The Monkey’s Paw Study Guide

W. W. Jacobs grew up in a working-class family in London, where his father worked as a manager of the South Devon Wharf. His father’s profession would greatly impact Jacobs’ later work, as he earned fame for his sea stories and humor writing. As a young man, Jacobs worked as a clerk for the Savings Bank Department of the General Post Office. During this time, he began writing as a hobby and a way to earn extra money. After being published in several magazines, Jacobs recognized his passion for writing and felt successful enough to quit his job in civil service. Politically conservative, he had a rocky marriage to Agnes Eleanor Williams, with whom he had five children. Throughout his writing career, Jacobs published several short story collections, including Snug Harbor, a massive collection of his work, in 1931, but today he is most well-known for his horror story, The Monkey’s Paw.

By the mid-1800s, Britain had taken control, directly or indirectly, of most of India. While the colonization of India brought Britain access to unprecedented amounts of natural resources, land, and labor, many Britons at the time feared that the otherness and foreignness of the colony would negatively impact British culture. This is reflected in the supposed evil of the monkey’s paw, which Morris brings from India. Jacobs grew up in Victorian England, an era characterized by the rule of Queen Victoria and an emphasis on morals and manners. Part of these morals celebrated the sacredness of family and the home, shown by the happy home life of the Whites at the beginning of the story. The Victorian era also saw rapid industrialization in England, shown by Herbert working and then dying in a factory.

Just as the monkey’s paw comes from India to bring tragedy into the Whites’ lives, The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also conflates objects from India with evil. Both stories reflect a common fear among Britons during the late 1800s and early 1900s of the otherness and foreignness of the countries Britain colonized. The Monkey’s Paw also deals with the macabre, a term for works dealing with gruesome and ghastly subjects associated with death. This relates to other gothic stories such as The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft, which like The Monkey’s Paw also deals with subjects of grief and supernatural horror. The story also borrows directly from The Thousand and One Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales also known as the Arabian Nights, which Mrs. White references in the narrative. In the most popular of the tales, a boy named Aladdin receives a magic lamp that grants him wishes, just as the monkey’s paw grants wishes.