Charlotte Taylor
How do you think Susan Hill creates sympathy for the character of Arthur Kipps?
In the woman in black, written by Susan Hill, there’re a variety of devises that creates sympathy towards the character of Arthur Kipps. Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor and a non-believer in ghosts, creates a lot of sympathy and the reader empathises towards him. I am investigating how Susan Hill makes the reader sympathise towards Kipps.
Susan Hill starts the book presenting Arthur Kipps as an old man, who lives in a beautiful house away in the countryside with his loving wife and children and has no cares in the world. He is a man of habit and finds pleasure in knowing that everything is how it should be and it should be under control. In the first chapter (Christmas Eve), we see him reflecting back as a young man and his experience in Eel Marsh House. He says in this chapter that “...as I often do in the course of an evening, went to the front door and stepped outside... I have always liked to take a breath of the evening...” We can see that he starts describing the weather to be nice and pleasant, however he has a sudden change of heart and says “My spirits have for many years now been excessively affected by the ways of the weather.” This creates sympathy for Kipps, because it makes the reader think of what could have affected him so badly, that makes him think second about the weather.
When Kipps takes the journey to Eel Marsh House he is a young man whose main ambition in life is to rise higher in his solicitor firm, and live a simple and quiet life. He is shown to neither have a dull personality, including naivety , who doesn’t get worried norlet’s himself get distracted, which is ironic because when we go further in the novel we see he changes.
In the third chapter, ‘The Journey North’, Kipps describes his journey to Crythin Gifford on the train. He