Category: 2016 Blog Post

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the more prominent horror novels of the 19^th century (while it was initially dismissed as a cheap thriller), plays not only on this fear of the supernatural, but the paranoia and fascination with “reverse invasion.” In Ledger and Luckhurst’s Fin de Siècle they describe a particular fascination with “fantasies of reverse invasion by the French or Germans.” (xvi) While Transylvania is neither of those areas it still falls within the mystery and almost primal realm of Eastern Europe.

Count Dracula himself plays on multiple fears and anxieties of this time period: supernatural, educated and powerful Transylvanian noble, and in combination he present the third fear of the foreigner both as something not human and not English. Aside from the dubious transaction of real estate close to the capital city of England there is also the intention to assimilate into British society. As the Count is showing Jonathan around the castle he insists that the young man stays so that he can learn to speak proper English. When Jonathan remains confused, as Dracula speaks perfect English, he is offered this explanation, “ True, I know the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them…I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pause in his speaking if he hears my words, to say, ‘Ha, ha! A stranger!’ I have been so long master that I would be master still.” (25) By assimilation into British culture and sounding like an Englishman Dracula can dominate the nation from the inside, and no one will suspect a thing until it is too late.

This ties into The Island of Doctor Moreau as well, relating to Prendick’s fear of every human he encounters possessing an inner beast that could break free at any moment. Dracula would become one walking among many, unsuspected and able to be a “master” in England as well as Transylvania. Jonathan is correct in stating that Dracula speaks perfect English, but he does not possess the accent necessary to maintain his high-class position[1]. In learning the “Queen’s English” dialect spoken by a majority of the upper class there is already a leap forward in Dracula’s social standing. He has the vast estate outside of London and soon will have the opportunity to become the new master of England (we all know he’s a vampire). There is also this interesting need to give the foreigner a supernatural or animalistic quality. In order for the paranoia and fear of the unknown to have any validity the foreigner must be distinguished as an “other.”

In his desire to learn the “proper” way to speak English the antagonist is bypassing the labels placed upon him as a foreigner. This is what makes him even more dangerous. While he still maintains the supernatural qualities, Dracula becomes an everyday English nobleman[2]. Of course there are still the ties to Translyvania, but the perfect pronunciation of the language gives comfort to the British, assuring them that he is not a wild and dangerous foreigner who has come to destroy their society.

[1] The play/film Pygmalion (also adapted as the musical My Fair Lady) demonstrates this need to have perfect language. “An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him.”

[2] In some versions of the film adaptations Dracula keeps his Transylvanian accent (most notably in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version). By some supernatural power he possesses the ability to go unnoticed by others.

Below is a scene from My Fair Lady in which the Professor Henry Higgins discusses with his colleague the importance of speaking English in a proper manner. Keep in mind at Higgins is incredibly misogynistic and a bit racist especially when it comes to people from Eastern Europe (mostly Hungary). It doesn’t have the horror of Dracula, but perhaps it provides a bit of cheer to act as a counterpart.

Irene Adler is one of the few ‘criminals’ against whom Sherlock Holmes is unable to exact some sort of punishment. She is an intellectual match for Holmes, even causing the man to hold off “[making] merry over the cleverness of women” after he is bested by her (19). However, this supposed female equal to Holmes only has one line in her own words in the entire story of A Scandal in Bohemia – “Surely. Bring him into the sitting-room. There is a comfortable sofa. This way, please!” (15). These are the only words Adler utters in her own voice: otherwise Holmes retells her words and the reader is given a mere sense of her voice in the letter she leaves for Holmes.

Adler’s character is conveyed through the opinions of the men who come into contact with her. Holmes file on Adler reveals her American birth and operatic career (7). The King tells the detective pair that “she has the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men” (8). Holmes decides while following Alder that “she is the daintiest thin under a bonnet on this planet” and “she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for” (10 – 11). Watson remarks on “her superb figure” as she watches the crowd tends to the injured Father Holmes, and calls her a “beautiful creature” (15). Adler is revealed to the reader piece by beautiful piece through the eyes of men; she is an object of which they discuss its merits, usually with the King wishing that she was of a higher birth because she would “have made an admirable queen” (19).

