how is the woman in black a gothic horror novel

The novel continually plays with time to pursue themes related to how the past intrudes upon the present to create a continuous line. The novel is structured as a story-within-a-story which introduces the concept of past and the present being connected. The isolated house is also show to be haunted irreversibly steeped in the decisions of the past through Mrs. Drablow’s collection of documents. And, of course, both Arthur and the demonic ghost terrorizing him are haunted by traumatic memories of earlier times. Even the language of the novel itself is a revelation of this continuous line of time as it speaks to an outdated formality that does not seem to fully jibe with its period setting.