Landlady Tasks

1. Is ‘The Landlady’ a continuation of the stories about women as witches, and teach mistrust and caution?

I think some parts of the landlady show that women are witches. For example, the landlady has a weird hobby of turning people into taxidermies which could be misunderstood as a ritual. Also, she has the uncanny ability to read minds because she knew that Billy would like to stay at her house even though she wasn’t visible to him and the fact that she knew exactly when he would open the door.

Also, this story teaches mistrust and caution because Billy was not following his correct assumptions that the landlady was a bit odd and a bit creepy. He placed his trust in something that would inevitably be his downfall and he didn’t show any signs of caution in his decisions of staying at the landlady’s house.

2. ‘Well, I’m going to bed. Goodnight.’ She smiles at me again and gently says ‘goodnight’.As I walk up the stairs to my room, there is the faint click of a lock behind me. I realise that she was as morbid and creepy as I thought. I quickly run back down the stairs and I try to open the door with no success. I decide to go and have a look at my room. I open the door which hasn’t been oiled in decades, so there was some effort required. The first thing I notice is that there are no windows, ‘so I’m stuck here’ I mutter to myself. The door suddenly slams behind me and locks. The only thing I hear for the rest of my living time is a funeral song being played by a record player in the wall.