KS1 (Age 5-7)KS2 (Age 7-11)11 Plus (Age 7-11)KS3 (Age 11-14)GCSE (Age 14-17)PSHE A.I.ESL Spanish Specialist Games

Need help with The Woman in Black - Setting? Ask our AI Tutor!

AI Tutor - Lucy

Connecting with Tutor...

Please wait while we establish connection

Hi! I'm Lucy, your AI tutor. How can I help you with The Woman in Black - Setting today?

now

The door to which room is locked?

The Woman in Black - Setting

This quiz focuses on setting in The Woman in Black, exploring how fog, marshes and isolation create Gothic atmosphere and affect Arthur’s sense of safety.

Explore the Topic →

(quiz starts below)

Fascinating Fact:

Frequent fog, sea mist and sea frets limit what Arthur can see, and this blurred visibility matches the uncertainty and half knowledge in the story.

In GCSE English Literature, you will be expected to explain how Susan Hill uses setting in The Woman in Black. Fog, marshes and the tidal causeway all intensify suspense and isolation.

Key Terms

Setting: The time and place where a story happens, including landscape, buildings and weather.
Gothic setting: A dark, isolated or threatening place that creates fear and mystery in a Gothic story.
Tidal causeway: A road or track sometimes covered by the sea, cutting a place off when the tide rises.

Frequently Asked Questions (Click to see answers)

How does Susan Hill use setting to create fear in The Woman in Black?

Hill uses shifting fog, the lonely marshes and the isolation of Eel Marsh House to limit what Arthur and the reader can see, so ordinary sounds and shadows become threatening and unsettling.

Why is Eel Marsh House an effective Gothic location?

Eel Marsh House is effective because it is cut off by a tidal causeway, surrounded by marshes and often hidden in mist, which matches the secrets and ghostly events in the narrative.

How should I write about setting in my GCSE exam answer?

Choose a short quotation that shows setting, name a technique such as imagery or pathetic fallacy and explain how it shapes mood, tension or Arthur’s experience at that point in the story.

Try These Related Quizzes

1 .

When is The Woman in Black set?

Late 18th century

Early 19th century

Late 19th century

Early 20th century

This is a tricky one! The main events of the novel take place in the early-twentieth century, although Arthur writes his account some years after they occur. The terrible loss of life on the Nine Lives Causeway occurs in the late-nineteenth century and Jennet Humfrye dies early in the twentieth century (her gravestone includes part of her death date: 190...)

2 .

Besides London, where does the novel take place?

The South of England

The North of England

Scotland

Wales

To get to Crythin Gifford, Arthur must first take the train to Crewe, where he changes for the final two legs of his journey. Susan Hill has said that a visit to the Suffolk coast partly inspired the novel's setting. Although the geographical location is northern, rather than in Suffolk, the eerie feel of that coastal visit remains

3 .

What distinguishes the island where Eel Marsh House is located from most other islands?

It often experiences thick mists, or sea-frets

It has a graveyard

It experiences strong winds

It is joined to the mainland by a causeway

Most British islands experience strong winds and sea mists. A good number even have graveyards. What is distinctive about the island in the novel is that it is a tidal island - connected to the mainland twice a day and cut off the remainder of the time. This situation is ideal for building the suspense and sense of terror necessary for a ghost story

4 .

"Sounds were deadened, shapes blurred. It was a fog that had come three days before, and did not seem inclined to go away and it had, I suppose, the quality of all such fogs - it was menacing and sinister, disguising the familiar world and confusing the people in it, as they were confused by having their eyes covered and being turned about, in a game of Blind Man's Buff." To which of the following does this description belong?

London

Crythin Gifford

Monk's Piece

Eel Marsh House

London is swathed in a sinister fog at the beginning of Arthur's tale, and yet it is not London which is the source of the novel's sinister events. London fog hides the familiar, which is still present and comforting, despite appearances

5 .

Which of the following best describes Monk's Piece?

Spooky

Mysterious

Menacing

Idyllic

Arthur conceives of Monk's Piece, the house he shares with his wife Esmé, as a restful retreat from London, a place of domestic harmony

6 .

"I simply went about the house looking in every room and finding nothing of much interest or elegance. Indeed, it was all curiously impersonal, the furniture, the decoration, the ornaments, assembled by someone with little individuality or taste, a dull, rather gloomy and rather unwelcoming home. It was remarkable and extraordinary in only one respect - its situation." What does Arthur find interesting about Eel Marsh House?

The pervading sense of gloom

The gothic interior

Its position on the island

Its stylish decoration

Eel Marsh House is dull and uninteresting in every way. Even its gloominess is undermined - the narrator describes it only as "rather gloomy". Instead, it is its position on the island which makes the house "extraordinary"

7 .

Which of the following is correct?

Arthur only sees and hears ghostly apparitions at night-time

Arthur only sees and hears ghostly apparitions during the day

Arthur only sees and hears ghostly apparitions outside

Arthur sees and hears ghostly apparitions both during the day and the night, inside the house and outside

Arthur sees the Woman in Black in the town, in the island burial ground, at the window, and finally, in a London park; outside, he hears the terrible incident in which the pony and trap are lost in the marsh, as well as hearing the sound of the rocking chair from within the house. The fact that Arthur can be "haunted" anywhere makes the apparitions more terrifying

8 .

The door to which room is locked?

The scullery

The nursery

The cellar

Mrs Drablow's bedroom

The door to Nathaniel's room is at first locked, then inexplicably unlocked. The final visit Arhtur makes to the room shows evidence of an enraged presence which has wrecked the room

9 .

"I had never been quite so alone, nor felt quite so small and insignificant in a vast landscape before, and I fell into a not unpleasant brooding, philosophical frame of mind, struck by the absolute indifference of water and sky to my presence. Some minutes later, I could not tell how many, I came out of my reverie, to realise that I could no longer see very far in front of me and when I turned around I was startled to find that Eel Marsh House, too, was invisible." How does the experience of trying to cross Nine Lives Causeway make Arthur feel?

Insignificant

Exposed

Surprised

All of the above

At first Arthur enjoys feeling small and insignificant. He writes that the experience makes him feel philosophical. The sudden appearance of mist (and the disappearance of the house) is surprising and confusing

10 .

"I could see the entrance to the old, overgrown orchard that lay behind the house and petered out in long grass and tangled thicket at the far end. Beyond that, I glimpsed the perimeter of some rough-looking, open land." Which word choices are especially striking in this description of Arthur's future happy home?

Old, orchard, grass, perimeter

Overgrown, tangled, thicket, rough-looking

Orchard, house, thicket, open

Petered, thicket, glimpsed, perimeter

The place to which Arthur feels mysteriously connected is wild and overgrown in contrast to the cosy domesticity he associates with home

You can find more about this topic by visiting BBC Bitesize - The Woman in Black

Author: Sheri Smith (PhD English Literature, English Teacher & Quiz Writer)