Compare and Contrast A Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy and The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

Compare and Contrast A Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy and The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

In this essay I am going to explain the similarities and differences

between 'The withered arm' and 'The monkeys paw'. Both of these texts

were written before 1914 by two different people. Thomas Hardy wrote

'The withered arm' and W.W. Jacobs wrote 'A monkeys paw'.

The withered arm is a short story about a milkmaid who had an affair

with a high class farmer. When the farmer gets a new wife, the

milkmaid becomes jealous.

In a nightmare, the milkmaid who is called Rhoda Brooks sees the new

wife she had been obsessing over for the past few days in a horrific

apparition gloats over her new husband. In this nightmare Rhoda grabs

the apparition and feels her arm as if it were real as she throws the

spectre to the floor. The ghost is gone when she looks down. The

farmers' new wife, the next day, finds a new mark on her forearm in

the shape of a hand in the same place that Rhoda had grabbed the

apparition. Rhoda and Gertrude, the farmers' wife soon become good

friends as her arm becomes increasingly more serious. Eventually

Gertrude persuades Rhoda to get her to take her to a conjurer called

conjurer Trendle who is a local magic man. Eventually Rhoda takes her

and conjurer Trendle gives her advice but does not give a solution to

her trouble. They return home to the village.

A year later after Rhoda and her son had left the village Gertrud's

arm is becoming steadily worse and she is using all types of potions

and magick on it but nothing seems to make it any worse so she goes to

see conjurer Trendle for one last time. This time he gives her a

solution, she must touch the neck of a recently hanged man while the

body is...

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...ell

in the rural setting of A withered arm.

The time frame for each story is also different, the monkeys paw all

takes place over a few weeks where as a withered arm has the story

lasting for over a year. The time frame they are set in gives them a

big difference as it distinguishes one from the other easily.

I think that the story which is most striking out of these two has to

be The monkeys paw. This story is a better length to not take a while

to read and the plot seems better as a whole. Each character seems to

have obviously different personalities that they use all the time and

these are distinctly separate from the characters of a withered arm. I

like the way that the ending of this story is a cliff hanging, we are

not told what Herbert looks like after he was brought back to life we

are just told about the sigh of dismay from Mr Whites wife.