This Holmes adventure is an example of the male gaze at work. Laura Mulvey discusses the male gaze in her piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” showing that the camera takes on the role of a man looking at a woman. This is why sex scenes usually focus heavily on the females face because that is what the male audience wants to see. It is a moment of scopophilia, or gaining pleasure in looking – basically a peeping Tom situation (Mulvey 835).  This scenario is repeated in Doyle’s work – all three men name Adler as an extremely beautiful creature and they are all after a photograph of her with the King.

The photo, however, complicates this narrative. A picture is something that can also be looked at and allow the viewer to gain pleasure from it. But this photograph, this potential source of scopophilia, is possessed by a woman, which means it must be wrong. Adler having the picture of her and the King opens the doors for a female to gaze at an image of a man for her own gain, and her only crime is threatening to let another woman look at said picture. The King claims that she is black mailing him to ruin his reputation and marriage, but Adler never has the chance to divulge her motives – who says she wasn’t trying to save another woman from an unhappy union to a man who she knows has done wrong? Adler has a set of man’s clothes, her “walking-clothes,” that she uses in order to be able to move about freely, and this guise is even convincing enough to fool Holmes as she passes him at his apartment, which shows that she understands the limited power women have over their own lives –– so why would she not be willing to help a woman who was being forced to marry a man without knowing his true character? (18)

The men see the photograph as a weapon that would hinder the proper social order: the King marrying a worthy princess to continue the royal bloodlines in Europe, but Adler views it as a weapon to safeguard herself “from any steps which [the King] might take in the future” (19). In this case, she is able to retain her weapon of protection, and in its hiding place she leaves another “which [the King] might care to possess” – this “photograph was of Irene Adler herself in an evening dress” (18 – 19). In this sense, Adler gets the last laugh because she willingly gives the men an attractive picture of herself in the midst of foiling Holmes’ plan. She is proving that she is not an unwilling object being viewed, but a person worthy of merit, even if she does fulfill the stereotypical marriage plot in the end, maintaining the original status quo.

The “Uncanny” – Sigmund Freud 1919

By reading the opening chapters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in light of Freud’s “The Uncanny”, the reader gains new insight into what exactly made this novel so riveting upon its release.  Specifically, looking at which parts of the opening narrative foreshadow the uncanny terror instilled by Dracula becomes clearer when using Freud’s understanding of the uncanny.  Freud immediately distinguishes what stirs this uncanny fear, noting that while it is always evoked by an unfamiliar element, the novel and strange aspect is never sufficient on its own to define the uncanny.  Instead, after much examining of Hoffman’s works and Schelling’s definition, comes to regard the uncanny as: “…in reality nothing new or foreign, but something familiar and old—established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression… the uncanny as something which ought to have been kept concealed but which has nevertheless come to light” (Freud, 13). Freud associates this repression of “which ought to have been kept concealed” with all manner of sexual oppression and childhood trauma, and yet we can tweak it only just so to fit the context of Dracula.

Right from the first page, Jonathan Harker mentions how he researched the country of Transylvania at the British Museum in order to become familiar with the area.  Immediately, Stoker establishes the idea that Harker should have some sort of established knowledge of his destination- he describes the countries location among other nations, some of it’s anthropological history, and so on.  However, when it comes to the location of Castle Dracula, Harker reaches a dead end.  Despite all of his research into the country, Dracula’s estate remains a mystery to him, as he can find naught but the nearby post town of Bistritz.  With this deficiency of information even in one of the most complete repositories of knowledge in the British Empire, Stoker plants the idea that the strange new locale of Dracula’s castle is unfamiliar, and yet should not be so unknown.  Without even realizing it, the reader begins to not only realize the mystery surrounding the castle, but more importantly, realizes that this should be known information- could it have been concealed in some way.  Through this simple hesitation, often brushed away by readers, Stoker also introduces the ever present supernatural element of the Gothic, laying a groundwork for his eventual grander supernatural occurrences.

The unknown surrounding Dracula’s castle is not enough for Stoker though.  When Harker first describes his host’s physical appearance in his journal, the description is rife with uncanny references most would prefer to ignore.  Published merely a year before, HG Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau left Victorian readers with a whole slew of questions regarding the differences between humans and animals, and the danger and visceral horror possible where the line between the two could be blurred.  It is with these already held beliefs that Stoker introduces his world renowned bestial monster- Dracula himself.

