Although both stories The Old Nurse’s Story and The Signalman have different settings, they still portray the same atmosphere; dismal, scary, bloody curdling and spooky. Both of the settings are in remote and secluded areas such as in the countryside by the Fells and a dreary cutting amongst the hills. Neither have much liveliness about them. “We had left all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gate’s of a large wild park-not like the parks here in the north, but with rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn trees, and the old oaks, all white and peeled with age. Together the settings feel as if they have been rather neglected. “Branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place” and “The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitous. It was made through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down. The gloomier entrance to the black tunnel in whose massive architecture there was barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air”. As these passages are very descriptive they seem more realistic and we are able to imagine these settings in more detail.
The weather also affects how the atmosphere feels because in The Old Nurse’s Story it is cold, wet, and dark. Whereas is The Signalman, it is also more or less that same. This weather is not very pleasant thus making it very dismal. In The signalman it gives us a sense of danger as there was a “zigzag decent” and “a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon”.
However, amongst the sinister places, in both of the stories there is a place which feels safe and warm. These are the kitchen in The Old Nurse’s Story and the signalman’s hut in the other story. The way the other settings in both stories are written is that they are described to be more sinister to make these safe places feel safer and a place of comfort. The safe places seem to have fires which give out warmth and light. The characters feel safe there because they are able to lock themselves away and are familiar with the surroundings.
There are many rooms and corridors in the setting of The Old Nurse’s Story which gives the impression of insecurity and that it is very large. “He led us through several smaller halls and passages” and “she were scared and lost in that great place, and as for myself, I was not much better”. It is also the case in The Signalman because it is set in the hillside where there is not much civilisation and seems to be forever ending. The great hall in The Old Nurse’s Story has an organ which plays in stormy weather and this continues the sense of spookiness, while in The Signalman there is a sense of danger as at nights it is quiet, lonely and fogging. “We had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and wires- he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching”. There is also a red danger light that shines through the mist of the start of the tunnel. “There was the danger light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel”.
I have noticed that both writers create mysteries. Without them, both stories would not be as interesting. During The Old Nurse’s Story many mysteries are built up such as the east wing being locked, the disappearance of Maude Furnivall, the organ playing on stormy nights and many others. Whereas in The Signalman, there are fewer mysteries compared to The Old Nurse’s Story, but they are more in depth and are carried out till the end of the story. Just like the narrator, Hester, we want to find out the answer to each mystery. This is also the case for The Signalman as the narrator is very curious about some of the things he is told by the signalman such as the appearance of the hallucinatory figure and it saying “Halloa! Below there!” Also the fact that previously when it had appeared, incidents on the railway followed.
Similar mysteries in both the stories are the ghosts and hallucinations of characters. In The Old Nurse’s Story there is the Old Lord, Miss Furnivall and her young child. While in The Signalman, there is only one and no one knows who this hallucinatory character is until the very end of the story. The appearance of these characters causes more mysteries in both stories as certain happenings and events follow in both of the stories. Examples of these would be that in The Old Nurse’s Story the Old Lord plays on the organ in the Great Hall during stormy nights which leads to Hester finding out that the organ being played is in fact broken. Another is a young child that appears when it is snowing. But who is this child and where did it come from? Hester grows to learn that this child is not any ordinary child because as it bangs on the windows of the Great Hall, she is unable to hear it but Miss Rosamond can. This strange child tries to lure Miss Rosamond to her death and Miss Rosamond is unable to realise it.
When Hester tries to ask other members of the household about these strange happenings and goings on, everyone is rather reluctant to tell her and they seem quite frightened by this topic as if it were a taboo. This creates more mystery. Hester is told and shown a portrait of Miss Maude but is made to promise that she will not tell anyone else about her acknowledge of this. But when shown the portrait, it is strangely laid upright facing against a wall and not hung up with the rest of the family portraits. Why was this so?
In The Signalman, when the hallucinatory figure had appeared in previous months, a death or incident always followed it.
Tension suspense is built up gradually towards the middle of the story in The Old Nurse’s Story as Miss Rosamond goes missing and is believed to be with the strange ghost child. Although we find out whom the ghost child is, why she wants to kill Miss Rosamond and the answers to mainly all the mysteries, the suspense is continued as we want to find out whether or not Miss Rosamond will die or come to much harm. In The Signalman the suspense is built up and kept till the end of the story. This is because as the appearance of the hallucinatory figure is always followed by a death, it has been appearing but no death or incident has occurred yet. So we are left waiting for this to happen but do not know whom it will be.
I have noticed that both stories end with someone dying. However, there is a twist in the narrative because we expect that there will be deaths of certain characters but in fact it is not these characters at all. It is Miss Grace and The Signal that die. The reader of The Old Nurse’s Story is lead to think that it is Miss Rosamond who will come to any harm by the ghosts as they are seeking revenge. Whereas in The Signalman we think it could maybe be another train of passengers as had previously happened. The stories are deliberately misleading.
The Old Nurse’s Story has a moral at the end of the story which is when Miss Grace says on her death bed “what is done in youth can never be undone in age”. This means that you cannot undo time, or go back and change a situation. Whatever an action, there is always a consequence. Miss Grace says this because when her sister had had her child, it was in secret and no one had known. Miss Grace had found out and told her father in spitefulness which lead to her father throwing her sister and her child out of the family home. Because of this they had died out in the Fells due to the bitter cold. Miss Grace felt responsible for this. However, in The Signalman there is no moral but in the story, the idea of the first train crash came from the Clayton Tunnel crash fives years before Charles Dickens had written his story.
I have noticed that at the end of The Old Nurse’s Story all the mysteries have been solved but in The Signalman we are still left with unsolved mysteries such as who the narrator was, why did the hallucinatory figure lead to a death and why was it that the signalman died.
The story I preferred was The Old Nurse’s Story. This is because there was much more description, which made it seem more realistic along with Hester’s description which made her seem real too. There was lots of detail in the story whereas in The Signalman there was not much detail about characters and it was more focused on the plot than anything else in the story as this is what the writer was trying to get across. But in The Old Nurse’s Story the story seemed much more balanced. I also liked the way that in this story all the mysteries seemed to have been solved by the end but in The Signalman you are still left thinking.
