“The Speckled Band” Coursework
“The Speckled Band” is set in London 1886 in the era of Queen Victoria. Crime was rife in the slums of London. Prostitution, drug abuse and murder were high. There was much poverty and ill health as poor people lived in cramp dirty conditions and smog from the factories weighed heavily on the city, making it dark and dreary. When Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, the Victorians immediately fell for the fictional character. He became the perfect detective solving every case. When Doyle tried to kill off his character in 1893, there was a public outcry and Doyle received death threats warning him to keep Holmes alive. Sherlock Holmes has become one of the most celebrated and famous fictional detectives the world has ever known.
Conan Doyle had many influences that helped him to write the Holmes adventures. The main influences were the tales of Edgar Allen Poe and the novels of Wilkie Collins. The works of these and other authors established the pattern that Conan Doyle’s stories follow. The main ingredients of a typical murder mystery usually include a body, a motive, a weapon, a suspect, an alibi and a detective. This detective story has all of these. “The Speckled Band” also follows a typical murder mystery structure. Miss Stoner tells her tale to Holmes and Watson; Holmes questions her; Holmes and Watson visit the crime scene; Holmes devises a plan of action; the murder is caught in the act; and Holmes explains how he deduced the solution to the mystery. This follows the pattern of events that we often see in today’s murder mysteries.
People still believed in the idea that facial and bodily features reflected people’ personalities. Therefore a lot of villains that appear in stories had unpleasant features. Dr Roylott is a perfect example of this. “A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every evil passion”. In the Victorian era if someone had “yellow” skin they were though of as a peasant, ill and worn out. It also suggests that his skin was marked with every evil passion, therefore if he looks evil, he must be evil! Many Victorian writers liked to provide clues about a characters nature through their name. Charles Dickens in particular was famous for giving his unpleasant characters unpleasant names. In this story one of the main characters is called “Grimesby Roylott”, this sounds as though the character has quite a dark nature, although being quite a long name it sounds as though he is quite clever. Dr. Roylott is a typical villain by being stereotypical with hints of madness: “Indulge in ferocious quarrels with who ever might cross his path. Violence of temper approaching to mania”. We also find out that if a least one of the girls married it would ruin his plans, “While even one of them would cripple him to a serious extent”. We are suspicious of Dr. Roylott from the start of the story and later find out that he is planning to murder Julia, “This ventilator, and to the bell-rope, which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole, and coming to the bed”, this quote tells us that certain objects were in the room for a reason. The murder seems to be violent, “Her face blanched with terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard”. This suggests that she is in pain and by using words like “groping” makes it sound violent. It clearly shows us that he is a doctor who has abused his power for wrongdoings, “When a doctor has nerve and he has knowledge”. Although is a doctor, very much a professional man, people also fear him, his collection of wild and dangerous animals reflect this, “He has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a correspondent and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wonder freely over his grounds”. This might reflect his power that he has over his daughters and over the villages, “Feared by the villagers almost as much as their master”.