Scattered through the first paragraph of Dracula’s aesthetic are numerous references to animal appearance, mostly dealing with the profusion of hair so common to wolves- “bushy hair”, “heavy moustache”, to name a few.  This excess of hair, combined with the thin, harshly defined facial deatures (from his thin nose to his firm and thin cheekbones), rests atop a broad and powerful frame, creating a feral looking powerful man, with “astonishing vitality in a man of his years” (Stoker, 21).  Moving away from his exaggerated facial and bodily features, Harker touches upon a series of bestial characteristics, which serve to drive the final nail into the coffin of Dracula’s humanity.  Harker highlights, of course, the trademark sharp teeth, elongated fingers, and pointed nails of the vampire image, as well as the nausea Dracula evoked in Harker.  More important than reaffirming what present day readers associate with vampires, however, are the hands of Dracula, specifically the hairs grouped in the center of his palms- a trait typically associated with werewolves.  Stoker plays with the feral nature of folklore werewolves and vampires to great effect here, by placing these easily recognized traits in Count Dracula.  Vital to this decision is the well established tradition of these beasts being almost entirely members of lower classes.  Vampires traditionally came from the downtrodden and untitled members of society, with the aristocratic nobles rarely, if ever, being cast in these roles.  Vampires were not new to the audiences of the time, even if they were an unfamiliar character, separate from the reader’s humanity.  This deficiency of noble vampires made people aware of this familiar void.  And with this awareness, a sense of the uncanny began to emerge.  Not only did readers begin to question their own humanity in light of these bestial traits (so soon after the vivisection in Dr Moreau), noble vampires like Dracula would also give them reason to wonder after this void.  Why were there so few noble vampires?  What other secrets could this ever so respectable societal sect keep hidden?  Are these bestial trends and traits restricted to Moreau’s beastfolk and feral vampires, or do all people carry within them this feral taint?  Questions such as these begin to bubble under the surface of uncanny terror, forcing readers to wonder what about these figures caused their unfamiliar appearance to feel so familiar- what could possibly have been concealed for them to feel this way?

Since the publication of Dracula, vampires have taken over a place in our cultural consciousness that no other phenomenon has come close to encompassing. Vampires smudge the line between terror and desire; in our modern conception of them, they are at once frightening, interesting, powerful, and eminently attractive. Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer, plus countless other writers, have both taken advantage of and created the recent sensation and call for “supernatural” fiction: Twilight, Vampire Academy, Salem’s Lot, Interview with the Vampire. These have spawned their own offshoots involving witches, werewolves, ghosts, and a positive plethora of other beings.

These beings, like Dracula did in 1897, represent “the other” as intensely desirable, not only as physical representations of forbidden sexiness but as a potential lover or friend or spouse. Dracula’s physical appeal and mental power have been perpetuated and diluted by more recent characters in popular fiction – Edward Cullen, Adrian Ivashkov, Bunnicula – but the essence of Dracula as an idea is there in all of them. Searching the word “vampire” into Google Images brings up a few gory depictions of ghastly old men, but mostly the images are of young and beautiful people – who just happen to have fangs and/or blood dripping from their mouths. Because of Count Dracula, vampires are sexy.

To someone not steeped in our modern conceptions, vampires aren’t sexy at all; they have mutant teeth and they eat people. But in fantasy or “supernatural” novels (Dracula included, more notably books like Harry Potter, the Divergent series, the All Souls trilogy and a thousand more), it often turns out that the protagonist is the most “other” of all the others. Harry Potter is the wizard prophesied to defeat Voldemort; Tris is divergent; Diana Bishop is the witchiest witch of them all. We ourselves desire to be “the other” because we want to be different – the most special.

Or maybe this desire to be “the other,” the most powerful witch or the sexiest vampire or the bitiest werewolf, stems from a desire to be part of the community to which we’ve truly always belonged. (Harry leaves Privet Drive for the wizarding world.) This displacement into the place we were meant to be reflects fear that we’re not in the place that we actually belong, that we don’t fit in. And couldn’t the entire concept of a supernatural world conceal and reveal the fear that our own world is mundane, that our lives have too little meaning? A supernatural world right around the corner is so much better and more exciting – and in all the fantasy novels, the vampire novels, that world is the world where we truly belong.

