read any M.R. James so I missed the reference but now I am intrigued to read some James!

Being sympathetic to the ghost does sort of ruin the scare factor, doesn't it Grad? I felt for her too, thought at times that if I were her I'd be haunting the place too so I couldn't blame her. But the fact that she went beyond haunting to killing the children of others, I lost my sympathy for her then.

I even got M R James off my shelf and was going to read the story entitled 'I'll whistle for you, my lad!' or whatever it was exactly, with an eye to exploring the parallels. But the day got away from me, you know how it goes. I will certainly do so. As for the time period, I know what you mean - timeless olde worlde - but given the crossover from carts to cars, you might expect 1930s?