I was rewatching A Scandal in Belgravia with friends tonight, and I realized that the way Irene Adler is written tells us a lot about the intended audience of the Sherlock Holmes stories when she was written.
I’m not claiming to be an expert or anything — and correct me if I’m wrong, please — but when these books were being written things were being written to men. While women of the time read, certainly, my understanding is that the majority of entertainment was not directed toward them. (The same way that entertainment was directed toward adults until the 1950s, again as I’ve been given to understand.)
So here we have Irene Adler (The Woman, though obviously not quite so much as she is the current BBC retellings) who is designed to be the absolute and only woman for Sherlock. She is this incredibly distinct character, making both parties in the relationship brilliant and desirable. But she’s unattainable.
Sherlock and Adler obviously never run off and have adorable babies in a London flat. To the men reading the book she is beautiful, brilliant, and available. Meant for Sherlock certainly, but hey — she ain’t dead.
This is, of course, assuming that readers got the same escapism and wish-fulfillment from books that we do now.
Comparatively, it seems to me that most popular literature now (and literature is used incredibly loosely in the following examples) is geared toward woman — specifically young women. The standard is totally flipped, though instead of given “available” we’re given husks of characters that serve as reader stand-ins. We have Bella Swan from Twilight; her perfect mate to whisks her off to
lock her away in a tower and never ever let her make a decision that he doesn’t approve of a more desirable and exotic lifestyle. Countless dime store romances are designed around the idea of a modern, relatable female lead getting caught up with a larger-than-life, perfect male lead.
While I would never call book-Sherlock terribly relatable, we also never have to view the world through his eyes; we have Watson, who allows the reader to follow along and view Adler through a more understandable POV.
I don’t really have a thesis statement here or anything; I just thought it was an interesting flop in the way characters are written and perceived when the different is what — hardly more than a century?
The world is a strange place, man.
When I posted last night about how Irene Adler is indicative of Doyle’s target audience, I had only watched the first episode of the second season. I have since caught up. (That is a whole ‘nother post. Oh my fucking god.)
I feel like Molly Hooper accentuates this point, actually. I like Molly. I’m supposed to like Molly. She’s a stand-in for women who have had crushes on unattainable men. I think Molly exists pretty much for this purpose.
She’s endearing and sincere and nearly infuriating. She’s sort of hopelessly cute in the first season, and I downright felt for her in A Scandal in Belgravia. So when she starts off in The Reichenbach Fall by analyzing the way Sherlock is behaving, and then follows it up with, “I don’t count,” I’m left wanting to hug her and shake her.
While I’d take a hundred Molly Hoopers over one Bella Swan, she serves a very similar niche — a relatively young woman who pines after a superior and exotic male. When Sherlock goes to Molly for help, we’re not only feeling that pang of strange excitement for Molly, but for the very type of woman she represents.
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