What does this have to do with Dracula? Perhaps Count Dracula represents the ultimate other: foreign, sexy, powerful, and dead. Yet despite their revulsion, the characters in Dracula also feel a strange attraction to him – they describe him in uncomfortably physical language (“parted red lips,” etc), and Dracula’s enduring status as a figure not of violence and gore but of sex and even romance surely owes something to our own desire to see him that way. We want to be – not Dracula but something like him: our enchantment with Dracula stems from our attraction to the idea of the best, most special “other” – and finding out that the other is actually ourselves. Lucy’s transformation into something other than human and Mina’s close escape from the same fate mirror modern novels which involve the protagonist being the other all along and not knowing it. We all want to be that other – the most powerful, the most magical, the most special – despite the fear and discomfort that often come with it.

Dracula is a vampire; he is not Prince Charming. But the modern world – often including people who have actually read Dracula – see him as a blend of the two. The 2013 TV show Dracula shows him as a wounded hero seeking revenge and finding love; there he’s played not by a creepy old man but by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Dracula means sex and desire, often forbidden. He’s our fantasies. He’s the “other” we might want to be. He’s the desire for something different, something not like us – and the desire that the “us” we are be different. We love Dracula because we want what he represents – he is “the other” but, in his recent incarnations and in the novels Bram Stoker (directly or indirectly) inspired, he’s also ourselves.

There are many parts of Dracula that drew my attention: one, because vampires are so cool, and two, because the story seems rich in symbolism related to many of the themes of the fin de siècle that we have discussed in class. However, the first page of the story opens a question that I’m curious about. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Moreau are both told through a first person narrator that is arguably bias. Prendick is hallucinating and Watson is, most probably, in love with Sherlock. Both of these narrators potentially reveal their own desires throughout their narration. If we read through the lens of Freud we, as readers, might delve between the lines of these texts and pick apart the desires and day-dreams of these authors and/or their narrators; if you’ll allow me to extend psychoanalysis to the characters as we do to their authors.

At a glance at the chapters, Dracula, it seems, is also told through first person narrator in the form of journal entries. These could be considered as unreliable. However, the short paragraph on the opening page to me, adds to this question. “How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them….” (Stoker 6). Someone has constructed these journal entries. By writing the paragraph in the passive voice this someone has concealed much about their identity. Obviously they are invested in this story. Are we as readers meant to assume that this is the author? Or is there another figure outside of the story that is party to crafting the narrative?

This first sentence reads like a deflection of the exact question that this paragraph raises. I would have assumed that these fictional journal entries were ordered in such a way to enhance the drama and suspense of the story. However, by stating that the reason for the sequence will be revealed through reading it made me pause. Why does this invisible figure feel the need to reassure me that the story will makes sense? Beyond that the questions is not why, but how. Is this simple a teaser to make the reader feel the mystery before they have even begun? To do a little deconstructionist reading: I did not question this stories creation until this someone reassured me that all would be revealed. I did not question the authenticity of these (fictional) journals until this someone reassured me that really, really, everything in these stories is factual history. The reader is placed in a position to either trust this someone to do all that they claim to do, or to grow suspicious of the only information that we can/will be given about these events. Both of these options, from a literary criticism stand point, are not that useful because the text is all we have. By distrusting the text we cannot make any claims that stick. However, I feel to ignore this insistence on truth and order within the text would mean missing something the text is trying to do. I’m not sure how this will fit in, but I’m curious about whether we will meet this mysterious someone in the text, or whether they will float as a periphery God-figure who cannot be ignored, questioned, or investigated.

This seems to be exactly Freud’s anxiety at the start of “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”: “Our interest is only heightened the more by the fact that the writer himself gives us no explanation, or none that is satisfactory…” (Freud 143). It is frightening and exciting not to know how the author created the story. There is mystery and anxiety in this unknown world that writers inhabit that psychoanalysts, it seems, cannot. However Freud sees the text as insight into the author, even if it is not insight into writing. So I’m left with the questions: What do we do with this secret narrator? What will the text reveal about their mysterious motives? Or will we, like Freud, be left in the dark to perpetually wonder what is behind the curtain of creation?

