Question

how does a shift in the physical description of the landlady throughout the passage impact the story's meaning​

Answer 1

Answer: We are noticing trough the story that she is not what she seems to be.

Explanation:  

The central theme of the short horror story ''The Landlady'' by Roald Dahl, is a deception that she is experiencing trough her life situations. The first look of the landlady appears to be a caring and good middle-aged woman that likes to help others. She is benign and we can see that in the story were ''Bed and Breakfast'', her hotel, is described as a hotel where people can stay overnight for five or six pennies. The landlady is a woman with a round face and blue eyes.

Trough the story, we can feel that there is a problem with her behavior because of the mysterious things.

Billy, a traveler, is noticing that there are no names in the guest book and she acted like she was expecting him. Later, he is discovering that her pets, parrot, and dog, are stuffed.

• As the story flows, we are discovering that she is a taxidermist and that she is stuffing her animals. Later on, she is noticing that she has a desire to stuff people too and that is the kind of deception that is showing up in this story in which we can see that she is not a good person as she seems.

• Notes: All of her guests were handsome and people were considering her as the strange person so she lowered the price to attract others who didn't know her.

• Meaning of the story: People are not always as they seem.

Answer 2

Answer:

We find a number of themes in the story, The Landlady, by Roald Dahl. The central theme is deception. The landlady appears to be a good soul, kind-hearted, caring, generous and, most importantly, benign.

In the story, people were assuming different things about the landlady therefore the landlady decided to lower the prices so she can attract those people who didn't think they could afford it.

This changes the stories theme entirely.