\u201cInstead of making friends and exchanging visits with our neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of Stoke Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in his house, and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper approaching to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family, and in my stepfather\u2019s case it had, I believe, been intensified by his long residence in the tropics\u201d (Conan Doyle, 134).<\/p>\n
In this passage, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, “The Speckled Band”, we see the character of Helen Stoner indulging Watson and Holmes in the background of her stepfather, which is relevant in understanding the unfortunate events that led to her sister\u2019s untimely demise. Similarly, to the story that we find in, Lady Audley\u2019s secret, <\/em>we see an explicit reference to a potential, \u201chereditary madness\u201d; for Dr. Roylott found in the men of his line, and for Lady Audley through her mother. In my fascination with binaries in gothic literature, it is interesting to see another example of the binary of wealthy, upstanding professionals\/citizens juxtaposed with the concept of \u201cmadness\u201d. Lady Audley is a credit to her profession before she is proposed to by Lord Michael, and therefore, her eventual downfall and \u201calternative side\u201d, is emphasized as all the worse. The same could be said for Dr. Roylott as his stepdaughters wanted for nothing, and he was generally proficient at his job, in conjunction with having lineage of noble standing, that his fits of anger were all the more terrifying to the reader. We can then ask ourselves, what does this mean to the text as whole? I would assert that the authors of both of these works are making claims about the hidden elements of higher society, even the \u201cGod-like\u201d standards that we may impart on noble and wealthy individuals, compared to our expectations of madness in those that may come from lower-class backgrounds or of certain undesirable professions. Do we expect those in lower positions to be driven mad by their unsavory conditions and therefore it is all the more shocking when they appear more sane than their privileged and protected counterparts? I think that is a question that emerges throughout gothic literature when characters of different class standing are introduced. Furthermore, we see that Dr. Roylott\u2019s illness is hypothesized to be heightened largely due to his time in India. We can then extend our expectations and reactions from merely class discussions to those of race and place. This \u201cforeign\u201d world is a synonym for danger and madness and the authors expectations of people who fit in these class and race categories defy the behavioral expectations set by Victorian societal standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cInstead of making friends and exchanging visits with our neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of Stoke Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in his house, and seldom came out save to indulge in ferocious quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper … Continue reading Friends In Low Places<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}