"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" focuses on the helplessness of children and women in a society that gives all legal power to adult males.

The Stoner twins' inherited fortunes are controlled by their cruel stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott, and the twins may secure their inheritances for themselves only by marrying. When the marriage of one is soon to occur, she dies horribly, crying to her sister, "Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!" Two years later, Helen is to be married; she is frightened for her life and asks Sherlock Holmes to help her. This reads like a fairy tale, with Holmes as the gallant knight answering the call of a maiden in distress, but at bottom it is a tale of a powerless woman.

The short story also presents a social theme similar to that in The Hound of the...