The Psychology of The Woman in Black Exploring within the depths of the afterlife, some might disagree with the existence of a life after death; until they have experienced it first-hand. The Woman in Black is a chilling ghost story written by author Susan Hill, to which the main character, Arthur Kipps expresses his horrors within the Eel Marsh House. The novel begins on Christmas Eve with Arthur and his family gathered around telling ghost stories when Arthur is suddenly too disturbed and bothered to tell his story out loud; so he decides to write it down. Thus, Arthur begins his story of his past young self, a solicitor, on his journey of settling the affairs of deceased, Alice Drablow. At her funeral, he catches sight of a peculiar woman dressed in all black; and to his curiosity, no one else seems to notice her. When he asks about her, Mr. Jerome, Keckwick, and Mr. Bentley, all fall silent as if they are trying to repress and hide something deep down. Arthur is …show more content…
As Arthur described, “There was something in the air that night… That my peace of mind was about to be disturbed, and memories awakened that I had thought forever dead, I had, naturally no idea” (Hill 9-10). Thus, producing the first clue of memory repression from Freud’s theory of repressed memory. As he shows his anguish of not wanting to and almost refusal of telling his story, begins the denial aspect; he is in denial that this ever happened. He is showing memory repression by having to “awaken” and dig up his godforsaken and horrid memories of what occurred to him in the Eel Marsh House and Jennet Drablow’s doings. Arthur does not at first remember all that happened, and he does not want to remember the traumatizing experience. However, with time he digs it up deep from the bowels of his unconscious to which has been repressed and hidden for such a long
Professor Nancy Shurtz from the University of Oregon wore a black face mask to a Halloween Party. To celebrate the spirit of Halloween, she came dressed as one of her favorite authors which was a black man. According to reports, she was unaware of the term “black face.” After being tagged as violating the school’s harassment policies, the professor was then suspended.
Arthur Dimmesdale has experienced multiple changes during the novel. During the novel, Arthur Dimmesdale has been extremely convicted about the sin he has committed because he hasn't told anyone but Hester about it. Arthur is so extremely convicted that he intentionally tried to hurt himself every day in order to cope with his horrible sin. To avoid telling anyone, Hester, Pearl, and Arthur plan to board a Spanish ship headed to Europe. Arthur and Hester believe that in doing this, he will not be as convicted and will be able to live a happy and wonderful life with Hester and Pearl.
He did not remember standing just outside his daughter's door as she lectured her bear about his naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishments Paws would receive unless he changed his ways (Wolff’s 4)”. In contrast compared to his adulthood, during Anders mediation of brain time the most rememberable part that he did reminisce was “the heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game.
This caused him to question his own philosophies and why humans act the way they do, thus he no was longer simple. These events created an introspective meaning for the work as a whole by manifesting human nature. T.H White uses Arthur as an example by having the readers analyze how he reacts to the people who revolve around his life to convey his opinion. Arthur was just like any other person, as time passed he became more wise due to experiences looking back at his mistakes and avoids repeating
His recollections and visions of his past traumas serve as a
In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Kesey promotes sexist views through the way he characterizes his female characters. He does this showing women in a dehumanizing light. The nurse for example is constantly showing her source of power over the males on the ward by simply taking away theirs. However kesey also adds in women such as Candy to simply help empower men. Kesey wrote his novel in the 1960s.
His recollections about his experience as a young boy makes the horror real and urgent for the audience: “I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast.” (paragraph 4) The audience’s inevitable emotional response to these memories is one of deep sadness and empathy. The need for action instead of silence in the face of such horror is made even clearer.
As characters are exposed to different situations, their feelings and opinions change and develop. 'The Woman in Black', written by Susan Hill, is a gothic novel set in Victorian England. Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is sent to an isolated town in the country to recover papers that belonged to newly deceased Alice Drablow. What he thought would be a relaxing time away from the noisy London turns into a nightmare as he is haunted by the Woman in Black. Being alone becomes a fear instead of a luxury.
Father: Arthur's Father affected him by keeping him in the house and making him anti-social. The legend was that he was cutting papers for his scrapbook and he stabbed his father in the leg and returned to cutting the paper like nothing happened. He was taken to a courthouse and was locked up for a month, then his father said he would take care of everything, and kept him inside of the house. Afterwards, he didn’t come out of the house during the day because his father kept him inside, and prevented him from communicating with people. Because he didn’t go out during the day and also didn’t talk to anyone, he became mysterious to everyone.
Arthur is portrayed as still having his dignity, but his overall physical appearance is melancholy. In addition to his physical appearance Dimmesdale physically abuses himself. Arthur whips himself with a scourge behind closed doors as a way of punishment. Hawthorne describes ‘His inward trouble drove him to practices... In Mr. Dimmesdale’s secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge.”
The words “ghost” and “haunt” are used to describe how the memories impact Charlie. While Charlie is trying to turn his life around, his memories slow him down. For example, when Lorraine asks for Charlie’s address, “he hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel” (Fitzgerald 217). Here, the walking memory, Lorraine, serves as a secondary conflict for Charlie. It is also shown that Charlie resists the memory to focus on his main goal.
In the last stanza, he explains that “[o]f all the things that happened there / [t]hat’s all [he] remember[s]” (Cullen 11-12). The tone of the boy quickly changes from joy into
The “Black-Eyed Women” The short story “Black-Eyed Women” is within the book The Refugees, written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The characters throughout the short story share similar qualities as the undead. This being said, the 38-year-old Vietnamese refugee is the narrator of the short story who works as a ghostwriter; who has lived in silence with her mother for a good amount of time. The idea of a ghost’s embodiment is proven through the ultimate struggle one may face during catastrophic periods.
The feminist theory is based on finding and exposing negative attitudes toward women in literature. Their goal is to reveal the reality of how women get portrayed in literature due to the fact that most literature presents an inaccurate view of women and are most of the time minimized. In the Catcher in the Rye there is a few female characters such as Sunny, the girls at the club, and Sally who are put in situations that show nothing but stereotypes and puts them in a bad spot throughout the novel. J.D Salinger decides to put some of the female characters in situations that can cause those who read this novel to think bad or leave readers with a bad image of women. This bad image on women is due to the fact that he decided to portray some of
The purpose of a ghost story is to leave the reader feeling frightened and unaware of what the truth of reality is. Nguyen's Black-Eyed Women flips all our perceptions of what a ghost is and why they visit the living. The ghost stories told in this story affect the narrator by forcing her to confront the discomfort of her reality. The narrator realizes she has been ignoring discomfort about her brother dying for her, and s the guilt and that she lived. She loses her identify, and sense of security, however her brother's ghost arrives to mend this disconnect.