Chapters 1-4: Arthur's Journey
The Frame Narrative: Christmas Eve
The novel opens with Arthur Kipps as an older man, sitting with his family on Christmas Eve. His stepchildren are telling ghost stories by the fire, enjoying the thrill of the supernatural as entertainment. But Kipps cannot join in. He knows that ghost stories are not games — he has experienced something so devastating that even decades later, the memory fills him with dread. Hill establishes from the very first page that this story will not end well. The foreshadowing is unmistakable: something terrible happened to Kipps, and the act of writing it down is both a confession and a warning.
Kipps decides to write his account rather than speak it aloud. This is significant. Writing gives him control over the narrative — he can choose what to reveal and when. But it also creates a distance between the reader and the events, filtering everything through the lens of a man shaped by decades of trauma. Hill uses the older Kipps’s voice to create a tone of quiet dread: he knows what is coming, even when his younger self does not.
The retrospective narrator creates dramatic irony throughout the novel. The older Kipps knows the full horror of what happened, so his account of his younger self’s confidence and courage is saturated with the knowledge that it will all be destroyed.
Arthur Kipps: The Young Solicitor
When we first meet the young Arthur Kipps, he is a junior solicitor sent by his firm to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow and sort through her papers at Eel Marsh House. He is rational, confident, and eager to prove himself: “I did not believe in ghosts.” He treats the assignment as a routine professional task and is mildly irritated by the journey to the remote town of Crythin Gifford. Hill presents the young Kipps as the archetypal rational protagonist of the ghost story tradition — a sensible, educated man who does not believe in ghosts and is therefore completely unprepared for what he will face.
Kipps’s journey north from London is described in terms that gradually shift from comfort to unease. The train carries him away from the familiar world of the city into an increasingly bleak, flat, and featureless landscape. The marshes, the grey sky, and the biting wind all serve as pathetic fallacy, foreshadowing the horror that awaits. By the time Kipps arrives in Crythin Gifford, the reader already senses that something is wrong, even though Kipps himself remains oblivious.
From the moment Kipps arrives, the townspeople behave strangely. Mr Jerome, the local land agent, becomes visibly distressed when Kipps mentions Eel Marsh House. Sam Daily, a friendly local businessman, offers veiled warnings but refuses to be specific. The landlord at the inn changes the subject whenever Kipps asks about Mrs Drablow. Hill uses these reactions to build suspense: the reader knows the town is hiding something, but the young Kipps interprets their behaviour as mere superstition. Samuel Daily hints that the town has learned to live with something it will not name — a chilling admission that the entire community knows about the supernatural threat but has collectively decided to endure it in silence rather than confront it.
This wall of silence serves a dual purpose. Structurally, it delays the revelation and builds tension. Thematically, it reflects the idea that communities can be complicit in suffering by choosing not to speak. The people of Crythin Gifford are not evil — they are afraid. But their fear makes them complicit in every death the Woman in Black causes, because they never warn outsiders like Kipps.
Mrs Drablow’s Funeral
The funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow is one of the novel’s most important early scenes. Kipps notices that almost nobody has come — the church is nearly empty, which tells the reader that Mrs Drablow was feared or avoided by the community. During the service, Kipps sees a woman he does not recognise, “dressed in deepest black,” with “a wasted face.” Her skin seems stretched over her bones, and her expression radiates a terrible mixture of suffering and malice.
At Mrs Drablow’s funeral, Kipps sees the Woman in Black for the first time, “dressed in deepest black” with “a wasted face.” This first sighting establishes the ghost’s appearance and the atmosphere of death and decay that surrounds her. The word “wasted” suggests both physical deterioration and a life consumed by grief and bitterness.
The First Sighting
After the funeral, Kipps sees the woman again in the churchyard, standing among the graves. He is unsettled by her appearance but assumes she is simply a mourner. He mentions her to Mr Jerome, whose reaction is immediate and terrifying: Jerome’s face drains of colour, his hands shake, and he is unable to speak. This is the first moment where Kipps begins to realise that something is genuinely wrong. Jerome’s physical reaction — described in visceral detail by Hill — is more frightening than any ghost, because it shows a rational adult reduced to speechless terror by a single mention of what Kipps has seen.
Hill’s handling of this scene demonstrates her skill with indirect horror. The ghost herself does nothing violent or dramatic in this scene. The terror comes entirely from the reactions of the living — from Jerome’s speechless fear and the community’s refusal to explain. Hill understands that what the reader imagines is always more frightening than what is shown directly.
Throughout these early chapters, Kipps attempts to rationalise everything he encounters. He explains away the townspeople’s behaviour as local superstition. He assumes the woman at the funeral is simply a reclusive mourner. He tells himself there is nothing to fear. This rational resistance is a classic feature of the ghost story genre — the protagonist must first exhaust every logical explanation before accepting the supernatural. Hill uses Kipps’s rationality to create tension: the reader can see the danger building, but Kipps refuses to acknowledge it.
The dramatic irony is intensified by the retrospective narration. The older Kipps, writing years later, knows exactly how foolish his younger self’s confidence was. The older narrator keeps returning to how little his younger self understood, so the reader always knows that this confident young man is walking into a trap.