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English book report The Woman in Black
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Comprehensive summary of Susan Hill's book The woman in black
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the woman in blackPERSONEN
Arthur Kipps: he has always liked to take a breath of the evening, to smell the air, to
look at the sky, to listen for the cries of nocturnal creatures and the moaning rise and
fall of the wind.
In the real story: He is 23 and lived in London for his work, apart from some spare time
spent in the study and collecting of watercolours. He had no taste at all for social life
and was prone to occasional nervous illnesses and conditions. He was growing old well
before his time. He had never been an imaginative or fanciful man and certainly not
one given to visions of the future. He had a passion for everything to do with railway
stations and journeys on steam locomotives.
Monk’s Piece: he first saw the house when he went out driving in the trap with Mr
Bentley. At that moment he was seized by something he can’t precisely describe, a
simple certainty which gripped him. He was quite unable to escape the belief that this
house was one day to be his home. When he accepted this, he felt a profound sense of
peace and contentment.
In the early days he had come there only at weekends and holidays but London life
and business began to irk the day he bought it so he retired permanently into the
country at the earliest opportunity.
Esmé Ainley: his second wife and she has four children from her first marriage.
→ Isobel: she was only 24 but already mother of 3 young sons and set to produce
more. She had been the most sensible, responsible of daughters, affectionate and
charming and she seemed to have found an ideal partner.
→ Oliver: the eldest of her sons.
→ Will: comes 14 months after Oliver.
→ Edmund: the youngest and he is pale-skinned, longnosed, black hair and blue eyes;
different than his brothers.
All three of them have good, plain, open English faces, inclined to roundness and with
hair and eyebrows and lashes of a light chestnut brown - the colour of Esmés hair
before it became threaded with gray.
Mr Bentley: was formely his employer, but he had lately risen to become a full partner
in the firm of lawyers. He was becoming more a countrydweller and he had immersed
himself in the roles of country magistrate and churchwarden.
Tomes: the clerk; a small man, thin as a stick and with the complexion of a tallow
candle and a permanent cold ( he sniffs every 20 seconds).
Alice Drablow: lived in Eel Marsh House on Eel Marsh. She died at 87 years old. She was
a rum’un (an older client of Mr Bentley). She was quite early a widow and had no
children and owned her house and a few properties in Crythin Gifford. She spent
money on a few dykes here and there, but not to much purpose. And there are the
usual small trusts and investments. She was married to Morgan Thomas Drablow and
they became the adoptive parents of Nathaniel.
→ Arthur went to her funeral and then he had to go through her documents and bring
them back to the office. But she was disorganized so it may take a while.
Mr Jerome: the agent who had dealt with such property and land business as Mrs
Drablow had conducted and who was Arthur’s companion at the funeral.
, Mr Samuel Daily: a big man with a beefy face and huge, raw-looking hands. He was
nearer sixty. They met on the train to Crythin Gifford. He is a large landowner.
Mrs Daily: a quiet, shy-seeming little woman, married to Mr Daily, with one son.
→ they had clearly bought their biggest house for miles because they had made
enough money but he did not seem very much at ease within it.
Jennet Eliza Humfrye: Alice’s sister, unmarried and had one son, Nathaniel Pierston.
Cause of death at 36 was simply given as heart failure.
→ She gave up her child because she’d no choice. First she stayed away and the boy
was brought up as a Drablow and was never intended to know his mother. But she
came back because the pain of being parted from him grew worse. She was not
welcome at her parents house and the man had gone abroad for good. Alice would
not let her see the boy at all, but she threatened violence and could visit very
occasionally, but never see the boy alone. He became more attached to her and
began colder towards Alice. She planned to take him away, but then he drowned. From
that day she became mad with grief and anger and a desire for revenge. She blamed
her sister who had let them go out that day. She also contracted a disease which
caused her to begin to waste away. She died in hatred and misery. And as soon as she
died, the hauntings began. And whenever she has been seen, a child has died. Any
child, and Jerome’s child.
Rose Judd: the nursemaid, also died by drowning.
Nathaniel Pierston (Drablow): six years old boy
→ He, his nursemaid and the father of Keckwick (and his little dog) had somehow taken
a wrong path in the sea mist and veered off onto the marshes, where it had been
sucked into the quicksands and swallowed up by the mud and rising waters. They had
drowned. And now, the whole episode somehow happened again and again. But
nothing could be seen now, only heard. And Jennet watched all this from an upper
window.
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