This tension and sense of an oppressive atmosphere is one of the key elements in gothic horror stories. Everything is done to add to this atmosphere. One of the most common tricks is to create a sense of alienation and isolation. One definition of alienation is “separation resulting from hostility,” ant this is very pertinent to the gothic horror genre; in many books and stories, the narrator feels that people aren’t telling him everything, and are acting against him (though they are often working to help him), for instance in The Woman in Black, when the landlord at the Crythin Arms is evasive about the Drablow family, Arthur Kipps says “I was curious and a little irritated by his manner,” a sentiment repeated throughout the text. In The Red Room, there are three old, deformed people that act in the same evasive manner about the Red Room. The way in which this alienation affects the narrator is summed up in The Red Room, when the narrator says “I must confess that the oddness of… these three old pensioners… affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a matter of fact phase.” This also works from the perspective of the reader. Isolation is a slightly different concept – being physically removed rather than emotionally removed from other people. Both books do this, one rather more subtly than the other. In The Woman In Black, the main location is Eel Marsh House, conveniently set far away from anywhere, out on a marsh. This house can only be accessed via a long, dangerous causeway, ominously titled “nine lives causeway.” Arthur Kipps describes the house as “isolated” and “uncompromising,” says, “I felt loneliness… I felt quite alone.” In HG Wells’ story, the narrator has to travel down a corridor, a “subterranean passage… [a] spiral staircase” and another corridor to reach the titular Red Room. The point of these journeys is make the narrator, and thus the reader, feel that help and safety are far removed, and that they are alone with whatever troubles they may have to face, increasing the tension.
Gothic horror stories are usually written from the first person, as this brings the reader deeper into the action, seeing everything as it happens from a personal perspective. This makes them feel more like they are actually there, rather than a more detached third-person view of the action. There are also a host of clichés prevalent throughout the genre concerning narrators. The classic narrator is young, male, upper class, educated, naïve and cynical. Both these stories have stereotypical narrators, probably because the writers aren’t usually associated with the genre and were playing up to genre stereotypes. In The Woman In Black, Arthur Kipps explains that “I had the Londoner’s sense of superiority in those days, the half-formed belief that countrymen… were more superstitious, more gullible, more slow-witted, unsophisticated and primitive than us cosmopolitans.” In the Red Room, the narrator expresses shocking arrogance when he says “Eight-and-twenty years… I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.” In fact, the narrator of this story seems to have a particular problem with old people, opining, “There is to my mind something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic.” The tendency for narrators in gothic horror stories to fit this stereotype is not a coincidence: there is a carefully calculated effect behind this casting. The arrogance and naivety compounds the alienation the character feels from the other people in the story, and discourages the narrator from taking their advice: another common aspect in gothic horror fiction is having older people in the story who are wiser and more experienced in matters of the supernatural. Naturally the narrator takes no notice of these potential allies, until later in the course of the plot. The other, even more important, effect of the personality traits prevalent in the narrator is how the character evolves. The character starts off in a state of sheltered security, but the events in the tale break these securities, leaving the character exposed and psychologically damaged. Of course, the reader goes through the same emotional strains as the narrator, so the events are made more powerful than if the narrator was prepared for the emotional onslaught he or she will face.
Pathetic fallacy is also used to create atmosphere. The environment changes around the narrator, becoming colder or warmer, lighter or darker, sunny or overcast, et cetera, depending on what is happening in the story. At the start pf The Woman In Black, Susan Hill creates a menacing atmosphere by spending two pages describing the fog of London. Arthur Kipps described the fog using vivid language such as “chocked and blinded, smeared and stained.” Many present participles are used, for example “creeping,” “swirling,” and “seething,” to heighten the atmosphere by making these events seem indefinite, stripping them of the cold, clinical safety of the past tense. Interestingly, this atmosphere is diffused a little with the line “It was, in all, miserable weather and lowering to the spirits in the dreariest month of the year.” This line shows how “sturdy and commonsensical” Arthur Kipps is, and to diffuse the tension a little so it does not become overpowering. Two more devices are used: the first is fear of the unknown. Arthur Kipps explains how the fog was “menacing and sinister, disguising the world and confusing the people in it.” The fear of the unknown is the greatest of all fears, and Susan Hill uses the fog to elicit this fear in the reader. The Red Room is based entirely on the fear of the unknown, as the narrator has no idea what is in the Room, but is still terrified by it. There is also irony in both stories, in that both narrators claim to be unafraid of ghosts, claiming to believe only in what they can see and touch – but both are most afraid when they don’t understand what is happening around them. The other device used is the juxtaposition of fear and childish innocence. Arthur Kipps likens the confusion caused by the fog to “a game of Blind Man’s Buff.” This is a text-book horror cliché, as used in the Nightmare On Elm Street films (the perversion of children’s dreams), in Henry James’ classic gothic horror novel The Turn Of The Screw (the mysterious children of Bly) – and later in The Woman In Black, in the nursery. Syntax is also manipulated for effect especially well in The Woman In Black. Shorter sentences are used to keep the mood relaxed, giving the reader plenty of time to keep in control. But longer sentences give the reader less time to stop and think, keeping the reader in suspence.
The protagonist’s actions in most gothic horror stories can be summed up thus: the character begins in a state of ease and security, then for whatever reason travels somewhere, where he or she discovers some strange happenings. From there, the character must overcome these problems, and try to return to his or her original state – but is fundamentally altered by his or her experiences. We can see this most clearly in The Woman In Black, as the narrator goes through these exact motions. It is less obvious in The Red Room: in that story, we have to assume that the character has travelled to his present location, and that he will be permanently changed by the events; but these seem to be logical conclusions to draw.
The occurrence of myths and local superstitions is another feature that is common in the gothic horror genre. In many books, the narrator finds himself surrounded by people who all seem to know about some terrible thing but don’t want to talk about it, so characters questioned about it usually fall silent or make excuses. The narrator then dismisses these supposedly unfounded stories as idle superstitions, such as in The Woman In Black, when Arthur Kipps says he “dismissed the notion, putting his remarks down to some local tales and silliness which had grown out of all proportion, as such things will do in small, out-of-the-way communities.” These hints and half-answers serve the purpose of building up the tension. Although not as palpable as, say, a moonlit graveyard, they do add to the background tension, and start to become more tangible when these rumours start to become reality.
These stories may differ in many ways, but are so similar in others, that claims of plagiarism couldn’t be too lightly dismissed. These two stories are particularly interesting because they were both written by authors who aren’t normally associated with the genre, so they have explored the clichés more than a seasoned horror writer might. But despite being so blatantly “influenced” by genre standards such as Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw and work of M.R. James, they remain gripping. This is because they appeal to our wish for escapism and a decent scare, a need that is pandered to by almost every work of fiction. This is the basis of horror writing – that the reader wants to be scared; if the reader approaches the story with the attitude of not wanting or expecting to be scared, he or she will not be affected by the story so much. However, gothic horror is still one of the most effective mediums for provoking fear, ensuring its enduring popularity.
