{"id":1216,"date":"2023-10-22T21:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T01:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2023-10-22T21:23:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T01:23:00","slug":"move-over-sherlock-here-comes-the-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2023\/10\/22\/move-over-sherlock-here-comes-the-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Move over Sherlock, here comes THE woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hearty hello readers,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give it to you straight: I love Sir ACD and Sherlock Holmes. But as much as I love Holmes, I\u2019m not here to talk about him (as if his ego needs any more boosting). I\u2019m here to talk about Irene Adler or THE woman who is just 100 times more intriguing. To do so, I implore the help of another text I read for a different class which is the 2018 scholarly short article \u201cPerformative Sherlock Holmes: Male Direction and Female Digression in \u2018 A Scandal in Bohemia\u2019 \u201c by Younghee Kho.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In her article \u201cPerformative Sherlock Holmes: Male Direction and Female Digression in \u2018 A Scandal in Bohemia\u2019 \u201c, Younghee Kho asks us to look at how \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia\u201d presents gender performativity as both an example of the identity culture established by Victorian society and a means of overcoming gender expectations. So, how does this story written by a <\/span>Victorian man <\/b>do this?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Put simply, gender performativity is a performance put on by someone who repeatedly behaves in a way that shapes their gender or sexual orientation. Readers, we are being asked to recognize and dissect this theory of gender through the interactions of Holmes, most notably those with Irene Adler, as Holmes is depicted to be the model of masculinity due to his superior intellect and great success as a male detective. <\/span>In doing so, Kho allows us to acknowledge factors of class, gender stereotypes, and natural instincts that structure gender as a social construct.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kho first tackles gender performativity in the lens of class by pointing out how the King acts when he explains to Holmes that the compromising photos need to be taken away from Irene Adler. The king is from European society where feudal order of gender and class define status. So in the eyes of the king, Irene Adler having these compromising photos and refusing to hand them over gives her power she shouldn\u2019t have as a woman of lower class standing. Therefore, according to Kho, the king sees this as an undesirable defiance to the order he\u2019s accustomed to and\u00a0 \u201cattempt(s) to control and regulate Adler\u2019s actions as she does not conform to the feminine gender expectations of society\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more interesting is when Holmes orchestrates the fire in Adler\u2019s house. Holmes literally states that women will act on instinct to reach for their most valuable item when there is a fire in their house, stereotyping feminine impulse that is supposed to show less self-control than men.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is he proven right?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Well yeah but also not really\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it crazy to propose that Adler takes advantage of this awareness of gender performativity when she cross-dresses as a man to listen to Sherlock planning to approach her after the house fire?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Lets think about it: Sherlock is under the notion that no one can best him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s one of the first things any reader lists when asked how to characterize Sherlock.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

More importantly, he has no suspicion that a woman would have the intellectual capacity to think of going as far as cross-dressing. After all, that\u2019s the thought process he used for the house fire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So does Irene Adler, the deliciously intelligent woman she is, know Sherlock won\u2019t recognize her for these exact reasons?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>As we see in Kho\u2019s argument, Adler behaves outside her gender by outperforming Sherlock with her intellect that is supposed to be seen in only men since men were traditionally seen as smarter than women. Interestingly enough, however, both the king and Watson serve as inferiors to Irene Adler when discussing intellect. The reason being is on p.4 of \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia,\u201d Watson admits: \u201c \u2018the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled, until you explain your process. And yet I believe my eyes are as good as yours.\u2019 \u201c Here we have a man, Watson, acknowledging he is incapable of the same keen inference and naturalistic observation skills as Sherlock yet here comes Irene Adler who is a woman that can do what no man has: Beating Sherlock at his own game of wit and intellect.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You go girl! Or should I say, you go THE woman!<\/span><\/p>\n

Sincerely, <\/span><\/p>\n

Alucard<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A hearty hello readers,\u00a0 I\u2019ll give it to you straight: I love Sir ACD and Sherlock Holmes. But as much as I love Holmes, I\u2019m not here to talk about him (as if his ego needs any more boosting). I\u2019m here to talk about Irene Adler or THE woman who is just 100 times more … Continue reading Move over Sherlock, here comes THE woman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4770,"featured_media":1219,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","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\/4770"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}