[Editorial] In Her Eyes: Jennet Humfrye in The Woman In Black (2014)

In The Woman In Black, a remote village in England is haunted by a vengeful spirit intent on ridding the community of their children.

The Woman In Black, directed by James Watkins, is the second cinematic adaptation of the 1983 novel written by Susan Hill. The movie sees young widowed lawyer Arthur Kipp (played by Daniel Radcliffe) who must leave his young son Joseph and journey to the rural village of Crythin Gifford where he must trawl through the vast number of documents left behind by deceased client Alice Drablow in her isolated manor house surrounded by marshland. Whilst there, Kipp is warned by the locals to return to London, and after not heeding their warnings, is witness to the terrible and violent deaths of local children. During his time at the abandoned Eel Marsh House, Kipp discovers that Alice Drablow and her husband had adopted her nephew, Nathaniel, after her sister Jennet Humfrye had been found to be mentally unstable and unfit to be Nathaniel’s caregiver. Alice had once prevented Jennet from being in contact with her son, but had finally agreed to allow her to stay at Eel Marsh House under the stipulation that she must never reveal her true identity as mother to the child. One day, as Jennet observed out of an upstairs window, the carriage that was carrying Alice and Nathaniel crashed into the marsh, which resulted in Nathaniel drowning and his body never being recovered. Filled with hatred for her sister’s apparent lack of care for the child, Jennet kills herself whilst swearing to never forgive Alice.

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In the aftermath of Jennet’s suicide, as is horror tradition following a violent and tragic death, her spirit remains, haunting not only Eel Marsh House, but further afield in the outskirts of the village of Crythin Gifford. Hers is a ferocious and rage-filled ghost, fuelled by a sense of vengeance against anyone who stood by and allowed her child to be taken from her, as well as misdirected towards anyone else in the village who has children. Alive, Jennet had to watch helplessly from the manor window as her child died in a horrific manner, and her sister Alice chose to save herself rather than aid Nathaniel, and so in death, Jennet inflicts that very same torture on the parents of children in the village. The parents of Crythin Gifford have been forced to witness their children’s violent deaths, incapable of preventing them from being led by the woman in black to carry out cruel and gruesome suicides such as the drinking of lye, drowning at sea and setting themselves on fire. 

Jennet has also focused her anger inwards, onto herself. She cannot allow herself to rest and be at peace, even when Arthur Kipp recovers her son Nathaniel’s body from the marsh and buries the corpse in the same grave as his mother. The guilt that Jennet must have felt would have been overwhelming, being found to be an incapable mother and having to give up her child to a woman, who’s care Nathaniel was under when he tragically lost his life. Guilt that then manifested itself into a rage that, even when reunited with her son in the afterlife, caused Jennet to lose any semblance of humanity, thus creating a monstrous mother that rather than nurture children, would cause them to suffer a horrendous death. Jennet even goes so far as to punish the man who risked his own life to drag Nathaniel’s body from the dangerous marshland that surrounds Eel Marsh House by luring his child Joseph, and subsequently Arthur himself to a violent death on the railroad tracks as they attempt to leave Cyril Gifford.

The Woman In Black’s Jennet Humfrye has joined the lore of grieving mothers turned vengeful spirits in horror that stem from the supernatural folklore beliefs like that of La Llorona from Latin America - a wailing woman who mourns the death of her children, usually by her own hands and is served as a warning to children lest they be lured to a watery death, and the Lamia from Ancient Greece - a monstrous creature who, after being driven to insanity by the murder of her own children by goddess Hera, would violently devour any child she came across. Jennet is a gothic personified version of the Lamia, a broken soul whose personification of motherhood has become twisted and uncontrollably evil, whose all enveloping love for her child has driven her to harm innocent children. After witnessing the devastating tragedy that befell Nathaniel, Jennet allowed herself to become a monster in death, a symbol of the ferociousness of motherhood and how a mother, when it comes to her child, will never forget, nor relent in her pursuit of vengeance. 

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