The Speckled Band By Arthur Conan Doyle Essay

Can you imagine Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, the great work of literature, without, for example, such female characters as Mrs. Margaret Saville, Elizabeth Lavenza, and Justine Moritz? In this case the novel will have no meaning. All the women help to develop the plot, and without them Frankenstein will lose its spirit. Although these heroines have a lot in common in their characters: they are all strong-willed, kind, careful, and selfless, at the same time, each of them is unique, and each plays her own role in the novel. Mrs. Margaret Saville is the woman to whom the narrator tells the story. Elizabeth Lavenza is the beloved of Victor Frankenstein. Justine Moritz is the heroine who is accused by mistake of murdering

Rather than surrendering to the trickery of Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler outsmarts him using his own tricks and makes her escape right under his nose. The narrowly defined roles of women were evident for the only means to discuss women in this story is through their relations with men. No woman, not even Irene Adler, has her own story. After all in the end, even Irene Adler runs away with a man. Out of the five female characters mentioned or referred to in this story, only one is given a name and a personality. This lack of female representation shows how dominant males were in the society of the story and in the society of the real world.

The story ‘Scandal in Bohemia’ starts of very odd, “To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman’. This has already given the reader a hint of suspense as it is something unusual. It was always thought that Holmes had no feelings and no emotions for anyone, but according to this opening the above phrase is

King’s Mary Russell series aimed to update the Sherlock Holmes cannon to the modern feminist era. However, King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice undermines its own feminist views through Mary’s approval seeking behavior, society’s restriction of women’s access to professional roles, and Mary’s tendency to react emotionally.

Some critics have advanced the notion that one of the reasons there is such a paucity of women and of strong, beneficent women in particular within this story is due to what they represented in typical Victorian England society. Women were generally viewed as "a social force or a source of authority" which "reinforces this fiction of coherent male identity" (Doane and Hodges 63). This quotation suggests the fact that women were generally the keepers of morality and virtue within Victorian

Throughout the years, different forms of literature  have generally shown women as weaker than men. They have played archetypes such as the mother archetype or the lover which have traits less desirable than the roles that men would take. These archetypes tend to limit their personalities and they become characters that are solely there for inconveniencing the hero. Stereotypes for women have affected these archetypes, but throughout history many people have made efforts to change these archetypes and make them more desirable. Even though archetypes for women have been shown as weak, it has changed throughout the years.

The women of these novels showed feminine empowerment. Although they had obstacles that could have over come them they still stood against them and showed that females can be strong and independent too.

A social criticism in these detective fiction stories from the 19th century is feminists fighting for equality. These stories had men that had expectations of women already, and even when the women would try to help the men, they would assume that the women had no idea about anything involving the crime. They believed women were just wasting time on silly things. Just like in “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell, Wright is accused of murdering her husband. While five people come to her house, the sheriff, his wife, one of the Mrs.Wright neighbors, his wife, and a county prosecutor. The men are looking for evidence to use against her. The women are collecting personal effects to bring to Mrs.Wright. But they find details that the men couldn’t have found or even noticed. For example, Mrs. Hale was fixing up a sewing that Mrs.Wright did not do well, Mrs. Hale said she did not stitch one or two well. She believed that Mrs.Wright was nervous about something because of the pattern of the sewing, she started off very good and then you can almost see a string being sewed in with frightness. Mrs. Hale explained “the sewing… All the rest of them have been so nice and even but this one. Why it looks as if she did not know what she was about!” (Glaspell 154) Mrs.Hale is probably asking herself why was Mrs.Wright nervous? What could have she heard that made her frightened, or what had happened for her to be frightened enough to mess up her great sewing pattern.

In the modern world women work, vote, run for office and the list goes on. In most aspects, women are equal to men. However, this was not always the case. In centuries past, women were not viewed as being equal to men socially, intellectually, or politically and were thought incapable of accomplishing anything of value. Consequently, many cultures held the view that women were possessions whose only purpose was to be subservient to men. The view of women as mere objects is evident in various works of literature throughout the ages. Two classic works of literature that exemplify this are The Thousand and One Nights and Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of

     Until recently, the role of women in literature has seemed to reflect the way they were treated in society. Women were seen as secondary to men, and their sole purpose in life was to please a man’s every desire. This is not the case in three specific literary works. The Odyssey, The Wife of Bath, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight use the actions of its women characters to greatly enhance important thematic elements. The women in each of these works use feminine psyche to persuade men to do things that men of the time would not usually do. The use of women in these literary works is very contrary to the prevailing ideals of the female and her responsibilities at the

Reflecting upon their role in society, women in literature are often portrayed in a position

Sherlock Holmes used his observance to come to the conclusion that occurred at the end of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” transcribed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In April 1883, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson experienced an encounter with Helen Stoner; Helen requested that Sherlock and Watson look into the case of her sister’s death. Holmes and Watson were recommended by a mutual friend of Helen’s. Helen Stoner and Dr. Roylott lived in Stoke Moran. Dr. Roylott, Helen’s stepfather, was an aggressive man. After Helen Stoner’s mother had perished, Dr. Roylott was left with her will until each girl got married. When married each girl would get one third of the money. Helen’s sister, Julia, had

While the men in the story where playing Sherlock Holmes looking for evidence that Mrs. Wright killed her husband, they missed the bad fruit and the bread left out of the bow, a quilt that was not finished and had a few bad stiches, an unclean table and a birdcage that was empty. They were so determined to find specific clues of the murder, that they missed the clues of the emotional abuse that Mrs. Wright was subjected to from her husband. They were also so busy criticizing everything that Mrs. Wright did or did not do, that they missed everything that was right in front of their eyes. They even slipped with some sexist remarks Mr. Hale says ‘Well, women are used to worrying over trifles’, not realizing that the women were in the room.

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which