Lopez 1 Katia Lopez Dr.

Haas Writing 37 11 February 2014

A Womans Worth In Conan Doyles The Hound of the Baskervilles, the different gender roles in the Victorian Era are revealed page after page. In the 1800s women did not have as many rights as men did and were considered second-rate citizens (Kent 30). There are plenty of women in the Doyle novels that are treated inferior to men. In The Hound, one woman that is treated as an object is Miss. Beryl Stapleton. Miss Stapleton allowed her husband to manipulate her into helping him commit crimes. Miss. Stapleton was a woman in the 19th century and women in the 19th century did not have a say in what became of their lives. Women in the Victorian Era did not know their worth therefore they allowed themselves to be mistreated. During the reign of Queen Victoria, a woman's place was in the home, as domesticity and motherhood These constructs kept women far away from the public sphere, BBC says. Women in the Victorian Era did not understand their worth. Women in the Victorian Era did as their husbands said because they had not known any other way of life. In Sir Arthur Conan Doyles The Hound of the Baskervilles published in 1902, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are asked to help a young man uncover the secrets of his family. Along the way, Sherlock and Watson meet an interesting duo, Mr. Stapleton, a naturalist and his beautiful sister Miss Beryl Stapleton. Throughout the novel, we learn that Mr. Stapleton is in fact married to Miss. Stapleton and has been abusing her both mentally and physically. Mr. Stapleton had been making his wife

Lopez 2 help him with his crimes. In one of the passages of Hound of the Baskerville we learn that Mr. Stapleton tied up his wife after he hit her for not cooperating with him. On page 256 Mrs. Stapleton (notice she is no longer Miss. Stapleton) says the following, Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me! She shot her arm out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. But this is nothingnothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool (Doyle 256). Mrs. Stapleton has allowed herself to be manipulated by her husband for many years and it is in this passage where she is speaking to Holmes and Watson that she learns there is no chance of her husband changing. Back in the Victorian Era, women did anything to keep their husbands happy, like Mrs. Stapleton would do for Mr. Stapleton (BBC). The women in the Victorian Era who typically did as their husbands asked were the women in the middle class and the upper class. The women who were in the lower class usually had more freedom due to the fact that they had to work in order to help provide for their families; but even though these women were in different classes, they were still viewed as objects (Kent 32). Women in the Victorian Era were not allowed to do half of the things men did (Perkin 73). For example, in Silver Blaze one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories tells the story of a horse trainer who tried sabotaging the horse he was training because he had bet against it. The only reason he bet against his own horse was because he knew he could stop his horse from winning. It turns out the trainer had a mistress who had very expensive taste and in order to keep her satisfied, the trainer had to spend all of his money on her, leaving him in debt. Because the trainer was a male, it was still frowned upon to have a mistress but the degree of punishment

Lopez 3 was not as bad as it would have been for a woman who was unfaithful to her husband. If a woman were to be unfaithful to her husband she would be ostracized and deemed impure. It has never been easy to be a woman in a mans world. Women are constantly objectified and looked down by men. Aside from being objectified, women also face expectations that they must meet in order to be considered a woman; one of them being marriage and the other being to bear children (Kent 91). But as a woman in the 21st century, I know we could do it all. Women nowadays are able to hold high-powered positions in corporations and at the end of the day still come home to a family. A great example would be Ivanka Trump. Not only is Ivanka Trump a business woman/model/writer, but she is also a mother to two children. Oprah Winfrey without a doubt is a great example of a powerful woman in the 21st century. Not only has she been on the Forbes 400 list but she is also the wealthiest African American in the 20th century and still has time for her significant other. Clearly, these two women know what they are worth and know what they are capable of. Women in the Victorian Era did not know that and allowed themselves to be mistreated, like Mrs. Stapleton did. But as time passed and women gained rights, they gained a voice as well. Women in the 21st century do not allow themselves to be talked down to anymore. They have learned from history that as long as they let themselves be demeaned, they will continue to be treated that way.

Work Cited: Abrams, Lynn. Victorian Britain. BBC. Jul. 2006.Web. Feb. 2014. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskerville. United Kingdom: The Strand Magazine, 1902. Print.

Lopez 4 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes Adventure 1: Silver Blaze. England: Newnes. 1894. Print. Kent, Susan. Sex and Suffrage in Britain 1860-1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Perkin, Joan. Victorian Women. New York: New York University Press 1993.