The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs a Comparison to the Time and Period in Which the Short Story Was Written Essay Example

“The Monkey’s Paw” was written by Wiliam Wymark Jacobs of England in 1902. W. W. Jacobs, who wrote mostly humorous short stories which reflected British culture, lived in England near the wharves where trading ships moored to load and unload their goods from other countries. Surprisingly a horror story, “The Monkey’s Paw” is actually his most famous piece, involving a popular theme from the Book of One Thousand and One Nights. In this short story, a monkey’s paw grants three wishes to its three consecutive owners, causing misfortune with every request. The other main theme was the clash of the outside world with domesticity. This draws more upon the period of society in England during which the short story was written. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, social class was highly favored by the English. It affected the way the people spoke, the way they dressed, and the relationships between family members. As the “Monkey’s Paw” was set in a working class man’s home, the way the three family characters behave is not much different than the way Americans might have acted in the mid-1900s, meaning that the family was well bonded, the mother did the cooking and cleaning, spoke easily to another without any preliminaries. The story could have been based anywhere, so small is the influence of the society. The era in which the tale is based, however, is fairly clear, as Herbert White was killed while working closely with a large, fallible machine, suggesting that the events did indeed occur over the same period which W. W. Jacobs wrote it; the early 1900s.
There were two major themes in “The Monkey’s Paw”; the danger of wishing and the clash of family life with the outside world. The former is a well-known theme from Arabian Nights (which is mentioned by a character in “Monkey’s Paw”) but it does not reflect anything on the time period it was written in. The monkey’s paw grants three wishes, though with each wish granted comes a consequence. For the Whites, this