Irene Adler is my favorite character in “A Scandal in Bohemia” written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only is she the only woman to best Sherlock Holmes, she embodies everything the New Woman aspired to be for the public.<\/p>\n
For context, the term “New Woman” emerged as a feminist movement in the late 19th century, and is commonly a theme in many works in writings of\u00a0la fin de siecle, or the end of the century. The development of independent women inherently shifted and challenged social expectations, bleeding into literature, education, and especially bicycles. Here is where I turn my attention to Irene Adler who, despite “having a face a man might die for” and looking like “the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet,” is the baddest bitch of the 19th century.<\/p>\n
Adler exemplifies every quality that a New Woman represented. She is a an independent American woman living in England, retired opera singer, and dates before marriage?? AND choses who she marries and decides when?? She is even described with male attributes multiple times throughout the reading, and blurs the social class ladder. Despite all these qualities, Sherlock assumes that because of her appearance, that she can be easily tricked. Whenever Alder bests him, and leaves a photo of herself in place of the photo Sherlock planned so carefully to obtain, instead of despising her, Sherlock admires her.\u00a0Adler defeats Holmes by using every skill and talent she possesses including her intelligence, her daring, and her willingness to defy conventional ideas of how she should behave in order to protect herself and secure the life she wants.\u00a0<\/span>This platonic appreciation from Sherlock is telling much more of his character than I originally realized. Holmes is shown admiring a different form of woman than the Victorian woman, instead he loves Adler; The New Woman.<\/p>\n This brings me to the first line of text in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman.” Sherlock never encounters another woman quite like Adler, thus making her THE woman.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What do you think?<\/p>\n Forever Yours, JAY WALKER<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Irene Adler is my favorite character in “A Scandal in Bohemia” written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only is she the only woman to best Sherlock Holmes, she embodies everything the New Woman aspired to be for the public. For context, the term “New Woman” emerged as a feminist movement in the late 19th century, … Continue reading Is THE Woman Irene Adler THE New Woman?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}