Helen comes to Holmes and Watson for help, as she is frightened of her stepfather
Grimesby Roylott. She has probably already been to the police about him but she would be turned away as she’s a woman and would take her wealthy respected stepfathers side. She comes in shivering and Holmes and Watson make the assumption that she is cold and offer her coffee and tell her to sit by the fire. This shows Holmes and Watson are a bit patronising towards her and the audience see them as superior to her. To be fair Holmes and Watson are polite to Helen bit you always get the sense of superiority from them.
In the Victorian era men made the rules and women and the poor followed them. When a women got married she then became the property of her husband and what he said goes. If a women got pregnant outside of marriage their families threw them away. There were many benefits that women did not have at this time e.g. They didn’t have maternity leave, The vote, Holidays from work and No pay for the sick.
Lamb to the slaughter is set in the 1950’s. The main character is Mrs Maloney, Mrs Maloney is different to Helen Stoner she’s quite independent even though she’s a housewife, She’s well educated and later on she’s sly and cunning. She’s emotional but this is down to the fact that she’s pregnant.
Roald Dahl starts the story building up a sweet and innocent picture of Mrs Maloney.
She has her husband’s tea ready for when he comes home, she’s cleaned the whole house and has his slippers ready. This changes rapidly as her husband gives her bad news which gives us the impression that he’s leaving, she flips and kills him by waking a joint of lamb of the back of his head (This could be down to the fact that she’s pregnant). She then carry’s on with her daily routine and goes to the local shop to pretend to buy her husband some tea which shows how cunning she is, we would expect Helen Stoner to break down hysterically and be to nervous to argue with a man. In the Victorian age men had a repressed attitude towards women. This still happens in many third world country’ were a man can beat a woman just because of the clothes they wear and get away with it, this repressive attitude reflects the Victorian age. Roald Dahl shows the police as stupid like in many detective stories as they believe her straight away, which might be because her husband was a policeman. She feeds the murder weapon to the policeman getting rid of any evidence it was her, this to me is a good ending as it defies a stereotypical detective story as the criminal gets away with the crime, you wouldn’t she his in a Sherlock Holmes story.
So in conclusion women’s rights and sexual politics have changed vastly over the years and women can look forward to better futures.
