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The Woman in Black was published in 1983, and was initially intended as a type of homage or pastiche of the   VictorianElizabethanJacobeanEdwardian   tallhorrorghostdetective story. 

In the novella, Jennet Humfrye is sent to   ScotlandCoventryLondonEel Marsh House by her family because she is an unmarried mother. This is an example of Victorian   hypocrisyguiltmoralitypunishment. 

The episodes of the novel that take place at Eel Marsh House depend to an extent on the absence of   doctorssunlighttechnologyreason, as Arthur cannot come and go freely by car, and is forced to use   lampsshadowsflarescandles in the house to see in the dark when his torch is broken and to seek out  a hammera slingshota hatchetan axe for self-protection.

Contemporary critics from the 1980s and later have seen in Hill's novella a critique of   rusticitypromiscuitymotherhoodmarriage. The parallel was drawn between Jennet's social exclusion and the pressures placed on single mothers in   authoritarianConservativetotalitarianLabour Britain at the time. Jennet is, by this   radicalanarchistfeministMarxist reading of her character, a role model to the extent that she defied the   patriarchyinequalityhypocrisyincompetence of Victorian society. She refuses to be condemned to lose her child as a   insanebarrenloosefallen woman.

The novella's popularity has resulted in a long-running theatrical adaptation in London's West End by  StevenStephenStephinStewart Mallatratt, a television series produced in   1997199919891987 and a film released in 2012 starring Daniel   RawcliffeRawleyRadcliffeHawley.