Explore the objects and images around the room – these all have significance to themes and ideas within The Woman in

Black

WHAT CLUES? PREDICTION AND INFERENCE

INFORMATION = what is obvious

INFERENCE= what is suggested/implied

CONNOTATIONS OF IMAGES AND OBJECTS

Image / object (denotation)

Connotation

Tombstone reading RIP Death, rest, peace, sadness, sorrow, tragedy?

Connotation = the ideas, thoughts and feelings that come from the denotation (what is literally seen/ heard)

DRABLOW

WHAT LINKS MIGHT BE DRAWN?

LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

Literal language – the most obvious reading/ meaning (giving an actual example)E.g. He ran as fast as he could when confronted by the savage dog.(Yes he did. He just ran)

Figurative language – alternative readings/ meanings that go beyond the obvious which are more abstract or metaphorical. (Presenting your meaning imaginatively)E.g. I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.(You wouldn't would you? It just means you could eat a large meal)

Common examples of figurative language use are:• Simile• Metaphor• Personification• Alliteration• Idiom• Hyperbole

CONSIDER THE IDEAS OF LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE WHEN LOOKING FOR

CLUES IN THE EXTRACTS

‘…a thick brown envelope marked DRABLOW. Clutching it under my arm, I plunged out, into the choking London fog.’

LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE – WHAT CLUES?

‘”Children.” Mr Bentley fell silent for a few moments, and rubbed at the pane with his finger, as though to clear away the obscurity, but the fog loomed, yellow-grey, and thicker than ever…A church bell began to toll…’

LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE – WHAT CLUES?

‘Fog was outdoors, hanging over the river, creeping in and out of alleyways and passages, swirling thickly between bare trees of all the parks and gardens of the city, and indoors too, seething through cracks and crannies like sour breath, gaining a sly entrance at every opening of a door. It was a yellow fog, a filthy, evil-smelling fog, a fog that choked and blinded, smeared and stained. Groping their way blindly across roads, men and women took their lives in their hands, stumbling along the pavements, they clutched at railings and at one another, for guidance.’

CONSIDER THE WOMAN

ORDER THE 3 EXTRACTS –EXPLAIN YOUR THNKING

CONTINUE TO EXPLORE THE LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE

‘She was dressed in deepest black, in the style of full mourning that had rather gone out of fashion except, I imagined, in court circles on the most formal of occasions…its blackness was a little rusty looking. A bonnet-type covered her head and shaded her face, but, although I did not stare, even the swift glance I took of the woman showed me enough to recognize that she was suffering from some terrible wasting disease, for not only was she extremely pale, even more than a contrast with the blackness of her garments could account for, but the skin and, it seemed, only the thinnest layer of flesh was tautly stretched and strained across her bones, so that it gleamed with a curious, blue-white sheen, and her eyes seemed sunken back into her head. Her hands…were in a similar state, as though she had been a victim of starvation…Her appearance, even in the limpid sunshine and comparative warmth and brightness outdoors, was so pathetically wasted, so pale and gaunt with disease…but there was still some faint trace on her features, some lingering hint, of a not inconsiderable former beauty…’

‘..I saw that her face did wear an expression. It was one of what I can only describe – and the words seemed hopelessly inadequate to express what I saw – as a desperate, yearning malevolence; it was as though she were searching for something she wanted, needed – must have, more than life itself, and which had been taken from her. And, towards whoever had taken it she directed the purest evil and hatred and loathing, with all the force that was available to her. Her face, in its extreme pallor, her eyes, sunken but unnaturally bright, were burning with the concentration of passionate emotion which was within her and which streamed from her. Whether or not this hatred and malevolence was directed towards me I had no means of telling..’

‘I had seen a woman whose form was quite substantial and yet in some essential respect also, I had no doubt, ghostly. She had a ghostly pallor and dreadful expression, she wore clothes that were out of keeping with the styles of the present-day; she had kept her distance from me and she had not spoken. Something emanating from her still, silent presence, in each case by a grave, had communicated itself to me so strongly that I had felt indescribable repulsion and fear. And she had appeared and then vanished in a way that surely no real, living, fleshly human being could possibly manage to do. Any yet…she had not looked in any way – as I imagined the traditional ‘ghost’ was supposed to do – transparent and vaporous, she had been real, she had been there, I had seen her quite clearly, I was certain that I could have gone up to her, addressed her, touched her.’