The motive for the crime in “Lamb to the Slaughter” is that Mary Maloney was told something by her husband that she didn’t like, what is told is never found out. But whatever is said shook Mary up enough to kill her husband. The motive for the villain Dr Grimesby Roylott was money. He murdered his stepdaughter so he didn’t have to pay her more money when she married, this was declared in her mother’s will. It is said, “Each daughter can claim an income of £250 in case of marriage… a marriage would cripple him”. This also paints out the villain as a selfish mans whom only cares about money and would kill, and did for money. This creates a figure of hate for the Victorian audience, where morality was constantly good against evil. And a picture of hate had to be created to defeat. Whereas in the “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Mary Maloney is pregnant and put in an awkward position by her husband. This twists morality in so you know she has done something wrong but she had to defend herself. It is not so much black and white, good against evil morality.
The characters in “The Speckled Band” are straightforward. Sherlock Holmes, the detective is essentially a super hero, he is intelligent, strong and friendly, and everything a Victorian gentleman should be. He is an ideal that men should follow; he uses logic and science to make sense of matters. Watson is the assistant or sidekick; he asks the questions that we would ask. He probes Holmes so we get clues and understand what is going on in Holmes’ head and try to become him.
We want to be Holmes because he is admired and we all seek admiration and to be better than normal people are, we strive and endeavour to be everything Holmes is. Dr Grimesby Roylott is a traditional villain.
In “Lamb to the Slaughter”, Mary Maloney is a soft, dependant yet strong individual. She is a symbol of feminism in some respects because she can be strong yet carry a child. Jack Noonan is the head of a team of detectives. Unlike Holmes he doesn’t work alone and doesn’t really have any special qualities for detection. This can be demonstrated when, “When she opened the door tow policemen walked in” and “Soon other men began to come into the house. First a doctor of whom she knew by name. Later a police photographer…” this is very “by the book” detection where everything is cleared.
The language in “The Speckled Band” is extravagant and vocabulary is large including detailed description. The “Speckled Band” is a metaphor for a snake, so quite exquisite language is used. Similes are present e.g. when the baboon is compared to “…a hideous and disfigured child”. Personification is used here, “The wind was howling…” to show how a natural occurrence can have human and eerie substance. “Mrs Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you”. The sentence structure is very correct, it seems too correct for everyday use, especially for modern times. But in the “Lamb to the Slaughter”, the language is simple and informal and vocabulary isn’t large. Modern conveniences like a “Thermos bucket” and informal words like “strongish” are used with a lot of Americanisms.
Feminism in the Victorian age was virtually non-existent, as can be seen with some of the characters. It wasn’t till the earlier parts of the 20th Century that feminism started to appear. Women were allowed to vote after the Victorian age, this was because their ideals were that a woman should stay at home and knit whilst the man made the money. After the Second World War, feminism was on the increase after the men went to war whilst the women looked after Britain. It is reflected in the character Mary Maloney, who is pregnant yet can overthrow her husband. Being a mother is a symbol of strength and feminism and to be that strong to be a single mother shows she has courage.
Science and logical thought were becoming more and more acceptable because the Victorian Age was the age of revolution and science. And Sherlock Holmes was the symbol of science; he used science to solve the mystery and makes logical deductions. He is a reflection of the advance of society and civilisation so they make him superior to show how much they had advanced. Also Dr Watson, being a medical doctor also reinforces that idea of science by using medical science.
Both stories represent the idea of solving a crime, detection and investigation. But they are distinctly different. For example, in “Lamb to the Slaughter” the crime is not actually solved, but it is solved in “The Speckled Band”. The reader’s knowledge of the crime appears at different stages of the story; in “Lamb to the Slaughter” it is in the middle. But in “The Speckled Band” the crime is only answered at the end.
“The Speckled Band” is set in Victorian England. This can be seen in the story to the references of towns in England such as Stoke Moran and Holmes’ home in London is referred to. But you are not actually told where it is set in the “Lamb to the Slaughter”; assumptions can be made in the language. References to Irish-American surnames such as Noonan and Maloney and words like “precinct” are in common use in America. Also there are references to “Idaho potatoes”, like when the grocer says, “You want these Idaho potatoes?”
Also because of the difference of times in the two pieces, the forms of entertainment for the people living at those times are different. For example the radio and television were not present during the Victorian times so more elaborate stories were created to exploit the imagination. This can been seen in the exotic references in “The Speckled Band”, this takes people away from their mundane lives in Britain and become a part of action. Because literature and books were seen as the main relief during the Victorian times, they should be aesthetically pleasing and be extravagant to make people read their stories and make money. And they made such stories as Sherlock Holmes’ stories entertaining and cerebral so more people would read them and so more of them were published, in doing so making more money.
However during the time of the “Lamb to the Slaughter”, television and radio could take people away from modern life, books were as popular because of all this new technology which fascinated and provided entertainment for many people. And language became simpler, so simple language was used in literature to make it more comprehensible and entertaining. This again can be seen in the simplicity of “Lamb to the Slaughter”, yet the story works because it is a different more comprehensible approach. People are still compelled to it because of questions that need fulfilling and answering. Ambiguity remains in the fact that we will never know what Mary Maloney was told by her husband that made her kill him. This creates suspense and a desire for knowledge, a desire we all crave.
After putting all this information received from the two pieces of text, ideas become apparent from the stories. “The Speckled Band” is a story where ideas are made to be fantastic and complex to provoke thought bewilderment and entertainment for the audience. It fulfils the criteria for a good story, it adds extraordinary characters to make the person amazed or have emotion for the character. In Doyle’s story, the detective Sherlock Holmes who only investigates mysterious cases as he did not investigate cases that “…did not tend to the unusual, and even the fantastic.” So immediately we anticipate some mystery which will lead to excitement. Also in the villain, he is over-exaggerated in his character of evil so that the fact that when Sherlock Holmes defeats the character, it is a triumph over evil. And because Christianity was a large part of Victorian Britain, an image of triumph over evil gives power back to the good inside them and provides influence. And like I said before Sherlock Holmes is a reflection of Victorian society, so in this ideal of their society they would want it to be victorious and triumphant to reassure themselves of their own superiority.
“Lamb to the Slaughter” however goes for a more realistic approach where realism is true drama. In many respects “Lamb to the Slaughter” is voyeuristic in that it doesn’t show how society should be rather it shows how it is. In the end the crime is not solved, in modern times the amount of crimes that aren’t solved is quite large. So as reflected in reality, the crime is not solved because they do not have the capability of solving it. The police inspectors as shown above follow police regulation and procedure, they know nothing more. The entertainment is not driven in how the actual crime was committed as in “The Speckled Band”. But rather the entertainment lies in how she deals with the murder of her husband, her alibi how she deals with the murder weapon. The audience enjoys examining how people cope with these situations; they want to sympathise and emulate the action so they can really feel a part of it. And the character of Mary Maloney is originally made out to be a simple housewife; “Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work”. And she is seen as a clean living person; “There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did.” And her husband develops as the “criminal” when he responds to his wife who is carrying child with commands like “Sit down” as if she were his servant. The audience would recognise this and be questioned whether her action of killing her husband was just, we never find out the reason so we move on assumptions that it was just. Our own morals and ideals are put to the test and when it ends on a sinister note, it makes the reader ponder whether she shouldn’t have killed where it ends on; “And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle”. The reader now begins to question is she really who we think she is? We don’t really know her and do we really know anyone?
