In the ‘Red Room’ “It’s own choosing’, said the man with the withered arm and glanced at me with askance” The ‘Farthing House’ makes use of descriptive language to reinforce that this is a ghost story. The alliteration of ‘w’ sounds reinforces the whistling of a ghost. ‘It’s own choosing’ is repeated quite often in the ‘Red Room’. This helps the structure and order of the story. It could also be that the man with the withered arm might have entered the ‘Red Room’ and his arm somehow got burnt.
The man with the withered arm is used as a kind of warning to the young man not to enter the ‘Red Room’ or he will end up like the man with the withered arm. The young man ignores all their warnings and makes his way through to the ‘Red Room’. The writer describes the man’s journey to the Red Room. It is slow. This builds up a spooky feeling.
In the ‘Farthing House’ Susan Hill uses a lot of description especially in the flashback. “Beautiful day clear and cold and blue and a few of them were swirling down”
The writer of ‘Farthing House’ uses a cyclical narrative structure. One recurring image in ‘Farthing House’ is ‘leaves decomposing’ This is used to emphasize the death of the natural linked to the death of the human being who is a ghost. The story goes around in circles. It starts in the present. It goes to the past. The writer tells you how she traveled to the house. She sees her aunt and sees the ghost. The story behind the ghost is told then moves back to the present tense.
The second paragraph of ‘Farthing House’ Susan Hill tells more of the story but does not give anything away about the plot of the story. This enhances the suspense and creates mystery to the reader’s mind.
“And in a rush I remembered.”
Susan Hill makes the reader curious and this makes the reader want to read on. Susan Hill also uses the second paragraph to create a depressing atmosphere as she establishes the story. The journey to the house is described slowly, once she enters the drive way to the house, the eerie atmosphere increases.
In the ‘Red Room’ H.G Wells uses fore shadowing and sound imagery ’. “I heard the sound of a stick and the shambling step on the flags in the passage outside” This sibilant sound creates a hissing sound menacing atmosphere like a ghostly wind.
In the ‘Red Room’ the narrator uses the old people’s warnings to build up tension.
“But if you go to the Red room tonight is the night of all nights” The old pensioners are warning the young man and frighten him a bit. The young man clearly stands by his belief, refusing to believe that the Red room is haunted. When he enters the ‘Red Room’ the tension rises. He is on his own and dislikes the dark room in the room especially in one corner
By comparison in ‘Farthing House’, the description of the ‘Farthing House’ seems warm and safe inside.
“Farthing House seemed like an individual, private home. The antiques in the hall were good, substantial pieces and they had been well cared for over the years”. The details create a range of old things from another era.
The presence of a ghost in both stories is linked through the words like ‘Monstrous shadows’. A cold atmosphere, a cold wind tells the reader that ghost are nearby.
In the ‘Red Room’ the H.G Wells creates an atmosphere of eerie activity “A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his action as he poured and drank.” H. G Wells uses shadow imagery to reveal the characteristic of this ghost story through a ghost is never really seen at all. It is the young man’s imagination and his fear but the story is very frightening in places so as I was reading it. I started to feel scared when all the candles started blowing out.
This description is often written in a spine-chilling style and presents the reader shivers. “It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there.” Another quote where the young man feels the presence of a ghost is “As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table.”
In the Farthing House the shadow imagery i.e also used to the reader and this fits in very much with the ghost story genre.
“Oh for an instant that feeling of unease and melancholy passed over me like a shadow. It is as if the ghost transfers its sadness to the narrator. H.G Wells increases the fear of the narrator. The longer he stays in the ‘Red Room’. The young man is panicking in complete terror. “I leapt panting and disheveled from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.” The ghost is suggested through the way the way candles keep going out. It is as if the ghost hand is taking the lights out. The ghost seems to be laughing at the young man.
And in the ‘Farthing House’ the narrator Susan Hill creates fear “I sensed some thing sinister, that I was shrouded at once in the atmosphere of a haunted house”.
H.G Wells uses the cold imagery linked to ghost “I shut them and walked down the chilly, echoing passage”. The setting is scary and horrific gets even more so as it builds up the climax to the story.
In the ‘Farthing House’ cold imagery is also used “I was cold, it was the back of the year and perhaps I had caught a chill, which manifest itself first itself as a sudden change of mood into a lower key”
The Cedar Room, in the ‘Farthing House’ is the center of the ghost appearances. The narrator describes the room whilst entering it.
“I was in this large, high ceiling room because it was free. Its previous occupant having recently died”. Both of the narrators H.G Wells and Susan Hill are staying in a room where someone had died. The major distinction is that in Lorraine castle a duke had died there are hundreds of years before the occupant of Cedar Room had only just passed away. The little church cottages and graveyards give a ‘spooky’ effect to the story as the graveyard shows to be overgrown and the church ‘uncut Marquette’. The description of the buildings and their past builds up the atmosphere of tension in both ghost stories.
