''The Woman in Black'' is a 1983
gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
horror novel
Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...
by English writer
Susan Hill
Dame Susan Hill, Lady Wells, (born 5 February 1942) is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include ''The Woman in Black'', '' The Mist in the Mirror'', and '' I'm the King of the Castle'', for which she received t ...
. The plot concerns a mysterious
spectre
Spectre, specter or the spectre may refer to:
Religion and spirituality
* Vision (spirituality)
* Apparitional experience
* Ghost
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Spectre'' (1977 film), a made-for-television film produced and writ ...
that haunts a small English town. A television film based on the story, also called ''
The Woman in Black'', was produced in 1989, with a screenplay by
Nigel Kneale
Thomas Nigel Kneale (28 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British S ...
. In 2012,
another film adaption was released, starring
Daniel Radcliffe
Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English actor. He rose to fame at age twelve, when he began portraying Harry Potter in the film series of the same name; and has held various other film and theatre roles. Over his career, Rad ...
.
The book has also been
adapted into a stage play by
Stephen Mallatratt. It is the second longest-running play in the history of the
West End, after ''
The Mousetrap
''The Mousetrap'' is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. ''The Mousetrap'' opened in London's West End in 1952 and ran continuously until 16 March 2020, when the stage performances had to be temporarily discontinued during the COVID-1 ...
''.
Plot
The novel is narrated by Arthur Kipps, the young lawyer who formerly worked for Mr. Bentley. One Christmas Eve he is at home with his second wife Esmé and four stepchildren, who are sharing ghost stories. When he is asked to tell a story, he becomes irritated and leaves the room, and decides to write his horrific experiences several years in the past in the hopes that doing so will exorcise them from his memory.
Many years earlier, whilst still a junior solicitor for Bentley, Kipps is summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the north east coast of England, to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow and settle her estate. Kipps is reluctant to leave his fiancée, Stella, but eager to get away from the dreary
London fog. The late Mrs. Drablow was an elderly and reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House. On his train ride there, he met a fairly wealthy landowner, Samuel Daily.
The house is situated on Nine Lives
Causeway. At high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland, surrounded only by
marshes
A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...
and
sea frets. Kipps soon realised that there was more to the late Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale face and dark eyes, whom a group of children are silently watching. While sorting through Mrs. Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House over the course of several days, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and appearances by the Woman in Black. In one of these instances, he hears the sound of a horse and carriage in distress, closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid, coming from the direction of the marshes.
Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are reluctant to reveal information about Mrs. Drablow and the mysterious woman in black. Any attempt by Kipps to find out the truth causes pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, he learns that Mrs. Drablow's sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, Nathaniel. Because she was unmarried, she was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs. Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, and insisted that he should never know that Jennet was his mother. The child's screams that Kipps heard were those of Nathaniel's ghost.
Jennet went away for a year. When realising she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an agreement to stay at Eel Marsh House with him as long as she never revealed her true identity to him. She secretly planned to abscond from the house with her son. One day, a pony and
trap
A trap is a mechanical device used to capture or restrain an animal for purposes such as hunting, pest control, or ecological research.
Trap or TRAP may also refer to:
Art and entertainment Films and television
* ''Trap'' (2015 film), Fil ...
carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all aboard, while Jennet looked on helplessly from the window.
After Jennet died, she returned to haunt Eel Marsh House and the town of Crythin Gifford, as the malevolent Woman in Black. According to local tales, a sighting of the Woman in Black presaged the death of a child.
After some time (but still years before the beginning of the story), Kipps returns to London, marries Stella, has a child of his own, and tries to put the events at Crythin Gifford behind him. At a fair, while his wife and child are enjoying a pony and trap ride, Kipps sees the Woman in Black. She steps out in front of the horse and startles it, causing it to bolt and wreck the carriage against a tree, killing the child instantly and critically injuring Stella, who dies ten months later.
Kipps finishes his reminiscence with the words, "They have asked for my story. I have told it. Enough."
Stage play
The play of ''The Woman in Black'' was adapted by Stephen Mallatratt in December 1987 and started off as a low budget production for the new Christmas play in Scarborough. It turned out to be so successful that it arrived in London's West End two years later in January 1989, taking up residence at the London Fortune Theatre on 7 June that same year and is currently the
second longest-running play in the West End. For the 30th Anniversary year the West End cast from May 2018-March 2019 was
Richard Hope as Arthur Kipps and Mark Hawkins as the Actor, then from 19 March 2019 Stuart Fox with Matthew Spencer. As of November 2022, Julian Forsyth now plays Arthur Kipps with Matthew Spencer still playing the Actor.
