Both farthing house and The Red Room are set in ancient buildings with a frightening past. From this quote we know that The Red Room has a frightening past from the beginning of the story:‘ ...the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house…’ However, in Farthing House the readers only find out about the houses past in the climax. ‘…just down the lane...’ It was a home for young women and their illegitimate babies…’ these types of settings are typical to short stories however, their structure and the way they are set are different. One other dissimilarity is that Farthing House uses various settings but The Red Room doesn’t.
‘ … I had stopped twice, once in a village, once in a small market town, and explore little shops, churches’…
This use of different settings decreases the tension that has been building up in the story. On the contrary, The Red Room uses its settings to create and build up the tension,
‘ The long, draughty, subterranean passage was chilly and dusty…candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver.’ Accordingly this use of settings is very successful in increasing the tension in the story.
In The Red Room the author came to be in the house because he wanted to see if there really was a ghost in the house. The readers know from the beginning that this a ghost story with a sceptical and open-minded narrator as the first sentence is;
‘I can assure you that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me…’
Likewise in Farthing House the storyteller starts the story with:
‘ I have never told you this I have never told anyone…’
These openings capture the readers attentions and make them want to read on. They also expect that there will be a ghost in The Red Room as one is mentioned in the first sentence of the story. Conversely, they don’t know that Farthing House is a ghost story as no ghost is mentioned at the beginning of the story. The styles of writing the stories are very different however, the style used to narrate The Red Room is more successful as it makes the readers believe that there is a real ghost throughout the story but there isn’t: ‘There is neither ghost nor countess in the room...but worse, far worse...and that is in all its nakedness- fear!’ The readers only find out that there isn’t a ghost in the resolution and the way that the storyteller keeps the suspense is very effective and makes the story more believable as there is no ghost. On the other hand, in Farthing House there is a real ghost and the readers find out more about the ghost bit by bit, like a puzzle. This is also effective in creating tension.
The structure of Farthing House is both linear and circular depending on he point of view but it is more circular than linear. This is because the storyteller s looking back at what happened to her but then in the end she returns to the present. In this quote we know that the story is set as a letter to somebody:
‘ …I have never told anyone and indeed writing it down and sealing it up…’The secretive tone of the opening story in Farthing House captures the reader’s curiosity and raises questions about why she sounds so scared and timid and why must she write it down. Conversely, in the Red Room the build up of tension begins to rise from the beginning and gradually rises:
‘…the door creaked on its hinges…’. This quote was taken from the third paragraph telling us that there is tension already from the beginning. So, it can be said that The Red Room has a linear structure. The Red Room also has a circular structure in terms of place as the storyteller starts the story in a room with the caretakers and in the end the caretakers take him back to the room:
‘I rolled my eyes into the corner…and saw the old woman’
From this we know that the narrator came back to the room. There is also a change in him, as he doesn’t call the caretakers ‘grotesque’ like he did in the beginning of the story.
Farthing House is written in a more recent language and it also has long structured sentences, whereas in The Red Room the sentences are shorter and varied. ‘‘ I was wide awake, I am quite sure…my own heart pounding, see the bedside table, and the lamp…’ said the narrator from farthing house. Although, using these long structured sentences builds the tension, it is a very different technique to the one used in the red room, which has shorter sentences:
‘I stopped abruptly.’ Both short and long sentences are very useful in the building up of the tension in both stories even though they are different styles. In the red room, we know that the story I quite old as the language is more old-fashioned when compared to Farthing House.
‘Eight and twenty years I have lived in this house’. The use of an older language makes it tenser and also increases fear in the story. The way that the shadows are described to convey panic is also very effective:
‘The impression of someone crouching to waylay me’
By describing the shadows as characters, the author is making the reader more alert for a ghost. However, in Farthing House the writer uses repetition to show that there is tension.
‘That feeling of melancholy came over me again’.
This use of repetition is very useful as it creates tension again and again. It also helps the readers to understand how the narrator is feeling and this might make the readers more curious and nervous.
The Red Room is a more successful story because the description of the setting created atmosphere and more tension than in Farthing House. It also had a reasonable ending as the reader is meant to feel that the story was complete with a satisfactory and definite ending. Unlike The Red Room Farthing House has two resolutions to the story, this creates the effect that the story has more resolutions and that it has not really ended. I prefer the red room because I liked the way that H G wells created a lot of suspense and then had a surprising ending. The build up of tension from the beginning was also very effective.