While reading the first two chapters of Dracula, I noticed that some of the biggest themes brought up in the Ledger and Luckhurst introduction to the Fin de Siècle were echoed in the sentiments of the protagonist, Englishman Jonathan Harker. We can see the balance between anxious dread and nervous excitement at the turn of the century paralleled in Harker’s language about visiting Count Dracula in Transylvania. I also noticed a definite fixation with England as a nucleus of refined and polite society, and detached wonder with the “queer” people of the Carpathians.

Anxious is the primary term I would use to characterize Harker. These first two chapters are set up as him leaving comfortable, sophisticated England and venturing forth into unknown, barbaric, uncivilized territory (even though, of course, we know that people do live there— he is not “discovering” this land). This gives him a vague sense of fear and nervousness, of which he cannot completely describe, “I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.” (11) “I waited with a sick feeling of suspense” (18). According to Ledger and Luckhurst, this is reminiscent of the general feelings of anxiety towards the new century; not quite knowing what is to come, but knowing that it is uncomfortable and something you must get accustomed to.

Additionally, Harker’s language reflects Ledger and Luckhurst’s point that “popular culture of the time was fascinated by exotic, imperial terrors— fantasies of reverse invasions by the French or Germans, the stirring of mummies in the British Museum as Egypt and the Sudan were annexed, the evil genius of Fu Manchu and the ‘yellow peril’ as trade routes in the Far East were contested.” (xvi) Harker constantly remarks on the strangeness of the people he sees in the Carpathians, and their differences both from other groups in the region and from good, ol’ pure England. He describes it as sort of a hectic melting pot of strange, Gothic figures that incite in him quiet terror throughout the first two chapters. This “othering” language comes up again and again. He begins with random insensitive racially charged comments like “it seems to me that the further East you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China?” (8),  which evolve into psychologically deeper digressions: “The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked?” (21). The longer Harker stays in the Carpathians, the novelty wears off, and he grows fearful, not because of anything particularly frightening in the traditional sense, but because of the odd, anxious feeling the place and the people give him.

While reading the first chapter of Dracula, I was particularly struck by the rather peculiar language surrounding the description of the Transylvanian landscape during the journey to Dracula’s house:

“As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine (…). Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness (…) produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening (…).” (14)

The existence of dark, ominous language, along with the “great masses of greyness” that appeared to be “closing down upon us,” seems to resonate with Ledger and Luckhurst’s introduction in their book The Fin de Siècle – the gray, looming shadows that are described in the Transylvanian landscape mirror the looming anxiety that Ledger and Luckhurst outline regarding the turn of the century. The shadows represent, as written by Max Nordau, the inevitable “dusk of nations, in which all suns and stars are gradually waning, and mankind with all its institutions and creations is persisting in the midst of a dying world.” (xiii)

This sort of language is repeated later on in chapter two, when Jonathon Harker is in Dracula’s house:

“(…) I could not help experiencing that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is like, in its way, the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death die generally at the change to the dawn or at the turn of the tide; any one who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in atmosphere can well believe it.” (31)

Again, the language seems to suggest a sort of foreboding, as in an approaching end or death, which is reflected in the “turn of the tide,” which closely resembles the Victorian “turn of the century.” However, here the language seems to suggest a beginning as well, which is embodied through the use of the word “dawn” – this can be tied to the Victorians’ fear of the ambiguity surrounding the beginning of a new century, as well as a realization of possibility and innovation. The interaction between these two contradictory feelings is what Ledger and Luckhurst refer to as the “ambivalence of modernity,” or “the way in which assertions of the limitless generative power of the British nation were haunted by fantasies of decay and degeneration (…).” (xiii)

How, then, can we interpret this “ambivalence of modernity” in terms of Dracula? Are these similarities within the text simply coincidental, or do they point to something greater? I feel like I am unable to analyze them just yet, as we have only read two chapters, but I am curious to see if this is a theme that will be continued later on in the novel.

The Longman Anthology briefly discusses the history of England in Southeast Europe and the Middle East. I don’t know if they were ever directly involved in Romania, but they did participate in the Crimean War of 1854. This conflict cost England many soldiers, “but made little change in the European balance of power” (1064). Considering England’s ambiguous success and control here, I think it makes total sense that this area is a source of interest and fear. Harker’s journal entries from the first few days of his travel are filled with comparisons to England––the environment, the ethnic groups, the religion, the superstitions, the clothing, the food. Dracula himself says, “‘We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.’” (28). It’s strange enough to be fascinating to Harker. However, the problem comes with Dracula’s interest in England.

