Abstract
This chapter argues that the BBC’s Sherlock limits the development of professional female characters, suggesting an anxiety about such characters competing with the male detective. It examines how professional female clients who appear prominently in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are presented as formidable characters who draw the detective’s praise, and contrasts this to the total absence or relative invisibility of female clients in Sherlock. Finally it explores how Sherlock introduces two female characters with careers related to crime detection and argues that, while the development of these characters is limited by the series in general and by Sherlock himself in particular, they nevertheless play important roles in the narrative and in the development of Sherlock’s character.
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Notes
- 1.
I refer to the detective and his doctor friend from Sherlock as “Sherlock” and “John” respectively; I refer to Doyle’s characters as “Holmes” and “Watson.”
- 2.
This chapter was completed prior to the original broadcast of Sherlock, Season Four.
- 3.
To be fair, Lavigne might have argued differently if she had been writing after the third season of Sherlock was aired.
- 4.
See, for instance, Elizabeth Jane Evans.
- 5.
See especially Marjorie Garber (191–96).
- 6.
Derek Longhurst does more to acknowledge the significance of Doyle’s treatment of women in the Holmes stories, but he suggests that the more impressive of the detective’s female clients are only the “few exceptions” to the rule of passivity and gullibility established by the rest; however, even though there are several characters to consider, Longhurst only gives one example from each of his two categories, and omits mention of Holmes’s own positive evaluation of Mary Morstan’s abilities. Nor does he seem to take into account that many of Holmes’s male clients also seem passive and gullible (63–65).
- 7.
Holmes’s clients in the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, and in five of the twelve stories in the first collection, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, are female.
- 8.
Quotations from the television episodes were made with reference to the transcripts by Ariane DeVere.
- 9.
“‘I have seen those symptoms before,’ said Holmes, throwing his cigarette into the fire. ‘Oscillation upon the pavement always means an affaire de cœur’” (290).
- 10.
Longhurst argues that, in Doyle, the male bonding between Holmes and Watson “excludes and eventually kills off Mary” (63). The removal of the twenty-first-century Mary from the climax of “His Last Vow” can also be understood as allowing the relationship between Sherlock and John to reclaim center stage after the intimate scene that just took place between the doctor and his wife. The television episode at least brings back Mary at the end, but whether Sherlock’s version of the character will outlive Doyle’s remains to be seen.
- 11.
In her examination of Doyle’s “The Doctors of Hoyland,” Sparks argues that the talented and dedicated female doctor in the story usurps and emasculates the male colleague who falls in love with her (139–40). Although neither Molly nor Sherlock are doctors, they have overlapping skills and professional interests, so Molly’s infatuation with Sherlock (and his total lack of romantic interest in her) might be read as a protection against the anxiety expressed in “The Doctors of Hoyland.” See Balaka Basu for more on how Sherlock manifests late-Victorian anxieties.
Works Cited
Basu, Balaka. “Sherlock and the (Re)Invention of Modernity.” In Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. Ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 196–209.
DeVere, Ariane [Callie Sullivan]. “Ariane DeVere.” LiveJournal. 9 Apr. 2012. Web. 9 Jun. 2016.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. 2 vols. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003.
Evans, Elizabeth Jane. “Shaping Sherlocks: Institutional Practice and the Adaptation of Character.” Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series. Ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 102–17.
Garber, Marjorie. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Lavigne, Carlen. “The Noble Bachelor and the Crooked Man: Subtext and Sexuality in the BBC’s Sherlock.” Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations. Ed. Lynnette Porter. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 13–23.
Longhurst, Derek. “Sherlock Holmes: Adventures of an English Gentleman 1887–1894.” Gender, Genre and Narrative Pleasure. Ed. Derek Longhurst. London: Unwin-Hyman, 1989. 51–66.
McCrea, Barry. In the Company of Strangers: Family and Narrative in Dickens, Conan Doyle, Joyce, and Proust. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.
Sherlock: Complete Series 1–3. Writ. Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and Stephen Thompson. BBC, 2014. DVD.
Sparks, Tabitha. The Doctor in the Victorian Novel: Family Practices. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.
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Turner, B. (2017). Clients Who Disappear and Colleagues Who Cannot Compete: Female Characters in the BBC’s Sherlock . In: Naidu, S. (eds) Sherlock Holmes in Context. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55595-3_3
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