Mallatratt's version sees Arthur rehearsing with an actor in an attempt to perform the story to family and friends, which allows him to relive the haunting of Eel Marsh House as a play within a play.
Radio, television, and film adaptations
*In 1989, the story was
adapted for television by
Nigel Kneale
Thomas Nigel Kneale (28 April 1922 – 29 October 2006) was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British S ...
for Britain's
ITV
ITV or iTV may refer to:
ITV
*Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of:
** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
network and directed by
Herbert Wise Herbert Wise (31 August 1924 – 5 August 2015) was an Austrian-born film and television producer and director.
He was born as Herbert Weisz in Vienna, Austria, and began his career as a director at Shrewsbury Repertory Company in 1950. He was at ...
. The production starred
Adrian Rawlins
Adrian John Rawlins (born 27 March 1958) is an English actor best known for playing Arthur Kidd in ''The Woman in Black'' and James Potter in the ''Harry Potter'' films. In 2019, he starred in ''Chernobyl'' as Nikolai Fomin.
Early life
Rawlin ...
as Arthur Kidd (not Kipps),
Bernard Hepton
Francis Bernard Heptonstall (19 October 1925 – 27 July 2018) better known by the stage name Bernard Hepton, was an English theatre director and actor. Best known for his stage work and television roles in teleplays and series, he also appeare ...
as Sam Toovey (not Sam Daily) and
Pauline Moran
Pauline Moran (born 26 August 1947) is an English actress, presenter, and astrologer, best known for her role as Miss Felicity Lemon in the British television series ''Agatha Christie's Poirot''.
She trained at several schools, including the ...
as The Woman in Black.
*In December 1993,
BBC Radio 5 broadcast a four-part adaptation of the novel. It starred
Robert Glenister
Robert Lewis Glenister (born 11 March 1960 in Watford, Hertfordshire) is an English actor. The son of the television director John Glenister and the older brother of actor Philip Glenister, his roles include con man Ash "Three Socks" Morgan in ...
(as young Arthur Kipps) and
John Woodvine
John Woodvine (born 21 July 1929) is an English actor who has appeared in more than 70 theatre productions, as well as a similar number of television and film roles.
Early life
Woodvine was born in Tyne Dock, South Shields, Tyne & Wear, Engla ...
(as an old Arthur Kipps, who also narrates parts of the story). It was directed by Chris Wallis.
*In October 2004,
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
broadcast a 56-minute version in its Saturday Play slot, adapted by
Mike Walker. It starred
James D'Arcy
James D'Arcy (born Simon Richard D'Arcy; 24 August 1975) is an English actor and film director. He is known for his portrayals of Howard Stark's butler, Edwin Jarvis, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television series '' Agent Carter'' and the ...
as Arthur Kipps, was directed by John Taylor and was a Fiction Factory production.
*In February 2012, a
film adaptation was released, starring
Daniel Radcliffe
Daniel Jacob Radcliffe (born 23 July 1989) is an English actor. He rose to fame at age twelve, when he began portraying Harry Potter in the film series of the same name; and has held various other film and theatre roles. Over his career, Rad ...
(of ''
Harry Potter'' fame) in the role of Arthur Kipps, and directed by
James Watkins of ''
Eden Lake
''Eden Lake'' is a 2008 British horror thriller film written and directed by James Watkins and starring Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender and Jack O'Connell.
The film was nominated for the Empire Award for Best British Film. It is among a gr ...
'' fame. It is a separate adaptation of the novel, not a remake of the 1989 film, and develops a storyline quite different from that of the source material.
Sequel
A sequel of the book named ''
The Woman in Black: Angel of Death'' was first published in the United Kingdom on 24 October 2013 and was published in the United States on 12 February 2014, written by Martyn Waites. It is a
novelisation
A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent ...
of the 2015 film ''
The Woman in Black: Angel of Death''.
References
External links
''The Woman in Black''at Susan Hill's official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woman In Black, The
1983 British novels
British Gothic novels
British horror novels
British novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into plays
Ghost novels
Hamish Hamilton books
British novels adapted into television shows
Novels by Susan Hill
Novels set in England
Fiction about suicide
First-person narrative novels