To analyse key quotations in Chapter 1 of The Woman in Black
Write down 5 adjectives to describe each character:
Older
Kipps
The Woman in Black
Jennet Humfrye
Younger Kipps
Keckwick
Daily
The Landlord
Name________________
Miss Iredale
Room 93
The Woman in
Black
Susan Hill
Pick a quotation and answer the question:
How does Hill hook the reader in the first
chapter?
Remember to focus on language, structure and form.
• Point and technique
• Quotation
• Analysis – Extend using ‘because’
and ‘furthermore’
• Zoom in
• Reader reaction/Author intention
Woman in Black, OMAM Section A, Poetry
Extras for Language Exam Q 3, 4 and
Section B:
Language, Structure Form
Repetition
Adjectives, verbs, adverbs
Similes, metaphors
Personification
Simple/complex sentences
Onomatopoeia
Gothic genre (WIB)
Dickensian pastiche (WIB)
Frame narrative (WIB)
First person narrator (WIB)
Alliteration
Superlative
Imperative
List
Ellipsis
Caesura
Personal pronoun
Enjambement (Poetry)
Hyperbole
Anecdote
Facts
Opinion
Rhetorical Questions
Emotive language
Statistics
Tripling
Bias
Humour/Satire
Exclamations
1 words sentences
1. Christmas Eve
‘a widower’ and ‘prone to occasional nervous illness as a
result of experiences I will come to relate.’
Monks Piece – A ‘fertile, and sheltered, part of
the country’ p.10
‘I was growing old well before my
time’
‘I have never been a fanciful man’
‘I would not have wished for anything to
ruffle that calm, untroubled sea’
The children ‘telling ghost stories…spoke
with excitement and laughter’
‘piling agony upon agony’ p.18
‘I fought a bitter battle within myself’
‘I began to feel set apart from
them all, an outsider to their
circle’
Like an old wound, it gave off a faint twinge’ p.22
2. A London Particular
People in London ‘groping, stumbling,
clutching. Sounds were deadened, shapes
blurred. It was a menacing and sinister
game of Blind Man’s Buff’
Fog: ‘creeping’, ‘seething like sour breath’,
‘gaining a sly entrance’, ‘a filthy, evilsmelling fog’
‘I was in those days, a sturdy, commonsensical
fellow and felt no uneasiness’
Pools of sulphurous yellow light, as from
random corners of some circle of the
inferno, flared from shops. They rose like
flares from the pit.’ ‘boiling caulron’. P.26-27
3. The Journey North
I ‘walked with a light step’ to the station. ‘All was cosy
and enclosed as some lamplit study’ p.34
‘cheerless rows of empty carriages’ p.35
‘ I put him down as a farmer’ his ring had a
‘touch of vulgarity’ p.36
‘huffing’ engine and ‘bursts of rain, like
sprays of light artillery fire, upon the
windows’. P.36
‘You’re not going to tell me strange tales?’ ‘He gave me
a straight look. ‘No’, he said, at last, ‘ I’m not.’ p.37
Crythin Gifford: ‘We tuck ourselves in
with our backs to the wind and carry
on with our business’ p.39
4. The Funeral of Mrs Drablow
‘Mr Daily gave me a straight, steady
stare, and said nothing’ p.40
Landlord: conversational then, on mentioning
the funeral: ‘He turned abruptly in the direction
of the bar, ‘I’ll wish you goodnight.’ p41
‘I had the belief that those who inhabited
remote corners of our island, were more
superstitious, more gullible, more slow
witter, unsophisticated and primitive’.
P.43
‘the houses huddled together and looked in on
themselves. The town tucking itself in with its back
to the wind.’ p.45
I fell asleep most peacefully, happy
and secure as a small child in a
nursery.’ p.43
On the way to the funeral ‘We
were the focus of uneasy
glances feeling like some
pariah’ p.46
4. The Funeral of Mrs Drablow (cont.)
The WIB p.48-50: ‘dressed in the
deepest black, suffering from
some terrible wasting disease as
though she had been a victim of
starvation’
‘I bent my head and prayed for the soul of that
lonely old woman’ p.50
Children with ‘solemn faces. I
smiled at one gently. He did not
smile back’. P.51
Mr Jerome looks frozen, pale, his
throat moving as if he were unable to
utter.’ p.51
‘Much land is useless because it
is all marsh’ p.55 (contrast?)
5. Across the Causeway
Eel Marsh House: Reeds, bleached bone pale as if
rising out of the water itself, a tall, gaunt house that
gleamed steelily in the light’ ‘It stood like a
lighthouse or beacon’. P.60
Nine Lives Causeway: ‘I saw how,
when the tide came in, it would
quickly be quite submerged and
untraceable.’ p.60
‘The most astonishingly situated house’ ‘I
thought handsome. I was fascinated by it.’
p.60
‘I determined to follow her, and ask some
questions to get to the bottom of it all’ p.66
Her face expressed ‘a desperate, yearning
malevolence’. ‘as though she were searching for
something she wanted and towards whoever had
taken it she directed the purest evil and hatred and
loathing’. p.65
‘I did not believe in ghosts.’ p.67 & 68
9. In the Nursery
‘a son was born to her and she wrote of
him at once with a desperate, clinging
emotion’ p.113
‘Every hair of her body was on end.’ ‘I sat
up paralysed, frozen’. P.107
When the letters began again ‘it was at
first in passionate outrage and protest,
later, in quiet, resigned bitterness’.
P.113
He is mine. He shall not go to strangers. I shall kill
us both before I let him go.’ p.113
‘Love him, take care of him as
your own. But he is mine, mine,
he can never be yours. I think
my heart will break.’ p.114
‘So many toys and all of them most
neatly and meticulously cared for.’ p.212
In the chest of drawers and wardrobe there were
clothes, underclothes, day clothes, formal
clothes, play clothes.’ p.120
‘I felt drained, exhausted, all the emotions
that had poured into me and out again leaving
me like something thrown up on a calm beach
at the end of a storm’. P.122
10. Whistle and I’ll Come to You
I listened hard. Nothing. p.124
‘The house felt like a ship at sea, battered by
the gale that came roaring across the open
marsh.’ p.123
‘I ran as I have never run before, heedless of my own
safety, desperate to go to the aid of the brave, bright
little creature.’ p.130
The door of the nursery
‘inexplicably opened’. ‘I tried
desperately to provide a
rational explanation for the
presence I had been so aware
of.’ p.125
11. A Packet of Letters
The nursery was ‘the very heart of the
haunting.’ p.138
Clothes ‘left hanging like entrails from a
wounded body.’ ‘the tin Sambo was smashed
as by a hammer blow.’ p.138
‘I crossed the room to the window, for
perhaps the vandals had gained an entry
here.’ p.138
The nursery ‘was in a state of disarray as might have been
caused by a gang of robbers, bent on mad, senseless
destruction.’ p.138
The rocking chair had been pushed into the
centre, to preside, tall-backed and erect, like a
great brooding bird, over the wreck.’ p.138
Daily: ‘The rest of us have to stay. We’ve to live with it.’
They have to live with ‘whatever will surely follow’.
p.147
12. A Woman in Black
‘A puppy was booked for us’ p.154, ‘we were as happy as a young
man and his bride may possibly be’, ‘busy and looking forward to
the future.’ ‘Stella gave birth to our child.’ p.157
There was a festive, holiday air about the
place,’ families strolled in the sunshine,
children tumbled about’. p.157/8
‘Then, quite suddenly, I saw her.’ ‘I felt the
malevolence and hatred and passionate bitterness.
It pierced me through.’ p.158
‘They asked for my story. I have told it.
Enough.’ p.160