The Landlady

In this story, there is a strong sense of dread, but also one of passivity and inertia.

Both the dread and the inertia seem to come from the setting of the story, which is one of British, middle-class conventionality and comfort. Billy is served tea and cookies in the landlady’s cozy parlor, a ritual with which he is probably familiar, even if the town of Bath is strange to him. He is also soothed by his “small but charming” bedroom in the boardinghouse, and by the person of the landlady herself, who reminds him of his friends’ mothers (Lines 203-04). Her familiarity allows Billy to discount some of her odder and more alarming pronouncements as mere “dottiness,” and to write her off as a harmless eccentric (itself a British tradition).

The landlady’s hints about her eventual plans for Billy are not subtle. She reminisces over the soft skin and beauty of her two previous lodgers, both of whom happened to be young men like Billy himself. She tells Billy that he is “the perfect age,” and at one point even tells him that her two previous lodgers “never left” (Line 408). Even so, Billy continues to sit with her in her parlor, rather than fleeing. It is not quite accurate to say that he does not understand what is about to happen to him. He does understand, or is on the verge of understanding, but his horror paralyzes him as much as the comfortable setting does, to the point where he cannot quite tell horror and comfort apart. When the landlady invites Billy to examine her dead-and-stuffed dachshund, coyly asking him if he has “met [her] little Basil,” Billy pets the dog and realizes that it is cold to the touch (Line 457). He is not, however, immediately shocked or revolted, or at least not obviously so. He stares at the landlady with “deep admiration,” asking her how she has managed such a difficult task; a few lines later, however, he asks her with dawning suspicion if it is really true that he is the only lodger that she has had in the past two years (Line 471).

This vacillation between horror and normalcy is seen most starkly in the story’s motif of taxidermy. Taxidermy is a gruesome practice, but also—at least in certain venues–an accepted and conventional one. In upper-class households, especially, taxidermied animals are often used as decoration, curiosity, or trophy. The town of Bath, as well as the landlady’s boarding house, is described not as upper-class, but rather as formerly elegant and run-down; the landlady’s taxidermied animals, being household pets rather than wild beasts caught on a safari, are also less than grand. This makes their taxidermied state more shocking and peculiar; they seem to exist (as do the young men) to keep the landlady company, and to give her an illusion of permanence and continuity in an uncertain world. In this way, they are not so different from the more conventional aspects of her life, such as her comfortable parlor and her afternoon teas. Billy is drawn into the house by the sight of this cozy parlor through the window, but also by a force that is more sinister and elusive: “And now a queer thing happened to him. He was in the act of stepping back and turning away when all at once his eye was caught and held in the most peculiar manner by the small notice that was there” (Lines 96-101). 

Taken together, the inviting parlor and the creepily-hypnotizing sign suggest a sort of bullying comfort, a quietude with violence underneath. The fact that the story ends quietly, moreover–with Billy’s destiny only hinted at, rather than graphically shown–allows this equivocal mood to remain, and makes the ordinary parlor seem almost as disturbing as the landlady’s conversation.