The Portrayal of Gender, Ethnicity and Class in Two of Arthur Conan Doyle's Stories

The Portrayal of Gender, Ethnicity and Class in Two of Arthur Conan Doyle's Stories

Arthur Conan Doyle was a well known writer during the Victorian Era

and still is today. He was famous for his stories. One of his books

had a fictional character that caught people's attention. This

character is a spectacular detective, Sherlock Holmes. People loved

Sherlock Holmes so much because he always solves the case and always

defeat evil. In fact, in one of Arthur's short story, 'The Speckled

Band', Sherlock Holmes was described as "the Scotland Yard

Jack-in-office" and "the busybody!"

This period of time is called the Victorian Era because the ruler

during this time was Queen Victoria. There were a lot of crimes

committed at this time. Common ones were murder and drug abuse, which

were feared greatly by people. The life style of people in the

Victorian Era was different to everyday life. In the Victorian Times,

there were three different groups of people. These were the upper

class - rich and powerful people who don't need to work, middle class

- have to work to support but not physical work, and lower/working

class - poor people with no money and works physically.

'The Speckled Band' and 'The Man with the Twisted Lip' are one of

Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. This piece of writing is to show how

these two stories give the readers an idea of how people lived and

behaved in the Victorian Era and what people expected of certain

people because of either their gender, their ethnicity or their class.

In Victorian Times, women were treated differently to men. Women

within this time were considered to be very emotional. We know this

because ...

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... class man who didn't act like the

way upper class people behave. In the story of 'The Speckled Band' Dr

Roylott was a monster in his community. He is violent and has a

criminal status. This happened when he was still in India where "he

beat his native butler to death…" He has "no friends at all save the

wandering gypsies…" An upper class is less likely to get involved with

people like them. Pets in the Victorian times are animals like cats

and dogs, owned by anyone group of people. However, no one had wild

animals as pets except from Dr Roylott, who had "a cheetah and baboon"

and a speckle band which the reader later found to be a dangerous

Indian snake. Dr Roylott is very aggressive, short tempered,

non-sociable, scruffy and considerably rude and doesn't act the way a

proper upper class individual should be have.