The second chapter emphasizes the obsession Dracula has with Great Britain. Harker is shocked to find books on every subject, “all relating to England and English life and customs and manners” in the semi-ruined castle of the Transylvanian count (26). He repeats several different iterations of “your great England” or “your mighty London” (27). Dracula embodies the 19^th century fear of “reverse invasion,” much like many of the villains in the Sherlock Holmes stories. The thieves, temptresses, and murders are always foreign or somehow associated with a foreign country. There was a fear that some outsider could disrupt English society and culture, corrupt it and manipulate it. Many Gothic novels from the late 18^th century (like Frankenstein, The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, and Vathek) take place in Italy or France or somewhere else in Europe or Asia. They almost never take place in England, because the crimes were too horrifying, the villains too barbaric, and the people too superstitious. These things could never happen in the polite, civilized society of England. (Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey makes fun of this idea). In The Island of Dr. Moreau, part of what disturbs Prendick after returning to England is that he can no longer distinguish between his fellow Brits and the beasts. The screen that holds England apart from the rest of the world has been torn down. Count Dracula is bringing the horror to England. That’s much scarier than reading about a ghostly figure in some ruined mansion in the French Alps. Jonathan Harker and his employer, Hawkins, personally found a house for Dracula in England. Not only is Dracula invading England, he’s doing it with the help of two Englishmen.

The Sherlock Holmes stories delicately balance order and chaos. The premise of detective stories is to restore order where it has been disturbed, and the Sherlock Holmes stories act as a way for readers to feel secure in an age of sweeping change and uncertainty. The Longman Anthology chapter on “The Victorian Age” sheds light on how the Sherlock Holmes stories embody core concerns of the 1890’s.

The Sherlock Holmes stories, particularly A Scandal in Bohemia, are fascinated with crimes we cannot detect; they happen right under our noses. And if they happen right under England’s nose (the most powerful, secure nation in the Victorian Age), what kind of monumental threat do they pose? Who can actually stop them? The Longman Anthology discusses the “age of doubt” (1055) rippling through British culture in the 1890’s. People stopped responding to authority figures, like religion (1056). This scared citizens because it meant they could not impose authority as directly as before (1056). Colonized societies began to rebel, and marital and women’s rights laws passed (1059); generally, every form of social order and regularity began to fall apart in the 1890’s, and Britain stood to lose the most from this shift.

“Each of the issues that threatened to bring the country into open conflict or destroy the social fabric was in the course of the century addressed peacefully through legislation…” (1059). While the end of this statement appeases readers, it also exposes the discomfort prevalent at the time of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and shows that A Scandal in Bohemia, for instance, reflects that unsettled feeling. Many of the Sherlock Holmes stories do not even end gratifyingly; they simply stop, and the “payoff” does not match the story’s suspense. In A Scandal in Bohemia, Irene Adler escapes Sherlock’s grasp, and she even keeps a picture that could destroy a king’s reputation. As the story says, “I keep [the picture] only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a weapon which will always secure me from any steps which [the king] might take in the future” (19). Arguably, nothing is resolved in the story, except the great Sherlock Holmes does know how Irene committed the crime. Maybe as long as he knows how she did it, we are supposed to forgive Sherlock for letting Irene escape, and we can trust England’s security once more? This lack of a neat, clean ending reflects Fin de Siècle sentiments. Not only is the story unresolved, but Irene Adler could return at any time and use the picture to cause a “scandal.” She continues to threaten the balance Sherlock establishes at the end of the story. Really, though, society does not actually regain balance in the story; instead, Sherlock, Watson, and the rest of England simply proceed as though Irene Adler presents no threat. In this story, ignoring the problem seems to “solve” it.

