The Woman in Black

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1983

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “The Funeral of Mrs. Drablow”

Kipps’s first impression of Crythin Gifford is favorable, especially after riding in Mr. Daily’s luxurious car. When he drops Kipps off at the inn, Mr. Daily gives Kipps his card and lets him know that he will “find everything hospitable enough at Crythin” (35). Inside the inn, Arthur enjoys the cozy atmosphere, and he drinks a glass of mulled wine with his dinner.

As he goes to his room, the landlord clarifies if Kipps is in town for the auction. There are several plots of land near the village that are being sold with a lunch and open market after the auction. Kipps replies that he will be attending Mrs. Drablow’s funeral and asks the landlord if he knew her. The landlord does not speak much on the topic, and wishes Kipps a good night. Kipps decides to ignore the landlord’s behavior.

The next morning Kipps wakes up feeling refreshed and eager to start his day. Although he believes himself to be happiest with Esme at Monk’s Piece, he claims to have never slept so well compared to his first night in Crythin Gifford. After eating breakfast, Kipps decides to spend time exploring the village while the weather is favorable.

When he returns to the inn, Kipps finds a note left for him from Mr. Jerome, the local solicitor, telling him that he will meet him in the morning before the funeral. After they meet, Kipps observes Mr. Jerome; he views him as being overly formal but courteous. Approaching the church, Kipps asks Mr. Jerome if Mrs. Drablow will be buried in a family cemetery. He learns that while the Drablows do have a family gravesite, Mrs. Drablow will be buried in the churchyard. They are the first to arrive at the funeral, and Kipps attempts to not ask any more questions regarding Mrs. Drablow, despite the small number of funeral attendees: Kipps, Mr. Jerome, and the church official.

At the funeral, Kipps notices that a woman in black joins the gravesite, and he focuses on both her beauty and her sickly appearance. When the funeral service ends, the woman has disappeared. As they are leaving, Mr. Jerome refuses to answer Kipps’s question regarding the woman in black. He tells Kipps that he will not accompany him to Eel Marsh House, but Mr. Keckwick will take him to the island. Mr. Jerome advises that Kipps head to the estate in the afternoon and that Mr. Keckwick will pick him back up in the evening. Kipps wonders if it would be beneficial to stay at the estate due to the number of papers he has to sort, but Mr. Jerome advises him to do otherwise.

Later that day, Kipps learns Mr. Daily is a large landowner in town, who is disliked by many. However, he also learns that not even Mr. Daily will be having anything to do with Mrs. Drablow’s property.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Across the Causeway”

Despite expecting to be driven in a car, Mr. Keckwick picks up Kipps in a horse-drawn cart for their ride to Eel Marsh house, and Kipps eagerly settles beside his companion. They pass the church that held Mrs. Drablow’s funeral, and Kipps thinks about the woman in black. He also continues to speculate about Mr. Jerome’s reaction to the sighting. However, he quickly turns his attention to the weather and the lack of clouds in the sky.

As they get closer to the estate, Kipps realizes how narrow the Nine Lives Causeway actually is. As a thin strip of land with the marsh situated on both sides, the causeway quickly gets covered during high tide. Arriving at Eel Marsh House, Kipps looks at the house in amazement before feeling a strange mix of emotions, including excitement, loneliness, and alarm. He asks Mr. Keckwick what time the tide comes in, which will only be in a few hours, so he wonders if Mr. Keckwick will wait on him. However, rather than answering Kipps, the man drives away.

Kipps explores the property before going inside the estate, and he stumbles upon an old family graveyard next to the ruins of an old church. During his exploration of the gravestones, he sees the woman in black from Mrs. Drablow’s funeral. In the air, he feels “a desperate, yearning malevolence” (63), and he becomes stuck in place, almost frozen by fear. As soon as the woman in black moves, he quickly runs toward the house. Kipps is overcome with anger toward the woman for making him feel negative emotions, such as fear and horror. Once inside, Kipps calms down and finds himself fixated on understanding who this woman is, especially since he has never believed in ghosts until this moment, because he cannot provide another explanation for his experience.

Kipps begins to organize Mrs. Drablow’s documents, but he soon realizes how much paper he will have to sort through and does not think it will be productive to start sorting so late at night. He wanders the estate and questions how Mrs. Drablow lived in the house alone. Rather than staying at the house any longer, Kipps decides to start walking toward the village, hoping to meet Mr. Keckwick on his way to collect him.

