Symbolism & Setting
The Marshes: Landscape as Threat
The marshes surrounding Eel Marsh House are not merely a backdrop — they are an active force in the novel. Hill describes them as "wide and grey and empty, stretching away on all sides", using a tricolon that builds desolation through accumulation. The marshes are treacherous: the causeway is submerged at high tide, paths shift, and the bog swallows anything that strays from solid ground — including the pony and trap that killed Nathaniel. The landscape is a symbol of hidden danger: what looks like solid ground may conceal a lethal trap beneath.
Hill draws a parallel between the marshes and the town's secrets. Just as the marsh hides quicksand beneath its surface, Crythin Gifford hides the truth about the curse beneath its silence. The landscape becomes a physical manifestation of the novel's central theme: appearances deceive. What seems safe — the causeway, the house, the quiet town — conceals mortal danger.
The marshes function on two levels: as a literal setting (treacherous landscape that killed Nathaniel) and as a symbol (hidden dangers beneath a deceptively calm surface, paralleling the town's hidden secrets).
Fog: Obscuring Truth
Fog recurs throughout the novel as both atmospheric detail and symbol. At the funeral, fog shrouds the churchyard; at the causeway, fog makes the crossing dangerous; at Eel Marsh House, fog isolates Arthur completely. Hill describes it as "thick, damp, clinging" — tactile language that makes it feel physical, almost alive, pressing against Arthur's body.
Symbolically, fog represents the limits of rational understanding. Arthur cannot see through it, just as he cannot see through the town's silence or understand the supernatural events around him. Fog marks the boundary between the known and the unknown — the moment it descends, Arthur is in the ghost's territory. When the fog lifts, temporary clarity returns, but it always returns. Hill uses fog to show that human understanding has limits, and that beyond those limits lies something terrifying.
Eel Marsh House: Ghost and Building as One
Hill describes the house as "a tall, gaunt house of grey stone" — wording that fuses the building with the ghost. The adjective "gaunt" is used of starved human bodies, and it echoes the description of Jennet's "wasted face", creating a visual identity between house and haunter. This is not accidental: Hill presents Eel Marsh House as an extension of Jennet herself. The ghost does not merely inhabit the house — she is the house. Every creak, every cold draught, every locked door is Jennet's presence.
The house also represents entrapment. Once the tide rises, Arthur cannot leave. The house becomes a prison — and within it, the locked nursery represents a further layer of confinement. Hill structures the setting as a series of enclosures: the marshes surround the house, the house contains the nursery, and the nursery contains Jennet's grief. Arthur moves deeper into each layer, getting closer to the emotional core of the haunting with each step.
The locked nursery door symbolises forbidden knowledge. In the M.R. James tradition, the protagonist's curiosity drives him to open doors that should remain closed — and he is punished for doing so. Arthur goes to break the nursery door down and finds it already standing open, and what waits inside — the preserved room, the rocking chair, the ghost's presence — is the emotional source of the entire curse. Hill uses the locked door as a moment of transgression: by entering the nursery, Arthur enters Jennet's private grief, and this intrusion has consequences. The locked door is a warning that Arthur ignores — another instance of his rationalism leading him into danger.
The Rocking Chair: Absent Motherhood
The rocking chair in the nursery is one of the novel's most powerful symbols. A rocking chair conventionally signifies maternal comfort — a mother rocking a child to sleep. In the nursery, the chair rocks on its own, with the impression of a body in its seat but no visible occupant. This creates a grotesque inversion of the maternal image: the chair moves as though Jennet is there, but she is rocking a child who no longer exists.
The sound of the chair — "the bump and rock" — becomes one of the novel's recurring auditory horrors. Hill uses the rocking chair to condense the entire backstory into a single image: a mother's grief, a child's absence, an endless repetition that can never be resolved. The chair will rock forever because Jennet's rage will never be satisfied. It is a symbol of irresolution — the curse has no expiry date, no condition for release.
Every major setting and object in the novel carries symbolic weight: the marshes (hidden danger), the fog (limits of understanding), the house (entrapment and Jennet's identity), the locked door (forbidden knowledge), and the rocking chair (eternal maternal grief).
The Graveyard: Neglect and Memory
Near Eel Marsh House stand the ruins of a small chapel and a burial ground of about fifty gravestones. It is neglected, overgrown and isolated — mirroring the way the town has tried to forget the Drablow tragedy. It is here, among the graves, that Arthur sees the woman in black for the second time, her face like bare bone. Hill uses the graveyard to reinforce the theme of social exclusion: Jennet was pushed outside respectable society in life, and the novel leaves her among the forgotten dead after it.