Why a "woman in black"? I must have had Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White in mind but it was more than 25 years since I had read his novel. The grief and craving for revenge must be released or she cannot find resolution and peace on either side of the grave. She cannot let go, and her revenge is an evil that continues to be visited on Crythin Gifford. But my ghost returns to exact revenge and it is the nature of revenge that it is never satisfied and so, loss and grief lead the woman in black on, trying to exact revenge for her child's accidental death by causing those of others. But moral points come out of character, and I kept asking myself the question: "Why does a ghost return to this life?" Perhaps to give information that they have withheld in life – the whereabouts of a will, say, or the identity of a murderer, or to warn. I knew my ghost story, like all my fiction, had to have a serious point and it was this that must sustain the length and underpin the sense of place, the creation of atmosphere and the events. Not that trying to induce a delicious thrill of fear is bad – it is another form of entertainment, and what is wrong with being an entertainer? Dickens certainly considered himself to be one. There also has to be more than an easy manipulation of the reader's superficial emotions – unless making someone jump out of their skin is the writer's only aim. There has to be more to fiction than that. The ghosts are there and they apparently go through the same motions again and again. A headless horseman rides by, a phantom coach clatters down a dark road, a veiled lady drifts up a staircase and through a wall, a pale and misty child's face is glimpsed at a window – and that is all. There are dozens of little books of "true" ghost stories, usually sorted by geographical location, but almost without exception the ghosts have no purpose and so the stories are ultimately unsatisfying. A footnote to "ghost" was a) of a human being and b) with a purpose. His story - confirmed to some extent by what the butler overheard - was that the journey was all arranged in a private talk before they set out, and he could not say, when Iput the question to him, why Manderson should have con- cealed his intentions by giving out that he was going with Marlowe for a moonlight drive.The list of ingredients included atmosphere, a ghost, a haunted house and other places, and weather. I would first draw attention to one important fact.ġ82 Digitized by Google " HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED " The only person who professed to have heard Man- derson mention Southampton at all before he started in the car was Marlowe. We must now examine fact number five (as set out above) in connection with conclusion number five about the false Manderson. Thesft I say, are the relevant facts about Marlowe. ere he had shown great amaze- ment and horror at the news of the murder. He had then returned in the car to Marlstone, wh. Manderson in the bed- room by the false Manderson, had been entrusted to him by his employer. (5) I ascertained beyond doubt that Marlowe ar- rived at a hotel in Southampton on the Monday morn- ing at six-thirty, and there proceeded to carry out the commission which, according tb his story, and to the statement made to Mrs. No other per- son, apart from the servants, had his opportunities for knowing the domestic life of the Mandersons in detail. To quickly assess the difficulty of the text, read a short excerpt: What reading level is The Woman in Black book?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |