“The text’s elusiveness on the content of the letters, and the
absence of the Lady Eva herself, deflects the reader’s attention from the
potentially contradictory ideology of marriage which the narrative takes for
granted (110)… the text is unable
to be precise about the content of the letters since to do so would be to risk
losing the sympathy of the reader for either the woman or her husband ”(111).
In
other words, by demonizing the character of Charles Augustus Milverton and
omitting specifics about the lives of the women in the story we as readers are
led to agree with a sanctified ideology of marriage. However, the omissions are
key to maintaining the readers accordance with Holmes’ claim that some crimes
are better left to private revenge. If we as readers knew the extent of the
sexual nature of these women, we may be less inclined to agree with Holmes’
demonization of CAM, which would have been especially true of Doyle’s
contemporary readers.
“Classic
realist text had not yet developed a way of signifying women’s sexuality except
in a metaphoric or symbolic mode whose presence disrupts the realist surface…
more significant, however, is that the presentation of so many women in the
Sherlock Holmes stories as shadowy, mysterious and magical figures precisely
contradicts the project of explicitness, transgresses the values of the texts,
and in doing so throws into relief the poverty of the contemporary concept of
science”(115).
In
other words, Doyle’s use of mysterious female figures was in direct opposition
to the classic realist form. However for the time it was forward thinking of
Doyle to portray women as strong, sexual characters. Therefore his female
characters may have aided in the progression of contemporary intellectual
thought. Doyle’s use of women as secondary characters tells the truth of the
ideology of his contemporaries, that women were secondary. However Doyle’s
allusion to women as strong, sexual and self-serving breaks through that
ideology and Holmes’ willingness to aid these women illustrates a shift towards
feminist thought.
“In
the Sherlock Holmes stories classic realism ironically tells a truth, though
not the truth about the world which is the project of classic realism. The
truth the stories tell is the truth about ideology, the truth which ideology
represses, its own existence as ideology itself”(117).
In
other words, the Sherlock Holmes stories use classic realism to present ideologies
directly to the reader—portrayed by the characters, plots and subplots—rather
than presenting the reader with truths about the world and allowing the reader
to bring their own ideologies into the story.
In
her analysis of Sherlock Holmes, Catherine Belsey takes a pseudo-new criticism
approach. She focuses mostly on the form and structure of the stories as
classic realist detective fiction. However to stay strictly within the new
critic approach would be to deny the text of all of its underlying themes and
messages. So Belsey combines this approach with historical and thematic
analysis. She does not directly proclaim, but it is clear through her text an
exhibition of Northrop Frye’s formalist “concept of human nature and of culture
which sees literature as imitating not the world but rather ‘the total dream of
man’”(23).
She
utilizes the intentionalist position (15), to analyze how the structure of the
story influences the reader to share in the opinions of Holmes and Watson. By
omitting the content of the letters the story intentionally maintains the
respectability and marriageability of the Lady Eva, thus the reader agrees with
Holmes and Watson, that she is worthy of their protection. Belsey is careful in
her analysis to appropriate these omissions to the text’s elusiveness, not to
Doyle’s authorship. In this sense it is the story that presents the reader with
ethical questions, not Doyle himself.
By
interpreting the form and content of Sherlock Holmes Belsey concludes through
historical analysis that the mysterious nature of the women in Sherlock Holmes
stories is indicative of Doyle’s contemporaries in classic realism. However,
Belsey explains that this, “throws into relief the poverty of the contemporary
concept of science”(115). The mysteriousness of the female characters is
contradictory to the realist text approach, which “installs itself in the space
between fact and illusion through the presentation of a simulated reality which
is plausible but not real”(117). The not real also illustrates how Frye’s
formalism is exhibited by the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes’ and Watson’s
scientific intelligence is an ideal, not precisely a representation of the
sciences of the time, but a slightly more advanced scientific knowledge.
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