Make us homepage
Add to Favorites
FAIL (the browser should render some flash content, not this).

Main page » Multimedia » Audio » The Woman in Black (Radio Drama)


The Woman in Black (Radio Drama)

 

The story centres on a young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, who is summoned to Crythin Gifford, a small market town on the north east coast of the United Kingdom to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow, an elderly and reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate and secluded Eel Marsh House.

 

The house is situated on Nine Lives Causeway, and, at high tide, it is completely cut off from the mainland with only the surrounding marshes and sea frets for company. Kipps soon realises there is more to Alice Drablow than he originally thought. At the funeral, he sees a woman dressed in black and with a pale wasted face and dark eyes, who is watched in silence by a group of children. Over the course of several days, while sorting through Mrs. Drablow's papers at Eel Marsh House, he endures an increasingly terrifying sequence of unexplained noises, chilling events and hauntings by the Woman in Black. From the direction of the marshes he hears the sound of a pony and trap in difficulty, which are closely followed by the screams of a young child and his maid.

 

Most of the people in Crythin Gifford are reluctant to reveal information about Mrs. Drablow and the mysterious Woman in Black, and attempts to find out the truth cause pained and fearful reactions. From various sources, Kipps learns that Mrs. Drablow's sister, Jennet Humfrye, gave birth to a child, but because she was unmarried, she was forced to give the child to her sister. Mrs. Drablow and her husband adopted the boy, called Nathaniel, insisting that he should never know that Jennet was his mother. The child's screams heard by Kipps were those of Nathaniel.

 

Jennet went away for a year; however, after realising she could not be parted for long from her son, she made an agreement to be able to stay at Eel Marsh House with him as long as she never revealed her true identity to him. One day, a pony and trap carrying the boy across the causeway became lost and sank into the marshes, killing all aboard, while Jennet looked on helplessly from the window of Eel Marsh House. This was particularly distressing for Jennet as she had become close to her son and was planning to run away and take him with her.

 

Jennet died later, but returned to haunt Eel Marsh House and Crythin Gifford with a vengeful malevolence, as the Woman in Black. According to local tales, seeing the Woman in Black meant that the death of a child would be sure ,to follow.

 

After some time , Kipps returns to London where he marries a woman named Stella, has a child of his own and tries to put the events at Crythin Gifford behind him. At a fair, while his wife and child are enjoying a pony and trap ride, Kipps suddenly sees the Woman in Black once more. She steps out in front of the pony pulling the trap and startles it so greatly that it gallops away and collides with a tree, killing the child and fatally injuring Stella, who dies of her injuries ten months later. The Woman in Black has had her vengeance. 

 

Episode guide:

 A Journey and a Funeral
1/4 Retired solicitor Arthur Kipps recalls his visit to the house of the reclusive Mrs Drablow
  1. A Journey and a Funeral
  2. A Causeway and a Pony Trap
  3. The Nursery and a Child 
  4. Letters and Death Certificates 

 




Purchase The Woman in Black (Radio Drama) from Amazon.com
Dear user! You need to be registered and logged in to fully enjoy Englishtips.org. We recommend registering or logging in.


Tags: Black, Woman, English, small, haunts, Drama, Radio