“The man must value the pipe highly”
He had just spent a lot of money having it repaired. In those days a pipe was very much a fashion accessory. People were judged on what their pipe looked like, they were even individualised. It was very much a fashion statement. As the quotation implies, men used to value their pipes very highly. They used to take them everywhere with them.
In the 1860s the education was not very well organized, therefore not many people had the privilege of going to school, even in “The Yellow Face” there is evidence of this, because Sherlock Holmes employs a young boy, as a servant, a page boy. The lower class citizens could not afford to go to school as they had to out into the world and work for a living in order for their own family to get by.
In this modern world it is actually against the law to employ anybody under the age of sixteen, and it is just as illegal not to go to school. People have actually been know to be imprisoned for not taking their children to school.
As the modern world has developed so has the household appliance. Instead of gas-lamps and open fires, they had,
“Candlelight”
“Station Lamps”
There is now electricity and central heating. Whereas, in the days of Sherlock Holmes, there were only
“Lamps and Gas jets”
which must had added to the mysterious atmosphere.
Household appliances are not the only thing that has changed, currency has also changed dramatically over the last seventy years. In those days, they dealt in pounds and shillings and the pipe cost
“Seven-and-sixpence”
The value of money has increased. Effie, who is the wife of Mr. Munro, has been left with a respectable £4,000. In that time you would be descried as
“Comfortably off”
Today, you would need a considerably more than, the £4,000 that Mrs. Munro was left. You would need a few hundred thousand pounds to be described as “Comfortably off.”
In the story, Mrs. Munro gave all her money to her husband this is very peculiar now a days, but I can assure you that it was the norm then.
The story was set in the nineteenth century. The English language has change quite considerably. This is noticeable in “The Yellow Face” because of the smaller words that are used. Small every day words such as
“Ye, Holloa, Goin”
are now spoken as
“You” “look here” and “going”,
They also seem to be very keen on hyphenating their words a lot more. A good example of this is
“Five-fold-leaves”
Clauses, such as ‘Five-fold-leave’ and “a walkin’” and “a stampin’”, show us how the modern English language is changing, and how it has developed. It also shows us how education is changing in the world today. Because the story was written so long ago, there will be some foreign words in it. There are some French words in “The Yellow Face”, for example
“Chamber”
The word comes the word ‘la chambre’ meaning bedroom. The other two French words are
“Reconnoitres”
and “Presentiment.”
These two have died out today.
The people of the 1850’s had habits different from us. They used to sniff and smoke cocaine, which was a pastime of the upper class, even Sherlock Holmes was smoking it in his living room.
They also dressed totally differently, there are no jeans and t-shirts, they wore
“Mantle and Bonnet”
Or
“A brown wide-awake”
In the years of 1859 there weren’t many black people in this country, and therefore there were few interracial marriages. So when Mrs. Munroe was looking after her daughter who happened to be a
“Coal-black Negress”
There was a lot of
“Gossip about a black child”
So for that time it was obviously very unusual, but today there are a growing number of interracial marriages, and ‘no one batters an eye lid’.
The race was a very important factor in the nineteenth century society. Black people were not accepted and were treated very differently from people of a different colour of skin, Effie had to renounce her own race to marry her black husband.
Effie did not disown her child as she loved her so very much, although many people would have disowned the black child in that time. Nowadays black and white people have the same rights, in most civilized countries. .
“It was our misfortune that our child took after his people rather than mine”
In this story Effie had to hide Lucy from the other people, because it wasn’t common to see a black girl in England; she also feared she would lose her dignity and her pride. So she would:
“Cover her little face and hands, so that even those who might see her at the window should not gossip about there being a black child in the neighborhood”.
The ending of this story is very unusual, because in those times a white person wouldn’t have accepted a black girl as her daughter, but Mr. Munro does just this:
“He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife, and turned towards the door”.
His attitude links this story with more modern ones.
L.D.S
