{"id":201,"date":"2016-02-24T16:42:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T16:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/?p=201"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:05:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T22:05:56","slug":"hierarchy-of-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/2016\/02\/24\/hierarchy-of-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"Hierarchy of Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the context of Ledger and Luckhurst\u2019s discussion of the 1870 Education Act and the issue of \u201cmassification,\u201d Conan Doyle\u2019s \u201cThe Red-headed League\u201d displays anxieties about education and intelligence through the implicit hierarchy of intelligence visible in the characters\u2019 interactions with one another. As Ledger and Luckhurst state, \u201cThe audience for\u2026 popular literature was perhaps the first generation to benefit from the 1870 Education Act\u201d (xv). Anxieties about the \u201clowering\u201d effect that this new expansion of the reading public had on the types of literature being produced were intimately connected to the issue of \u201cmassification,\u201d which Ledger and Luckhurst link to the increasing population of the \u201cLondon poor\u201d (xv). Although Conan Doyle\u2019s Sherlock Holmes stories could be considered to be included in the newly developing genre of popular literature, they display an anxiety about the consequences of knowledge coming into the minds of the masses. By establishing a hierarchy of intelligence in stories including \u201cThe Red-headed League,\u201d Conan Doyle presents a ordered vision of which classes of society should be knowledgeable, reserving true intelligence for the most privileged members of society. Naturally, Holmes resides at the highest level of the intelligence hierarchy, as Watson\u2019s frequent testaments to his intelligence demonstrate, and it is Holmes\u2019s judgement in \u201cThe Red-headed League\u201d that deems Clay worthy of inclusion at the upper level: \u201cHe is, in my judgement, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third\u201d (31). Holmes\u2019s statement explicitly reveals the presence of the hierarchy of intelligence that Doyle creates in this story through the numerical rank that he awards Clay, which implies that Holmes holds the full list in his mind. The authority of his \u201cjudgement\u201d is sufficient to secure Clay\u2019s place at the top of the hierarchy, and Holmes\u2019s wealth and privileged social position, implied through his ample leisure time, correspond with John Clay\u2019s credentials: \u201cHis grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford\u201d (33). Through the credentials that he awards Holmes and Clay, Doyle implies that true intelligence is only accessible to the elite. He therefore moves true intelligence out of the hands of many of his readers, who, as the \u201cmasses\u201d reading popular literature, will never reach the level of intelligence that Holmes and Clay represent– it is unattainable. Watson is also elevated above the level of the reader. Although he is consistently stymied by the inner workings of Holmes\u2019s mind, he acts as an authority figure by allowing the readers access to Holmes\u2019s mind, and his relationship with Holmes allows him to experience firsthand the power of Holmes\u2019s mind: \u201cI trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes\u201d (32). Here, Holmes confirms the implication that Holmes possesses an intelligence that even he, a physician knowledgeable in his own right, cannot hope to possess. However, his ability to relate the events of Holmes\u2019s cases makes him more knowledgeable than the reader– again, privilege allows access to intelligence, even indirectly. By thinking about \u201cThe Red-headed League\u201d through the lens of Ledger and Luckhurst\u2019s discussion of the effects of the 1870 Education Act, it becomes evident that Conan Doyle was expressing his own anxieties about \u201cmassification\u201d and the rise of popular literature at the end of the 19th century. By creating a hierarchy of intelligence in his Sherlock Holmes stories, in which Watson, the character that the reader is supposed to identify with, cannot fathom the intelligence of Sherlock, Doyle renders true intelligence inaccessible to all but the most privileged. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the context of Ledger and Luckhurst\u2019s discussion of the 1870 Education Act and the issue of \u201cmassification,\u201d Conan Doyle\u2019s \u201cThe Red-headed League\u201d displays anxieties about education and intelligence through the implicit hierarchy of intelligence visible in the characters\u2019 interactions with one another. As Ledger and Luckhurst state, \u201cThe audience for\u2026 popular literature was perhaps … Continue reading Hierarchy of Intelligence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3012,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123782,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-blog-post","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","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\/3012"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}