In, “the Half Brothers”, there is a boy named Gregory whose mother, Helen died when he was three years old and he had to live with his stepfather, William Preston. The only family he had left was his aunt Fanny who married his stepfather when his mother died. The stepfather was a rich man and the only reason Helen married him was because she didn’t have enough money to bring Gregory up by herself. Helen loved her little boy dearly and she didn’t even love William half as much. This made William extremely jealous and when Helen died, the jealousy turned into hatred and he started mistreating Gregory. Just before she died Helen had given birth to another boy whom everybody loved. He was handsome, smart and clever whereas Gregory was quite the opposite.
Firstly I would like to compare the relationship between Helen Stoner and Dr Grimsby Roylott to the relationship between Gregory and William Preston.
In, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Dr Roylott had, “ absolutely uncontrollable anger”. And therefore he hurt Helen over small things even if she didn’t do anything wrong. “Five livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were imprinted upon the white wrist.” This is an obvious sign of physical mistreating by her, stepfather, Dr Roylott as he is the only one she lives with. She also admitted, “He is a hard man and perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.”
Similarly, in “The Half Brothers” William Preston hurt Gregory but mainly because he was jealous that his late wife loved Gregory more than she loved him. He, “never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson who had wrestled so innocently with him for the possession of my mother’s heart”. In the text, the only evidence of Gregory being physically harmed is when Gregory’s headmaster, “grew weary of scolding and flogging”.
Both Gregory and Helen forgive their stepfathers easily and don’t hold grudges for a long time. This shows how the relationship between Gregory and William is similar to that of Helen and Dr Roylott.
“The Half Brothers” explains that Gregory would, “try do a kind turn for anyone, even if they had been scolding or cuffing him not a minute before.” Helen is similar to Gregory because when Sherlock Holmes noticed the finger marks on her hand and realised it was Dr Roylott who made those marks, Helen tried to defend him and said, and “perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.”
Secondly I will compare the relationship between the mother, daughters and stepfather in, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” to the relationship between the mother, Gregory and the stepfather in “The Half Brothers.”
In, “the Adventure of the Speckled Band,” both Julia and Helen got whatever they needed from Dr Roylott but only because, Dr Roylott felt that he owed it to his late wife to give her daughter’s all the money they needed and their mother left some money in her will to look after them. “There seemed to be no obstacle to our happiness”, until a, “sudden change” came over Dr Roylott a little while after his wife died. Dr Roylott became more and more distant from then on and kept himself shut inside house, working and didn’t make any friends.
Gregory’s mother loved him dearly and this is shown when William becomes really jealous of all the love that Gregory gets from his mother. William gave Gregory all the basic things that he needed like shelter, clothes and a bit of an education because he knew that was what his wife would have wanted and he also knew that the main reason she married him was because she couldn’t afford to bring up the child on her own.
Although the family relationships in the stories are similar to each other and have the same sort of characters, the authors’ had different morals to their story.
In, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” It seemed as if his main concept was greed and he was basically trying to paint a picture of somebody who’s greed got the better of him and this greed could be the cause of the breakdown of a family, which in Dr Roylott’s case it was. He killed Julia just because he didn’t want her to get her engagement money and attempted to kill Helen as well. This shows that he would have rather had money than any sort of family or friends.
In, Elizabeth Gaskell’s, “The Half Brother’s” the main concept was jealousy and how jealousy could, also, lead to the breakdown of a family as it did with William Preston and Gregory. William was so jealous of Gregory that he made his life worthless.
Both Authors made the characters that caused all the pain in the family suffer in the end and get paid back. In, “The Speckled Band,” Dr Roylott got killed by his own snake which was actually supposed to kill Helen. In, “The Half Brothers” William Preston feels so guilty because he made Gregory’s life a living hell and Gregory repaid him by sacrificing his own life for William’s only son.
In conclusion, I feel that both authors were trying to let the reader know how one person can easily break family relationships but in the end that person will be punished somehow either physically or mentally, even if it doesn’t help the family get back together.
