Chapters 9-12: The Truth & the Ending
Mrs Drablow’s Papers: The Truth Emerges
As Kipps works through Mrs Drablow’s documents at Eel Marsh House, he uncovers the truth that the people of Crythin Gifford have been hiding. Among the legal papers, he finds a trail of letters, birth certificates, and adoption records that reveal a devastating family secret. Mrs Alice Drablow was not simply a lonely old woman who died in isolation. She was at the centre of a tragedy that destroyed her sister Jennet Humfrye and created the vengeful spirit that now haunts the marshes.
The documents reveal that Jennet Humfrye had a son, Nathaniel, born out of wedlock. In the Victorian period, an illegitimate child was a source of enormous shame. Jennet’s family forced her to give Nathaniel up. He was legally adopted by Mrs Drablow and raised at Eel Marsh House, while Jennet was allowed to see him but never to claim him as her own. Hill uses the discovery of these papers to shift the novel from a supernatural horror story into something far more emotionally complex: a story about a mother’s grief, a family’s cruelty, and the terrible consequences of denying a woman her child.
Jennet Humfrye was forced to give up her son Nathaniel because he was born outside marriage. In Victorian society, illegitimacy was deeply shameful. Jennet’s family took Nathaniel away and gave him to Mrs Drablow. This act of forced separation is the original injustice that creates the ghost and drives the entire plot.
Jennet Humfrye’s Story
Through the letters, Kipps pieces together Jennet’s agony. She was permitted to visit Nathaniel at Eel Marsh House but was never allowed to tell him she was his mother. She had to watch another woman raise her son while remaining powerless to intervene. Her letters to Mrs Drablow reveal a woman consumed by a bitter, desperate love — begging, threatening, and finally cursing the family that stole her child. The letters are not the ravings of a madwoman; they are the words of a mother driven to extremity by a system that treated her as disposable.
The forced adoption reflects the harsh realities of Victorian society, where unmarried mothers had virtually no legal rights over their children. Jennet was a victim of a rigid patriarchal society that punished women for sexual transgression while the father of the child bore no consequences. Hill uses Jennet’s story to give the ghost a human dimension: she is not simply an evil spirit. She is a woman destroyed by injustice, whose pain has become so overwhelming that it transcends death itself.
The documents reveal the final, devastating piece of the story. Young Nathaniel was killed when the pony and trap he was travelling in went off the Nine Lives Causeway and sank into the marsh. The child and his nursemaid were both drowned. Jennet was watching from a window of Eel Marsh House when it happened. She saw her son die and was powerless to save him. The spectral sound that Kipps heard — the pony and trap, the screaming, the sucking of the mud — is Jennet’s trauma replaying itself endlessly, embedded in the landscape like a wound that will never heal.
Jennet blamed Mrs Drablow for Nathaniel’s death. If Jennet had been allowed to raise her own child, she believed, he would never have been at Eel Marsh House, never been on the causeway, never been killed. Her grief transformed into rage, and her rage transformed into a supernatural curse. As Samuel Daily puts it, after every sighting “in some violent or dreadful circumstance, a child has died.” Her vengeance is not aimed at those who wronged her. It is aimed at everyone. Jennet’s pain has become so vast and indiscriminate that she punishes the innocent for the crimes committed against her.
The Curse: A Child Always Dies
Sam Daily finally explains the curse to Kipps: every time the Woman in Black is seen, a child in the area dies. The deaths appear to be accidents — drownings, falls, illnesses — but the pattern is unmistakable. The community of Crythin Gifford has known about this for years. They have buried their children and said nothing, because speaking about the Woman in Black only draws her attention. This is why Jerome trembled, why the landlord changed the subject, why Sam Daily warned Kipps without explaining why.
The curse transforms Jennet from a sympathetic figure into something more complex and more terrifying. Her grief is real, her injustice is genuine, but her response is monstrous. She kills innocent children — the very thing she lost. Hill forces the reader to hold both truths simultaneously: Jennet is a victim and a villain. This moral ambiguity is one of the novel’s greatest strengths, because it refuses to let the reader settle into a comfortable judgement.
“In some violent or dreadful circumstance, a child has died” — Samuel Daily’s words mean that every sighting of the Woman in Black is followed by the death of a child. Jennet’s revenge is not targeted at those who wronged her; it is indiscriminate. She inflicts on others the same loss that destroyed her, creating an endless cycle of grief and death.
The Ending: Stella and the Baby
The novel’s final chapter is its most devastating. Kipps returns to London, marries his fiancée Stella, and they have a baby. For a time, it seems as though the horror is over. Then, at a country fair on the outskirts of London, Kipps sees the Woman in Black one last time. Moments later, the pony and trap carrying Stella and the baby crashes. The baby is killed in the crash. Stella survives the accident but dies from her injuries some time later. The ending is sudden, brutal, and deliberately inevitable — from the moment Kipps first saw the Woman in Black at the funeral, his family was doomed.
Hill denies the reader any consolation. There is no defeat of the ghost, no lifting of the curse, no cathartic resolution. The Woman in Black simply takes what she wants and moves on to the next victim. Kipps is left alive but destroyed — a man who has lost everything and must carry the knowledge that it was his encounter with the ghost that killed his wife and child. The ending fulfils the foreshadowing of the opening chapter: the older Kipps’s quiet devastation finally makes sense.
Hill’s decision to kill Stella and the baby in the final pages is a deliberate rejection of the conventional ghost story ending, where the protagonist escapes and order is restored. In traditional Gothic fiction, the hero usually survives and the evil is defeated or contained. Hill refuses this comfort. The ghost cannot be defeated because Jennet’s grief cannot be resolved — her child is dead, and nothing can undo that. The curse will continue indefinitely because there is no possible remedy for the injustice that created it.
The sunny day on which the final tragedy occurs is also significant. Throughout the novel, bad weather signals danger. By placing the ending on a beautiful, bright day, Hill subverts the reader’s expectations. The message is clear: the Woman in Black can strike anywhere, at any time. There is no safe place and no safe moment. The horror is not confined to the marshes and the fog — it follows Kipps into his ordinary life and destroys it.