“Man-size in Marble” is a horror story by the English writer and poet Edith Nesbit (1858–1924), first published in Home ChimesBritish magazine published from 1884 until 1894, precursor to popular fiction magazines. magazine in December 1887,[1] and included in her Grim Tales (1893) collection of short stories.

The story is told as a first-person narrative, and concerns a newly wed young couple who move into a cottage built around two old rooms, all that remains of a large house that once occupied the site.

Scene from the BBC television adaptation, Woman of Stone
BBC Studios

Synopsis

The narrator, a painter, and his wife Laura, are on their honeymoon in the country when they come across a pretty cottage. Standing by itself on a hill two miles (3 km) from the seaside village of Brenzett, the cottage seems exactly the sort of place they have been looking for, and on inquiry they find that the rent is “absurdly cheap”, and decide to move in right away.

They hire a local woman, Mrs. Dorman, to take care of the housework. She tells the couple of the local legends, and of “ ’the things that walked’ and of the ‘sights’ which met one in lonely glens of a starlit night”, material that Laura makes use of in the magazine stories she writes to earn the couple their meagre living.

One evening, three months into their marriage, the narrator pays a social visit to their only neighbour, a young Irish doctor. On returning to the cottage he finds Laura sobbing on the window seat, as Mrs. Dorman has said that she must leave their employment before the end of the month. The narrator promises to speak to Mrs. Dorman when she comes back, and in the meantime suggests that he and his wife take a walk up to the church. On entering they see two grey marble figures of knights in full plate armour, one on each side of the altar, lying on low slabs with their hands clasped in prayer.

Mrs. Dorman has returned while the couple were out, and eventually admits that the reason she must leave is that on Halloween – in just a few days time – the statues of the knights in the church are said to come to life and return to their former home, the old house around which the cottage is built. She urges the narrator to make sure that the door is locked early, and to put signs of the cross over the doors and windows. The narrator decides not to share this information with Laura, for fear of upsetting her.

The day of Halloween passes pleasantly enough, but in the evening Laura becomes uneasy, saying that she has a premonition of evil. At half past ten the narrator goes outside to smoke a pipe. Hearing the church bell toll eleven, he wanders up to the church, finding the door open and the two marble statues gone. Horrified, he rushes back to the cottage, but on the way bumps into his neighbour, the Irish doctor, on his way to see a patient. On hearing the narrator’s story, the doctor persuades him that the best course is to go back to the church together, to prove that he must be mistaken.

The two men find the statues in their usual places, convincing the narrator that what he saw must have been a trick of the light. The doctor notices that one of the statues has a missing finger, but the narrator is certain that it was intact when he and Laura last saw it.

The narrator and the doctor go back to the cottage together, and find the front door open. Laura is dead, with a look of terror frozen on her face. One of her hands is tightly clenched around a grey marble finger.

Adaptations

“Man-size in Marble” has been adapted for television by Mark Gatiss under the title Woman of Stone,[2] first broadcast on 24 December 2024 as an episode in the BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series.[3]

Gatiss altered the story so that it takes place on Christmas Eve. In the Woman of Stone the narrator and his wife are not the blissfully happy couple they are depicted as in the original story. Instead, they take the cottage to make a fresh start after some “obscure unpleasantness” in London, allowing the narrator to focus on his painting. The knights return to punish the wives they were told were unfaithful to them while they were at war.[2]

References

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Bibliography

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