Chapter 6 Summary: “The Sound of a Pony and Trap”

Kipps begins to walk quickly down the causeway, worrying that the woman in black is behind him. To calm down, he also tells himself that there must be a reasonable explanation as to how the woman was at the funeral and, now, Eel Marsh House. He also decides not to further reflect on Mr. Jerome’s fearful reaction regarding the woman either.

Continuing to walk down the causeway, Kipps feels alone and scared, which is heightened when he turns around to see that Eel Marsh House is now invisible due to the thick fog. However, Kipps is determined to make it back to the village until he realizes that the fog has made the path in front of him invisible as well. Ultimately, Kipps decides to go back to the estate to wait on Mr. Keckwick, hoping to not get lost.

On the walk back, Kipps tries to stay focused on the path directly in front of him to not get disoriented from the fog. As he continues to walk forward, he begins to hear the sounds of a pony trap behind him. Kipps hopes Mr. Keckwick is nearby, but the sounds of a child screaming and a horse whining in panic start to make Kipps panic. He thinks Mr. Keckwick has a small child riding with him and that they must be drowning in the marsh. He attempts to run after them, but Kipps realizes that he does not know how to find them and is scared he may also get pulled into the marsh. He returns to the estate and tries to signal them with lights. Upon arriving at Eel Marsh House, Kipps begins to sob.

He falls asleep until a ringing outside wakes him up. Mr. Keckwick is outside waiting on Kipps to take him back to the village, and Kipps sees that all the fog is gone. Being two in the morning, Mr. Keckwick explains that he had to wait out the fog before he could come back to the island, but he reassures Kipps that he would not have left him there all night. Kipps asks Mr. Keckwick how he was able to get out of the marsh, but he believes it must have been someone else who drowned in the marsh. As he reflects, he acknowledges how the woman in black must be a ghost and the sounds he heard in the marsh were also from ghosts. Kipps dreams of the woman standing over him.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

Since Kipps has not experienced the haunting at Eel Marsh House yet, he still approaches his task with eagerness and curiosity. Exploring the town, Kipps finds Crythin Gifford favorable and hospitable, which encourages him to feel secure and comfortable. However, the landlord’s reaction to his business in town forces Kipps to question more Mrs. Drablow’s mysterious past. Kipps notices that the “alarm” Mrs. Drablow’s name causes implies a fear toward the deceased woman. Despite the landlord’s attempt to “suppress” what has “stirred some strong emotion” in him, Hill’s depiction of their interaction implies a disconnect between Kipps and the rest of Crythin Gifford (37).

By sleeping easily, Kipps approaches the day of Mrs. Drablow funeral with an enthusiasm toward uncovering the mysterious Mrs. Drablow, despite having to attend the funeral itself. In this moment, the older version of Kipps writing his story interjects to say that he has yet to “have ever slept so well as [he] did that night in the inn” due to his innocent state of mind (39). Here, Hill reminds the reader that Kipps’s story is being told in retrospect, which allows for both versions of Kipps to reflect on these events. On the one hand, young Kipps, who has yet to experience the haunting of the woman in black, maintains an innocent, unbiased perspective of Crythin Gifford. While on the other, older Kipps’s narrative voice illustrates a perspective that has had time to reflect, and, therefore, foreshadow what is to come in the novel, reflecting the theme of The Clash Between Rationality and Superstition.

The introduction of Mr. Jerome and Mr. Keckwick also perpetuate the impending dread Kipps will endure as well. Mr. Jerome’s reaction to Kipps seeing the woman in black enhances the foreboding tone of what is to come. By having Mr. Jerome “[stop] dead” at the mention of the woman in black, Hill creates an ironic tone because, at this point in the novel, the young version of Kipps still does not know the woman in black is a ghost and not just a woman dying from a disease (47). Mr. Keckwick’s lack of dialogue produces his own air of mystery around the town itself, too. Kipps grows in frustration at how little he has been told of Mrs. Drablow, which furthers his own feelings of isolation before he even reaches Eel Marsh House.

Once Kipps has experienced the haunting at Eel Marsh House, he attempts to reconcile his interaction with the woman in black logically and rationally, perpetuating the theme of The Clash Between Rationality and Superstition. However, the sounds of a horse-drawn cart and a child screaming do not just enhance the gothic elements of the novel, they also serve to mark the beginning of Kipps’s revelation concerning Eel Marsh House. He fixates on his “foolish independence and blockheadedness in ignoring all the hints and veiled warnings,” which then manifests in anger (75). Kipps struggles to comprehend that there is not a logical explanation for what he has experienced, but he also recognizes his experience is unexplainable.