MR James’s “The Mezzotint” is set at an English university with its “homely and familiar” (2011, p. 24) libraries, museums and common rooms. This contrasts the stereotypical gothic settings which Dani Cavallaro presents: ruined castles and abbeys, murky crypts and fungoid dungeons, clammy cellars, dank passages and stairwells echoing with howls, groans and tapping fingers, dripping charnel houses and ivy-clad monasteries, secret cabinets, storms, bleak forests and treacherous marshes. (2011, p. 21) However, James claims that “the more ordinary and normal both setting and actors are, the more effective will be the entangling of them in a dreadful situation” (Moshenska, 2012, p.1195). According to Briggs, James also believed that a fairly familiar
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James uses the darkness by allowing for the mezzotint’s changes to either take place or be discovered late in the evening or in the night-time, this is mirrored in “Oh Whistle” where the weather is described as “bleak and solemn” and everything is “too late and too dark”. Cavallaro asserts that darkness is usually associated with menace and fear and “[l]onely spots in the grip of forbidding northern winters, preferably in the dead of night, are elements of a well-known matrix” of gothic settings (2002, 21f). The eeriness of James’s atmosphere is frequently interrupted by incidents that occur during daylight. This could be used as an effective contrast between light and dark and instil a greater sense of fear in the reader. However, the harmless activities that occur during the light such as breakfast chat and games such as cards create a safe and unalarming atmosphere. In “Oh, Whistle” there are several features accustomed with the typical ghost story, one being that the protagonist is never able to really see the faces of the ghosts, when visited by the apparition in the night – a common theme throughout the ghost story- and when the apparition rises from the second bed Parkins is then only able to see it as a "band of dark shadow" and unable to see "what its face was
James uses the darkness by allowing for the mezzotint’s changes to either take place or be discovered late in the evening or in the night-time, this is mirrored in “Oh Whistle” where the weather is described as “bleak and solemn” and everything is “too late and too dark”. Cavallaro asserts that darkness is usually associated with menace and fear and “[l]onely spots in the grip of forbidding northern winters, preferably in the dead of night, are elements of a well-known matrix” of gothic settings (2002, 21f). The eeriness of James’s atmosphere is frequently interrupted by incidents that occur during daylight. This could be used as an effective contrast between light and dark and instil a greater sense of fear in the reader. However, the harmless activities that occur during the light such as breakfast chat and games such as cards create a safe and unalarming atmosphere. In “Oh, Whistle” there are several features accustomed with the typical ghost story, one being that the protagonist is never able to really see the faces of the ghosts, when visited by the apparition in the night – a common theme throughout the ghost story- and when the apparition rises from the second bed Parkins is then only able to see it as a "band of dark shadow" and unable to see "what its face was