Which is scarier, The Invisible Man Or The Landlady?
Which is scarier, The Invisible Man Or The Landlady?
Roald Dahl was born in Norway in 1916. His father died when he was young and his mother sent him to school in England. After his education in England, Dahl started to write short stories, for which he is now well known. H.G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent in 1866. After working as a schoolteacher he won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science. He received a first class honours degree in biology and resumed teaching, but had to retire due to injury. He then experimented with journalism and stories. It was 'The Time Machine' that started Wells' career as an author.
In both 'The Landlady' and 'The Invisible Man' the character of each title is a villain who is either already mad or who becomes mad. H.G. Wells wrote 'The Invisible Man' in 1897; it is about a fanatical scientist who makes himself invisible and uses his power to inflict a ' Reign of Terror' on the local community. 'The Landlady' was written by Dahl in 1959, about a seemingly kind old lady who has a hobby of taxidermy - and whose subjects include handsome young men who come to her house seeking lodgings.
'The Invisible Man' is a full-length novel whereas 'The Landlady' is a short story. This means that Wells had plenty of time to develop his story line and characters but Dahl had to do all this, and build up tension, in the much more restricted form of the short story. In 'The Invisible Man' the story is concluded with the death of the invisible man but at the end of 'The Landlady' the reader is left to work out what happens for himself, and his imagination must supply the events that follow. This would have seemed strange to readers of H G Wells' era, but it works well with the short story form and makes 'The Landlady' more sinister than 'The Invisible Man' because there is no end to the evil.
In 'The Invisible Man', the main character, Griffin, is a fanatical albino scientist who goes mad after making himself invisible. Wells made Griffin an albino for two reasons: it fits in well with the removal of all pigments that has to be done to make Griffin invisible, thus making the plot more plausible; and it also makes him different from other men. Griffin is a very mysterious character; his name isn't even revealed until about half way through the book (chapter seventeen) and the events that lead up to and the causes of his invisibility aren't revealed until chapter nineteen. This means that for most of the book the reader knows nothing of the invisible man's past. This mysteriousness, together with the stranger's abrupt and irascible manner, causes great curiosity and some suspicion in the local community. This leads to the eventual discovery of his invisibility and the ensuing panic. Although Wells has made his readers aware of Griffin's invisibility, he gives no explanation of this, and so we also find him sinister. Wells makes Griffin an unpleasant character: "aggressive and explosive", and his appearance, with "goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face" was such that:
"Children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies."
Because Wells describes Griffin in such unpleasant terms, that the reader finds it difficult to empathise with him even though "he was a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation". He is frightening rather than pathetic.
Wells describes the villagers as being very parochial; this highlights the differences between them and the invisible stranger. Their characters are not well developed by Wells, and even Mr and Mrs Hall share the same character profile as the rest of the villagers - a broad accent and ignorance of the outside ...
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"Children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies."
Because Wells describes Griffin in such unpleasant terms, that the reader finds it difficult to empathise with him even though "he was a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation". He is frightening rather than pathetic.
Wells describes the villagers as being very parochial; this highlights the differences between them and the invisible stranger. Their characters are not well developed by Wells, and even Mr and Mrs Hall share the same character profile as the rest of the villagers - a broad accent and ignorance of the outside world. The villagers are almost comical; they blunder about and trip over one another in their efforts to avoid the Invisible Man and are all of limited intelligence. They are no match for the invisible "experimental investigator", especially as Wells tells us that he is physically very powerful. The fact that he is so much more powerful than them makes him scary.
The only other character of any weight is Dr Kemp. Griffin and Kemp had known each other as students, and Griffin assumes that Kemp will help him to establish his 'Reign of Terror'. Kemp is the only character who is Griffin's intellectual equal and so when Kemp lets Griffin slip from his grasp, the threat from Griffin's increasing madness becomes much more frightening, and we can imagine Griffin carrying through his intentions to kill anyone who stands in his way. However, we assume that in a novel of this period this evil man will be stopped and good will triumph.
The first character we meet in 'The Landlady' is Billy Weaver. Billy is a young boy of seventeen years of age; he is a junior employee who has travelled down from London to Bath on business. He is a very naïve young man who is fresh into the world of work and is hoping to make his way to the top. When Dahl is writing from Billy's viewpoint he uses lots of adjectives and superlatives, illustrating Billy's youthful enthusiasm.
"The big shots up at head office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time."
Billy's innocence makes him very vulnerable and this makes the reader fear for him. He naturally thinks the best of people - although the landlady appears to be "slightly off her rocker", he is sure that she is "quite obviously a kind and generous soul." This is ironic, as her motives are far from kindly. He refuses to be put off by the landlady's odd behaviour.
Dahl gives the reader lots of clues as to the landlady's true character, as when she appears too quickly in response to Weaver's ring:
"This dame was like a jack-in-the-box"
The use of this simile gives the reader a 'jumpy' feeling and adds to the gradually building tension. We are told that the landlady has "a round pink face and very gentle blue eyes", but these same blue eyes travel "slowly all the way down the length of Billy's body, to his feet, and then up again." This is creepy. She talks of her last young lodger in the past tense, but when questioned by Billy as to when he left, says
"But my dear boy, he never left. He's still here. Mr Temple is also here. They're on the fourth floor, both of them together."
