Sherlock Holmes to a 20th century audience is surprisingly popular. People who have never read a Sherlock Holmes story still recognize the name and know he is a fictional detective. On the other hand ‘The Landlady’ is not as popular or well known. A reason for this is that Sherlock Holmes featured in around seventy different stories. We know this because right at the beginning of ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band Dr Watson says 'glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases.'
Out of the two characters my favorite is 'The Landlady' because there is hardly any information on her; as a result it makes you use your imagination to figure out who or what she is.
A short story's structure consists of four basic parts; the first is the exposition.
In a short story the exposition explains who the main characters are, where it is set, when it is set, and why. The two stories both have an exposition; the exposition of the 'Landlady' tells the reader that the main character is a young man named Billy Weaver who has just arrived in Bath on business. We know this as it says '.... He got to Bath it was nine o'clock...' The exposition in the 'Speckled Band' tells us that the main character is Sherlock Holmes who is in his home and has been awakened earlier than usual by the arrival of a woman in black. So far both stories are similar and both explain the ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’ questions.
Next is the complication. The reader can tell when the story reaches the complication, as a character will encounter a problem or become troubled. In the 'Speckled Band' it is Helen Stoner who has a problem. Her sister mysteriously died two weeks before her wedding day. She suspects it was her violent stepfather Dr Grimsby Roylott, but is not certain. Now Helen is planning to get married and is worried that the same fate will happen to her, she has even been moved into the same bedroom that her sister was murdered in, by her stepfather. So she asks Holmes to investigate these mysteries. In 'The Landlady' there is no complication, this is because Billy never realises the trouble he is in because he stereotypes The Landlady as a harmless old woman but the reader IS aware of the trouble Billy is in.
After the complication is the climax, it is the part of the story with the peak of tension. Both of the stories have climaxes even though they are at different points. The 'Landlady's' climax is rather abnormal as it occurs right at the end of the story. The 'Speckled Bands' climax takes place about two thirds of the way through the story, when Holmes and Dr Watson encounter the dangerous ‘Indian Swamp Adder' in Helen's deceased Sister's bedroom, which results in the death of Dr Roylott.
The Final part of a story's structure is the resolution, this is where the mysteries are explained or resolved. The 'Landlady doesn't have or need a resolution as there is nothing to explain that the reader doesn't all ready know, for example we already that the landlady is not in any way human and Billy Weavers tragic Fate, alternatively the 'Speckled Band' needs a resolution because of the many unexplained things. This is done in the form of Sherlock Holmes explaining to Helen Stoner what has happened.
On top of the four basic parts of a story's structure there are two additional parts to it, these are the frame and mysteries. The frame is a couple of paragraphs at the beginning of a story and is used to set the scene for the rest of the story much like a complication. The reason why the 'Speckled Band has a frame and the 'Landlady' does not is that, as mentioned earlier, the Landlady is a one off story and the 'Speckled Band' is not.
In conclusion these two stories have many differences, mainly because of the times in which they were written, but despite being written in totally different styles, but because they use the structures as outlined above it is possible to identify their similarities.