H.G Wells creates fear very well. I can see that the man is getting more uncomfortable as he imagines a shadow as a “lurking, living thing”. The man is doing everything he can to try and stay away from admitting that he is afraid because he is determined to prove there are no ghosts.
Both stories clearly suggest the existence of ghost. In Farthing House Susan Hill says. “The door opened, I know that because a rush of air came in the room, and it went even colder, but some how, I didn’t see her put her hand to the knob and turn it.” The ghost is female and can move through doors.
The ‘cold’ imagery is used again. Flowers didn’t see the ghost hand put her hand to the knob.
H.G Wells also demonstrated the characteristics of the ghost. “My first match would not strike and as I succeeded with the second something seemed to blink on the wall before me.” In my opinion this indicates there is ghost because candles don’t blink. So I believe it was something supernatural then. H.G Wells doesn’t say the ghost is ‘he’ or ‘she’.
The presence of a ghost is suggested again in The ‘Red Room’ “I didn’t see the candle go out, I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger”. The darkness builds up the fear in the mind of the narrator that there is a ghost with him in the ‘Red Room’. Also I believe the young man has that feeling that a ghost is present because his “hands trembled so much that twice he missed the rough paper of the matchbox” as he was trying to re light the candles.
On the first night of her stay, Mrs. Flowers had a dream, about the night her daughter was born as St. Mary’s. This is vital information, as is tells us that the narrator is writing to her daughter. This gives a clue of the final outcome of the story. When she awakes she says,
I had absolutely clear sense that someone else had been in my room. This leaves the reader with no doubt that there is a ghost.
The second night of Mrs. Flowers stays at Farthing House. Mrs. Flowers woke up again to realize that ‘a desperate woman was sobbing’. As she sat up. Mrs. Flowers sees the ghosts.
The cold imagery is brought about again as a presence of a ghost “The room felt horribly cold. I remember the conscious of the iciness on my hands and face. To me this suggests that the nearer the ghost the colder it gets whereas before Mrs. Flowers was ‘just’ cold.
The tension of the story is at it climax when Mrs. Flowers describes the ghost.
“She was young, with a flowing embroidered night gown, high necked and long sleeved.” This indicates to the reader the ghost is from the past decade.
She held out her arms as if begging someone to give her something. And that terrible melancholy came over me again, I felt inconsolably hopeless and sad”
The tension is commencing to be released, as we know that the ghost is not dangerous but sorrowful. Mrs. Flowers follows the ghost onto the landing and again the tension is reduced because the ghost has disappeared,
“The flickering light had faded and the landing was in darkness, I was too frightened to go any further.”
Mrs. Flowers feels she can help the ghost “I was desperate to follow her, because I felt she needed me in some way.”
This mirrors the inner bonding between the women, even if one is a ghost. Mrs. Flowers is not scared unlike the young man did in ‘Red Room’. Later on when the storyteller is visiting a graveyard she sees the grave of the young woman and her baby.
“Eliza Maria Dolly
Died January 20, 1902 , Aged 19 years
And also her infant daughter.”
This allows Mrs. Flowers her to find out the tragic story behind the occurrences.
This castle was given the basic characteristics of being a very scary place, and set the platform for a very good horror, an example is in the ‘Red Room’
‘The long draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver.’
The woman in the ‘Farthing House’ was put in a very calm setting. The ‘Farthing House’ had ‘framed photographs on a sideboard, flowers in jugs bowls.’
‘Farthing house was run, warm and comfortable, and there was good, home-cooked dinner.’
As you can see it is a contrast to the ‘Red Room’.
I prefer ‘The Red Room’ because it was a full story because it explains why the things happened in the first place. In the closing stages the man in ‘The Red Room’ manages badly the supposed ghost and so was mentally and physically broken down as a result of the intense darkness, his belief in that ghost do not exist. But the woman coped. She felt sorry for the ghost. She wanted to understand the ghost sorrows. In ‘Farthing House’ all the characters are women; Aunt Addy, Mrs. Flowers and the ghost woman. The ghost whom the women met was not aggressive. She was grieving.
The ending of the ‘The Red Room’ was a surprise to me because the next morning the young man said to the old people that the real ghost in the ‘Red Room’ was his own fear and it was his own fear and fear of darkness that terrorized him. He was saying that he still didn’t convince me. I thought he was coming out with this because he wasn’t brave enough to admit the truth that he had been in the presence of a ghost. The ending is a bit a mystery. It’s ambiguity. Both were very unusual ghost stories in my view.
