Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The  Folly of Youth

Billy Weaver’s youth and inexperience are a central theme of the story, as well as a leading reason why things go so badly for him. His naiveté, inexperience, and go-along-to-get-along conflict avoidance are all hallmarks of youth, and these adolescent traits bring humor and levity to the story. Billy is only seventeen years old and naturally looks to his superiors for guidance in how to behave. Because he has seen successful businessmen walk about very briskly everywhere they go, he decides to simply copy them and do everything briskly himself. This detail highlights Billy’s youth and inexperience, sets a humorous tone, and casts Billy as a somewhat pitiable character. It also foreshadows Billy’s demise and hints that Billy’s youthful inexperience will cause him to walk briskly and enthusiastically right into a trap. At numerous points, Billy’s youth and inexperience cause him to ignore or avoid any indication that the landlady and her bed and breakfast are unsafe. He is drawn in by the cleanliness and seeming coziness of the landlady’s house. These things appeal to Billy as a young man who is only recently on his own in the world. The landlady represents a motherly figure, and her home likely represents the home of Billy’s youth, complete with tea and cookies. As a result, Billy ignores or pushes aside any indication that the landlady is mentally unwell and possibly dangerous. Rather than assert himself and ask pointed questions about the things that concern him, Billy’s youth causes him to be conflict avoidant. Indeed, the landlady targets men like Billy specifically because they are young. She knows that their youth makes them overly trusting and therefore easy to entrap. Unfortunately for Billy, the landlady’s cunning proves effective. Because of his youth and inexperience, he does not realize what is happening until it is much too late.

The Effect of Grief and Psychosis

The landlady’s grief and resulting psychosis is never stated directly in the story, but it is nonetheless a theme that looms in the background throughout. No reason is ever given for why the landlady lives alone, but her psychosis suggests that something terrible has happened to cause her seclusion. Billy guesses this might be the case when he first senses the landlady’s mental instability and attributes it to a son or husband lost in the war, which is an understandable assumption, as “The Landlady” takes place in 1950s England. Therefore, an English woman around the landlady’s age very likely would have had a son or husband who fought in World War II. England lost huge numbers of young men to the war, and this left an equal number of mothers and wives to grieve over lost loved ones. Roald Dahl himself fought in the war and experienced its horrors firsthand, so he would have a keen understanding of the way grief can affect a person. Dahl’s landlady is a tragic example of this, as she is a woman whose grief is more than she can handle. Instead of accepting that her lost loved one is really gone, she finds other young men, whom she murders and taxidermies, to take his place. She does the same thing with her pets and for the same reason. Unable to process her grief and accept that her pets are gone, she simply keeps them around as if nothing ever happened. Thus, the landlady’s house and all the dead things in it are a monument to her grief and an expression of her psychosis. 

The Insidious Nature of Evil

The landlady is one of only two characters in the story, yet she is given no name, a choice that suggests the landlady is not just a person, but a symbol for evil itself. The savagery of the landlady’s actions is certainly disturbing, and this kind of violence is the most obvious characteristic of evil. But the way she behaves and goes about her awful business reveals evil’s more subtle and insidious nature. The landlady and her hostel-turned-deathtrap show that in order to achieve its aims, evil must deceive. The animals look real, the tea looks delicious, and the bed looks cozy. These deceptions all cause Billy to think he is safe and to walk further into the trap. But in fact, the animals are dead, the tea is poisonous, and Billy will be dead long before he has the chance to use the bed. Yet, Billy is not the only one who is deceived. The landlady, unable to accept reality and process grief, deceives herself into believing her pets are still company and her boarders are still guests. This deception shows that evil, through grief and psychosis, has insidiously worked its way into the landlady. Evil has penetrated her so thoroughly and so stealthily that she smilingly abducts and murders, seemingly unaware of how monstrous it all is. The insidious nature of this kind of evil also suggests that no one is immune to it. Everyone loses loved ones. Everyone grieves. Everyone struggles to process hurt and loss. Therefore, the real horror of “The Landlady” is that, just like the landlady’s bed and breakfast, evil hides in plain sight, including within ourselves.