Ignoring the problem, or pretending there isn’t one, seems to be a common practice in the Victorian Age, according to The Longman Anthology. “[Victorian] novels work within an established social frame, focusing on the characters’ freedom to act within fairly narrow moral codes in an unpredictable universe; they deal with questions of social responsibility and personal choice, the impulses of passion and the dictates of conscience” (1071). So Victorian literature both reaffirms faith in society, because it operates “within an established social frame” (1071), and the works investigate how social order could imperceptibly, and then permanently, crumble. A Scandal in Bohemia and other Sherlock Holmes stories embody this because the crimes themselves are not serious (theft, digging for gold, and royal “scandals” are not so fantastical), but Sherlock and other characters respond to the crimes with an urgency that suggests a far greater threat. Sherlock acts as though solving the crime will provide an eternal restoration of order, which of course it won’t, especially if you solve the crime but have no control over the threat (in this case, Irene).

The stories’ crimes themselves are not dramatic; Sherlock’s reaction provides the fearful quality of the stories. This mirrors Victorian sentiments. Colonization, class equality, and other changes do not threaten society’s health or lifespan, but British society’s reaction to those changes produces anxiety and fear. Thus, the Sherlock Holmes stories deeply resemble how Victorians reacted to the change confronting their established society, and how that reaction posed more of a threat than any change could.

As previously discussed in class, the Sir Conan Doyle story “A Scandal in Bohemia” plays around with the roles of gender and gender ideology, primarily through the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, although we have also discussed Watson in this manner. As noted in the Fin de Siècle reading, gender was a primary focus of the time period along with the struggle for personal identity, bringing these issues to the forefront of people’s minds. Through the characters of Holmes and Adler, Doyle mimics the same action by drawing upon stereotypes to make it appear that his characters conform to their given genders, while mixing the ideologies of masculinity and femininity to comment on these developing societal notions.

Within the story, adjectives used to describe the characters are as important as their actions. In the first paragraph on the first page, Sherlock is described as a sort of machine, “cold” and “precise” with “perfect” reasoning and observing skills, never speaking about the “softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer.” Whether or not this was definitively the description of a masculine figure at the time, it is along the lines of how society describes masculinity now. Masculine figures show ambition, but not excessive emotion. Placing this description of Holmes in the context of his feelings, or lack thereof, for Irene Adler, seems to solidify the notion that he has better things to worry about than feelings, which sets him on the masculine end of the spectrum. However, the second half of the paragraph turns this metaphor into a more vague question of gender when the machine becomes “delicate” with a “finely adjusted temperament,” threatened by the smallest piece of “grit.” Here, the line separating genders is altered and no longer clearly defined as it was in the first half of the paragraph.

As for Irene Adler, the first introduction the reader has to her is as “the woman,” who “eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex” (1). This statement undeniably aligns her with the female gender and does so through the eyes of a man. The gaze here becomes important when the King of Bohemia describes her as having “the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men” (8) and later Holmes refers to her as “a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for” (11). What is intriguing about these statements is that a resolute mind is not expected of a woman, but her beauty is mentioned many times within this one story. It seems as if the expectation of women portrayed throughout descriptions of Adler is to be a pretty face, but no resolution or strength of mind are expected. Adler’s masculine description here and eventual disguise as a man tie into the notion from the reading about the icon of New Woman that could “mark an image of sexual freedom and assertions of female independence, promising a bright democratic future” (xvii). Adler begins to show this female independence, but in the context of this story, not without masculine-leaning tendencies.

“A Scandal in Bohemia” brings into focus the “questions of contemporary identity, whether concerning gender politics, sexual identity, or conceptions of subjectivity itself” (xvii), in part due to the descriptions and in part due to the processes of thought. In order for Holmes to outsmart Adler, he must think like a woman, and for Adler to outsmart Holmes, she takes on the thinking strategies of a man. The two cross identities, so to speak, in order to play their game, bringing in these topics of the Fin de Siècle and introducing the questions of what makes a person masculine or feminine and where is the line drawn between the two, potentially using gender to highlight the larger theme of ambivalence about the time period. The reading states, “Such problematic complicities and ambivalences at the beginnings of modern feminist thought have proved productive sites for thinking through the articulation of gender with other significant markers of identity” (xviii), and this is what Conan Doyle takes advantage of within the text. Not only is Irene Adler beautiful and intelligent, but she, unlike all of the other white, British, male criminals we’ve read about in the context of these stories, is able to outsmart Sherlock Holmes’ “best plans” by use of “women’s wit” (19). In this instance, what was once believed to be straightforward was taken and challenged, similar to what happened during the Fin de Siècle.