The Woman in Black: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The narrative flashes back to the beginning of Arthur’s terrible tale. It is a Monday afternoon in November, and though it is only three o’clock in the afternoon, it is already growing dark. London is enveloped in a thick fog, and has been for three days. It is a “filthy, evil-smelling fog”—neither sight nor sound can penetrate it. The fog is menacing and sinister and turns the city into a veritable maze.

The fog, however, does not give Arthur a sense of foreboding as he makes his way in a carriage through London towards King’s Cross station. Mr. Bentley, his boss (Arthur has not yet been made partner at the firm) has sent him out on a journey to a remote part of England. Arthur is barely twenty-three, and is excited by the prospect of a journey by train.

Earlier that morning, Arthur was summoned to his boss Mr. Bentley’s office, where Bentley began telling Arthur about “the extraordinary Mrs. Drablow” of Eel Marsh House. Mrs. Alice Drablow has recently died at eighty-seven years old, but was a loyal client of the firm for many, many years. An odd woman, she lived in an equally odd house in a small market town called Crythin Gifford—a house only accessible at low tide after crossing the Nine Lives Causeway. When the tide comes in, Bentley says, one is “cut off” until it goes out again. Bentley informs Arthur that Arthur is to travel to Crythin Gifford to represent the firm at Mrs. Drablow’s funeral, and must then go on to Eel Marsh House to locate the “disorganized” Mrs. Drablow’s private papers and bring them back to London.

Mr. Bentley assures Arthur that the business will take a day or two at most. Arthur is amused by the idea of a “reclusive old woman having hidden a lot of ancient documents” in her old, creaky house; he thinks the assignment sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. Mr. Bentley, too, encourages Arthur to “treat the whole thing as a jaunt.” Mr. Bentley tells Arthur to stay in a hotel this evening and be ready to attend the funeral tomorrow morning at eleven—a local man will help Arthur from there. Arthur asks for more details, but is hurried out when a client of Mr. Bentley’s arrives for a meeting. Arthur gathers his things and leaves the office, heading out into the “choking” fog.