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In recent months I've been reading a little of the extensive scholarly work on Sherlock Holmes - colonialism, gender, etc. (Which reminds me - I must see if anybody's doing work on Top Gear and masculinity. ETA: aha!) Ho ho, how well the Victorians knew their position at the top of the totem pole, the apex of the chain of being, was a fragile illusion - they were sweating bullets about the New Woman, "reverse colonisation", and a bunch of other stuff that threatened their superiority. (ETA: Viz. They were bricking it.)
One of the things I absorbed was an essay called "Displacing Urban Man: Sherlock Holmes's London" by Andrew Smith (cite below). As Smith points out, confusingly, Victorian women were increasingly out in public - shopping, going to clubs, etc. Suddenly you didn't know who was a lady and who was a whore; if this kept on, you wouldn't know who was a woman and who was a man. Along comes Irene Adler, who not only shags what she likes but bests our hero at the masculine game of logic. (The loveless Sherlock gets to be her groom - geddit?) This sort of thing can only lead to smoking and voting - not to mention wearing trousers, which Irene explicitly does in her "male costume". (I was slightly disappointed that we didn't get the Scandal in Belgravia Irene delivering the famous "Good night, Mr Sherlock Holmes" while in male clobber, until I realised that of course we did.) Fortunately, when it comes to women, Irene is an exception. Mostly. She's not the only bad girl in the canon, suggesting a spot of Victorian nail-chewing over shifting gender roles.
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Smith, Andrew. "Displacing Urban Man: Sherlock Holmes's London". in Gail Cunningham and Stephen Barber (eds). London eyes: reflections in text and image. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.
One of the things I absorbed was an essay called "Displacing Urban Man: Sherlock Holmes's London" by Andrew Smith (cite below). As Smith points out, confusingly, Victorian women were increasingly out in public - shopping, going to clubs, etc. Suddenly you didn't know who was a lady and who was a whore; if this kept on, you wouldn't know who was a woman and who was a man. Along comes Irene Adler, who not only shags what she likes but bests our hero at the masculine game of logic. (The loveless Sherlock gets to be her groom - geddit?) This sort of thing can only lead to smoking and voting - not to mention wearing trousers, which Irene explicitly does in her "male costume". (I was slightly disappointed that we didn't get the Scandal in Belgravia Irene delivering the famous "Good night, Mr Sherlock Holmes" while in male clobber, until I realised that of course we did.) Fortunately, when it comes to women, Irene is an exception. Mostly. She's not the only bad girl in the canon, suggesting a spot of Victorian nail-chewing over shifting gender roles.
__
Smith, Andrew. "Displacing Urban Man: Sherlock Holmes's London". in Gail Cunningham and Stephen Barber (eds). London eyes: reflections in text and image. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.
