The Woman in Black Character Analysis in The Fall

The woman in black is a figure that the narrator claims he encountered late one night on a bridge in Paris. Shortly after the narrator walks past her, he hears her attempt suicide by jumping into the water and then begin crying out, possibly for help. Rather than help her, the narrator first freezes and then walks on. Resurfacing memories of this encounter precipitate the narrator’s moral and existential crisis several years later. Yet as readers know about the woman in black only through the stories of the unreliable narrator, it is unclear whether the incident truly happened—especially since, at the novel’s end, the narrator exhorts his listener to confess having the same encounter with the woman in black. Given this ending, the woman in black may not be a “real” person but a symbol of the narrator and listener’s shared guilt, loss of innocence, and need to confess.

The Woman in Black Quotes in The Fall

The The Fall quotes below are all either spoken by The Woman in Black or refer to The Woman in Black. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 33–34

Explanation and Analysis:

Oh, I don’t know. Really, I don’t know. The next day, and the days following, I didn’t read the papers.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 71

Explanation and Analysis:

I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short, where lies the bitter water of my baptism.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 108

Explanation and Analysis:

I had to submit and admit my guilt. I had to live in the little-ease. To be sure, you are not familiar with that dungeon-cell that was called the little-ease in the Middle Ages. In general, one was forgotten there for life. That cell was distinguished from others by ingenious dimensions. It was not high enough to stand up in nor yet wide enough to lie down in.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Related Symbols: The Little-Ease

Page Number and Citation: 109

Explanation and Analysis:

Brr . . . ! The water’s so cold! But let’s not worry! It’s too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), The Listener, The Woman in Black

Page Number and Citation: 147

Explanation and Analysis:

The Woman in Black Character Timeline in The Fall

The timeline below shows where the character The Woman in Black appears in The Fall. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...ever since one incident he remembered. Several years before the mysterious laughter, he passed a woman in black on the Pont Royal at night. He had already crossed the bridge when he heard... (full context)

...“on the quays of the Seine.” He exhorts the listener to cry out to the woman in black to attempt suicide again so that the listener will have an opportunity to save them... (full context)