{"id":2512,"date":"2023-09-29T21:31:49","date_gmt":"2023-09-30T01:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=2512"},"modified":"2023-09-29T21:31:49","modified_gmt":"2023-09-30T01:31:49","slug":"lamb-to-the-slaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2023\/09\/29\/lamb-to-the-slaughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Lamb to the Slaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2018It is not cold that makes me shiver,\u2019 said the woman in a low voice, changing her seat as requested. \u2018What then?\u2019 \u2018It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.\u2019 She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless, frightened eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features and figure were those of a woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature grey\u2026\u201d (Doyle 132).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This initial description of Helen Stoner does a nice job of setting up the story. There are many words that fall in line with the monstrosity\/madness of the entire text. First are the words \u201cfear\u201d and \u201cterror,\u201d which are attributed to the unusual death of Helen\u2019s sister. The presence of a veil is also quite revealing. Veils are traditionally worn to protect or conceal the face, which feeds into the common theme of secrecy throughout the works we are reading. Helen\u2019s face being described as drawn and grey puts imagery into the mind of the reader that can be likened to a corpse or a ghost. Juxtaposed with the following descriptions of \u201crestless, frightened eyes,\u201d this section makes Helen out to be a lamb to the slaughter. In fact, this passage explicitly denotes Helen as resembling some sort of hunted animal. The animals present in the story provide a nice flavor to the text. We learn that Grimesby Roylott practiced medicine in India and brought back with him a handful of pets, including a cheetah and baboon, and an extremely venomous snake, as we later learn. Perhaps all the animals present amongst the humans is Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s way of likening humans to animals in the sense that we are both selfishly after personal gain. Roylott, as Sherlock Holmes discovers, wishes to kill his step daughters in an effort to avert the conditions of the prenuptial agreement and save money for himself. Meanwhile, Helen defends herself stubbornly by contacting Holmes and Watson, like a cornered snake would defend itself from a predator. The cherry on top of Doyle\u2019s imagery is the rapidly aging young woman. As readers, we can sympathize with the emotional toll put on Helen by recent events. Every tidbit of illustration leads the reader to understand that Helen is on borrowed time if it weren\u2019t for the heroism of Sherlock Holmes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2018It is not cold that makes me shiver,\u2019 said the woman in a low voice, changing her seat as requested. \u2018What then?\u2019 \u2018It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.\u2019 She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn … Continue reading Lamb to the Slaughter<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2512","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\/2512","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\/5342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}