The Woman in Black (TWIB) is a story about isolated people in an isolated place. Not least TWIB before she died. Janet Humfrye was isolated by her plight as a mother of an illegitimate child, which was frowned upon by society in the early 20th century when the story is set. Even the town’s people of Crithin Gifford were isolated on the marshes and almost described as though they lived in another dimension, another part of the world set apart from the rest of society. The sense of isolation runs like a thread right through the whole book. Hill does this by creating vivid pictures in the reader’s mind. She uses detailed descriptions or imagery with frequent use of metaphor, simili and personification techniques. She also uses short and
“Certainly I felt loneliness” “ I felt quite alone outside that gaunt empty house.
Hill’s use of repetition in short phrases helps the reader to empathise with the feelings of Kipps.
“But for today I had had enough. Enough of the solitude and no sound, save the water and the moaning wind and the melancholy calls of the birds, enough of the monotonous greyness, enough of this gloomy old house.”
This all helps to add to a sense of the atmosphere and isolation that Kipps feels.
When Kipps sets out on the causeway path back to Crithin Gifford he remarks, “I had never been quite so alone, nor felt quite so small and insignificant in a vast landscape.” At this point he is unaware that in minutes he will be shrouded in mist so that he can no longer see the house behind him or indeed see the path in front.
Hill uses imagery throughout the book to create atmosphere, tension and vivid pictures in the readers mind. In the Pony & Trap chapter she describes the descending mist. “Like a damp clinging cobwebby thing.” She writes “I felt confused by it, teased by it, as though it were made up of millions of live fingers that crept over me, hung on to me and shifted again. This makes it sound to the reader as though it were a live creature attacking Kipps. This adds to the tension, atmosphere and isolation that Kipps feels. He is far from anywhere and there is no one to call out to.
Although Hill tells the story