The Landlady

One of the major themes in “The Landlady” is imprisonment or captivity. The eponymous character is presented like a jailer or prison guard, having dominion over the author, pervasively controlling physical space, meals, light, time, and even thoughts. The Landlady’s “lair” (Line 1) is directly beneath the speaker's home and is a space the landlady dominates so thoroughly that escape seems impossible. The danger of the landlady is that she is free to roam about the property as she wishes. The speaker states the landlady is “a raw voice loose in the rooms below me” (Lines 3-4). This contrasts starkly with the author’s sense of imprisonment. She seems entirely dependent on the landlady, who controls the author’s external and internal worlds. The most basic necessities—food, light, and the air the speaker breathes—are controlled, as is time itself. The landlady “is everywhere” (Line 9) and the speaker cannot even get away from her in dreams “of daring escapes in the snow” (Line 9), where the landscape becomes the landlady’s “vast face” (Lines 21-23). Upon waking, the author laments her failed attempts to “find some way around her” (Lines 26-27), as the landlady “stands there […] blocking my way” (Lines 30-31).