GOTHIC SPATIALITY AND THE POETICS OF SETTING IN SUSAN HILL’S THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Abstract

The article examines the representation and functions of Gothic space in Susan Hill’s novel “The Woman in Black” (1983), focusing on the relationship between spatial organization, atmosphere, narrative tension, and the supernatural. The study argues that setting in Hill’s novel should not be regarded merely as a passive background against which the events unfold. Instead, geographical, architectural, domestic, and natural spaces actively participate in the construction of Gothic meaning and shape the protagonist’s psychological experience. Particular attention is paid to Eel Marsh House, the surrounding marshes, the causeway, the village of Crythin Gifford, London, and the recurring motifs of fog, water, darkness, isolation, and restricted visibility. Eel Marsh House is analysed as a central Gothic locus in which domestic space is transformed into an uncanny and hostile environment. The marshes and the sea further destabilize the opposition between land and water, safety and danger, familiarity and otherness. The causeway functions as a particularly significant liminal space because its periodic disappearance under the tide undermines the protagonist’s confidence in rational control and creates a material boundary between the ordinary world and the supernatural realm. The article also considers the interaction between natural and architectural spaces, demonstrating that weather, landscape, water, and darkness contribute to the novel’s Gothic agency. Consequently, spatiality in The Woman in Black becomes a means of representing trauma, memory, isolation, and the persistence of the past. The study concludes that Hill’s Gothic setting constitutes an active narrative mechanism through which psychological fear is transformed into a spatial experience.