46 pages • 1 hour read
Roald DahlThe Landlady
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Dachshund
The dachshund, who seems to be asleep in front of the fireplace, is one of the things that lures Billy into the boarding house. Its presence, like the presence of the stuffed parrot, makes the parlor seem inviting and cozy. It is possible that it is for this very reason–to lure in unsuspecting guests–that the dog has been placed in front of the fireplace. It is also possible that the stuffed animal is a genuine comfort for the landlady, as well as a bait for potential guests.
The moment when Billy touches the dog, having been invited by the landlady to do so, is also the moment when the real horror of the story is made manifest. The reader feels the horror, even if Billy does not, in the description of the dead animal’s “hard and cold” back and his “greyish-black and dry and perfectly preserved” skin (Lines 464-67). The stuffed dog in front of the fireplace is also shocking in a way that the perched, stuffed parrot is not. We are accustomed to seeing taxidermied animals mounted and displayed like ornaments, but not to them being placed in lifelike roles; we are also, as humans, more accustomed to identifying with dogs than with tropical birds.
Billy’s reaction to discovering that the dog is stuffed is strange, and also telling. He does not seem repulsed by the dead dog, let alone worried about his own safety. He instead admires the landlady’s handiwork, commenting, “It must be awfully difficult to do a thing like that” (Lines 473-74). It is a detached and automatic response that shows how much a creature of habit and custom Billy is, to the point where he is incapable of registering what is right in front of him.
Tea
The tea that the landlady serves Billy is likely poisoned. It is described as having a funny taste of “bitter almonds,” which is the smell most associated with cyanide. Further, we are told that the landlady holds the tea tray out well in front of her, as if she herself does not want to inhale its fumes (Line 479). However, we do not know for sure if the tea is a murder weapon or only another one of the story’s slightly skewed and creepy details. It’s likely, however, that it is.
The atmosphere in the story is one of gathering menace and oddity, rather than outright violence, so that there is no one element in the story that seems threatening and out of place. Rather, the entire setting of the story–which is supposed to be one of shelter and tranquility–contributes to the story’s feeling of unease. Nothing, from the names in the guestbook to the landlady’s idea of acceptable fireside patter, is quite what Billy has expected.
Serving tea is a classic British custom, and Billy reacts to the taste of the tea with classic British understatement: “[H]e didn’t much care for it,” we are told (Lines 479-80). Taken by itself, this line does not sound particularly ominous. However, Billy’s reaction comes near the end of the story, immediately following his discovery that the dachshund by the fireplace is dead. It therefore seems like a quietly-pointed moment, rather than an innocuous detail.
Bath, England
The city of Bath is a significant setting for this story. Like the landlady, it is stranger and more threatening than it appears to be at first, and Billy underestimates the city, as he does the landlady. A London dweller himself, he imagines Bath to be simply a smaller and more manageable version of London, rather than an entirely different entity. Although he arrives in the city after dark, knowing no one and having no place to stay, he still walks “briskly” down the street as if he knows exactly where he is going (Line 33). This is a type of big city corporate bluffing that has perhaps worked for him in London, but that does not work for him here.
While London is a modern, industrialized city, Bath is described as a quiet, mostly residential place. It is also described as elegant, but run-down: a place that has seen better days, and that has failed to keep pace with the times. Walking down the street in search of lodging, Billy notes the formerly-grand buildings: “They had porches and pillars and four or five steps going up to their front doors, and it was obvious that once upon a time they had been very swanky residences” (Lines 42-46). The neglected condition of these buildings, as well as the abandoned-feeling quietness of the street, make Billy especially susceptible to the inviting scene that he sees inside the window of the landlady’s house. Without quite realizing it, he is put off and frightened by Bath, and he feels a need not only for shelter, but for comfort and company as well.
Related Titles
By Roald Dahl
