The Landlady

How does the landlady objectify Billy? What does she find most interesting about him? Do the story’s views on objectification align with your response to the Personal Connection Prompt? Why or why not?

Teaching Suggestion: This Discussion/Analysis Prompt invites students to make the connection between objectification and The Fetishizing of Youth. As with other “objects” in her house, the landlady uses her skill in taxidermy to preserve beings in a youthful state; in this way, she manages to overcome death as well as the idea of loss, something that is inevitable with progress and modernity. As a point of interest, Dahl takes the typical gender roles (i.e., the older predatorial male and the young innocent female) and reverses them; this is an interesting comment on gender, implying that older women are able to prey on younger men without suspicion since younger men do not learn to fear them. Furthermore, reversing the typical power imbalance in this relationship—here, giving the “dotty” old lady what seems to be the agency to trap and murder her victims—is an interesting twist for both the author and the reader and perhaps makes the content more palatable for the audience.