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This essay will consider four of this type of story, by short story

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This essay will consider four of this type of story, by short story writers of the period; Dickens’ The Signal Man, The Monkeys Paw’ by
W W Jacobs, H G Wells The Red Room and The Dream Woman by Wilkie Collins.

LOOKING AT THE ATTUTUDES OF THE PERIOD, EXAMINE HOW A RANGE OF 19TH
CENTURY WRITERS CREATE MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE IN THEIR SHORT SHORIES

The rise in popularity of magazines in Victorian times and the era’s fascination in the unknown and supernatural led to immense interest in the short story genre. The key to the success of short stories is holding the reader’s attention by the use of interesting and meaningful subject matter, by using a condensed style of writing in order to maintain suspense and intrigue.

The …show more content…

A further technique was to contrast a mundane or particularly modern setting with extraordinary and supernatural events. Collins sets ‘The
Dream Woman’ in a village, whereas Dickens’ location for ‘The Signal
Man’ is an, at the time, noticeably technologically advanced area, due to the railway track. With industrialisation, most people were living in large cities, so remote rural areas had become romanticised and
Jacob’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is such a locale.

Mystery and suspense is created by drawing on elements of the location and using pathetic fallacy, the use of the weather to describe the atmosphere, as in Jacob’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw’. When describing the surroundings Jacobs writes, ‘Without, the night was cold and wet’.
This use of pathetic fallacy evokes a feeling of impending danger and creates a classic horror atmosphere suggesting darkness and evil. One more quote from ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is ‘That’s the worst of living so far out’, informing the reader that the location of the story is away from civilisation and isolated. Using a deserted and out of the way setting is a typical way of creating suspense.

The location of the signalman’s hut in ‘Dickens’ ‘The Signalman’ was secluded and unwelcoming, Dickens writes ‘his post was in a solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw’. This arouses feelings of loneliness, and isolation which helps to create a tense atmosphere, we could also assume

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