This is alarming. Her excessively sweet manner contrasts strongly with her callous intention to kill and stuff Billy, as when she gives him "another gentle little smile" with his cyanide tea. The landlady's superficial respectability and kindliness, together with her calculating madness, make her a very frightening figure. The invisible man's rage and ravings are not as frightening as the landlady's cold, calm manipulation of her victim. We can understand the unique causes of the invisible man's madness, and realise how it developed, but we are given no explanation for the landlady's behaviour - perhaps there are lots of women like her, waiting to claim their victims?
In the first part of 'The Invisible Man' the mystery and fear caused by the invisible man are interspersed with elements of comedy, as when the invisible man removes his pink shiny nose and hands it to Mrs Hall who screams and drops it on the floor where it rolls around. The comic element decreases as you get further through the book and the crimes of the invisible man become more serious (i.e., murder). This transition is indicated when the invisible man has a comical struggle with the villagers before leaving the Coach and Horses, but after describing this Wells adds the single line:
"But Jaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent."
This is a very powerful line as it is the first time that the Invisible Man does any real damage and it snaps the reader out of the comical blundering of the villagers. The comical element is removed altogether when the siege of Doctor Kemp's house takes place and Ayde is shot. The removal of this humour helps show that things are getting serious. Towards the end of the book there is a lot of exciting action. This creates an atmosphere of crisis and fear and the invisible man becomes much more menacing.
Unlike Wells, Dahl has to rely more on his subtle use of language rather than on a sequence of events in order to build up suspense; this is because he is writing in the form of a short story and not a novel. Dahl describes the Bed & Breakfast sign as
"Like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay."
This is the first sign that there is something mysterious about the place and the reader becomes aware that something is wrong. The image of an eye is uncomfortable, and vaguely menacing. From then on Dahl continuously drops hints as to the strangeness of the situation and the landlady's true intentions. For example, her description of one of her previous tenants is rather surprising:
"There wasn't a blemish on his body."
These hints, to which Billy appears to be blind, help build up the expectation that something is going to happen to him. Dahl's clues become more frequent as the story progresses. One of the strongest of these is when Billy recognises the two names in the guest book and draws a link between them. He is puzzled by the fact that their names are familiar to him, and he keeps returning to the subject. This builds the tension because the reader is kept in suspense as to whether or not Billy will remember what happened to these two men in time to avoid their fate. Every time he gets close to discovering the link, the Landlady distracts him or draws him away.
Dahl uses irony extensively throughout the story, for example when Billy expresses "deep admiration" for the landlady's taxidermy skills. This makes the reader fear for Billy because he is "a lamb to the slaughter"; the reader knows he is going to be her next victim.
How scary the reader finds each story is inevitably influenced by the events and interests of society at the time the book is read. H.G. Wells was living in an age of great scientific advances. In the two years before he wrote "The Invisible Man", Rontgen had introduced the X-ray (and Wells actually refers to this in the story, when explaining the invisibility process); Becquerel had determined the radioactivity of Uranium; and Rutherford published his researches into the magnetic detection of electrical waves. Because of this Well's readers would have been interested in the idea of a lone scientist making a fantastic discovery and what might happen as a result. The fear, destruction and panic caused by the invisible man would be pertinent to possible future discoveries by real scientists, so that it is very likely that they would be alarmed and frightened by this book. Today's reader also lives in a time of rapid scientific advances, but the nature of current scientific discovery is different. This means that Well's tale is less relevant to the modern reader and so has less power to frighten him, although Griffin's descent into insanity still rings true.
At the time "The Landlady" was written (1959), there were lots of post war Bed & Breakfasts all over the country, run by war-widowed women. At the same time there was an increase in the number of people travelling alone around the country on business, and they often had to stay in these boarding houses. This means that to someone of that era, (and of today but to a lesser extent) this could very well be a true story. This makes the book much more frightening as the events that occur in it could be possible. Today there is still a mobile work force although there are less boarding houses than when the book was written. However, there still are lots of young men travelling the country and many of them would be attracted to a B & B like this one because of its low prices.
In conclusion, the scarier of the two stories for the modern reader is 'The Landlady' because what she did is still plausible, whereas in 'The Invisible Man' the scientific references are out of date and so of less relevance; most recent breakthroughs in science have been by teams of scientists and in the field of biology. Also, the personality of Griffin is rather extreme and it is unlikely that a scientist in his position would behave as he did. It would be more likely that they would announce their discovery and seek help. The scariest aspect of the 'The Invisible Man' for me was the way in which the villagers reacted to the invisible man and how they eventually despatched him. This is frightening because people don't change, so even today a man could be held at the mercy of a mob and kicked to death. So the scarier of the to stories for me is 'The Landlady', but to the audience of the time 'The Invisible Man' may have been more frightening.
By Geoffrey Frost
