Jonathan Sullivan

Professor Haas
Writing 39B
30 April 2014
The Duality and character of Sherlock Holmes
Oscar Wilde, an acclaimed writer and playwright during the Victorian era, once
wrote, most people are other people, their opinions are others opinions, their lives a
mimicry. This was a facet of society that he examined with the character of Dorian Gray
from what is, perhaps, one of his most well known novels - The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This character, who moves outside of the Taxonomic lines of a stratified victorian
society, is a character who, according to literary writer John McBratney, mirrored in the
character of Sherlock Holmes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyles The Sign of the Four.
McBratney, in an article, Racial and Criminal Types: Indian Ethnography and Sir
Arthur Conan Doyles the Sign of Four, printed in a 2005 edition of the Victorian
Literature and Culture magazine, discusses the duality of the character of Sherlock
Holmes and, ultimately, how this duality is the reflection of the society in which he has
been created into. McBratney- as well as other Scholars - use the The Sign of Four--
one of Doyles most popular stories about Sherlock Holmes and first published in 1890--
in particular for these arguments. These scholars, using The Sign of Four (as well as
other sources) discuss the development of the character of Sherlock and how his
character is a reflection of the society in which he has been created.
George Dove, and Leroy Panek, writing The Reader and the Detective Story
and an Introduction to the Detective Story, respectively, both argue that, in essence,
the plot of a Doyle story is not particularly special - it follows a set pattern, and often
involves a derivative plot of a relatively short list of generic and standard plot devices -
however, it was Doyles fusion of existing literary motifs and his own scientific veneer,
(Panek 92, 94-95, Dove) and, ultimately, its the character of Sherlock Holmes, that set
the Holmes stories apart. Agreeing with this, McBratney suggests, [Doyle] emphasizes
[how important]...identity [is] to the narrative (McBratney, 162). On this point, Panek
agrees - he asserts that Doyle transformed the somewhat wooden character of the
detective when he made Holmes[Holmes identity] is [that] of a complex and
fascinating man (Panek 92). Beginning with his name, Doyle created an ingenious
character- yet, for how much we know about Sherlock - that of his genius, acute and
amazing observational abilities (92), as well as a few of his habits, such as his cocaine
addiction (Doyle, 149) - there is much that is not known about him. Holmes is a
creature of immense attraction (Panek 92), partially because Doyle conceals his
characters identity beneath the fog of the unobservant Watson. Even though the
Sherlock is the central character in the narrative(s), so little is known about him and his
life - all that is truly seen is his identity with regard to the mystery itself through the eyes
of John Watson (92) - thereby taking focus off the finer- and perhaps even some of the
broader- points of Sherlocks life. One more element of his intrigue derives from the fact
that he is so accessible to the society that he lives in - that is, according to Panek, he is
like a Physician, who, as seen in one of Doyles earliest stories, The Scandal in
Bohemia, is the only man who people can come to with their unique stories. The
development of the mystery of his character, combined with his accessibility, create
great levels of intrigue and relatability, as Panek asserts.
Furthermore, both Panek and McBratney argue for the intrigue caused by the
duality that Doyle infuses into the character of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes, is, essentially,
according to Panek, modelled after Poes ideal of a Bi-Part Soul - a secular and
popular split personality (93). His identity, then, is one of contrasts - a drug addict who
is, perhaps, lazy and imprecise at times (93) - yet, he is also accomplished at all of
these; he is accomplished without effort. His character, then, is a fascinating one.
Although we know so little about him, that which we do know informs us of his effortless
genius and his ability to do nearly anything that he sets out to accomplish. He is a man
who is bored - a man who craves mental exaltation and who created the unofficial
consulting detective (Doyle, 164) to help satiate his boredom; a man who can take
what appears to be trivial and almost meaningless - such as the case of Jabez Wilson in
Doyle short story, The Red Headed League, and make it important (93). Likewise, as
McBratney argues, we could also say that this split personality helps separate Holmes
from the aggregate, and puts him in a self-contained liminal state. Unlike Panek, who
asserts that this character is essentially modelled after Poes Bi-Part Soul (92),
McBratney argues that Doyle was heavily influenced by Oscar Wilde and the character
of Dorian Grey from The Picture of Dorian Grey (McBratney 161); like Dorian, Holmes is
a member of the upper class (or the bourgeois) who is a witty aesthete, a seeker of
outr, and a seeker of fresh sensations that sometimes shock the bourgeois (161).
Holmes, then, clearly does not make the aggregate (or the identity/taxonomy) of the
upper-class - and while Watson follows the pattern of the Victorian era and the typical
marriage novel of the time by marrying Ms. Morstan (162), Sherlock, in the words of
McBratney, is an insoluble puzzle of a man by resuming his cocaine usage and
bucking this trend. Sherlock, however, is the only character that can do this, and, thus,
this liminal state- that of being between the upper and other classes- is confined solely
within himself (162). While both Panek and McBratney agree that this duality of
character causes intrigue in the character of the detective, the two disagree upon its
implications. Whereas Panek asserts that the duality embodies almost everyones
fantasies, thereby making him a more accessible character with more universal appeal,
and contributing to our estimation of his genius (Panek 93), McBratney contends that
his duality of character is a conduction of himself as an exception to those venerable
set[s] of factualized statements about the world in order to prop up taxonomic orders in
England and in the Empire...he acts to confirm the legitimacy of British taxonomies of
knowledge about India[to] ensure that even a rudimentary sense of political agency is
moot (McBratney 162). Or, in other words, Doyle, through the character of Sherlock
Holmes, particularly the facet of duality, legitimizes leading social ideas about the
taxonomies (or classification structures) of India.
Moreover, both McBratney and Christopher Keep/John Randall, in Addiction,
Empire, and Narrative in Arthur Conan Doyles The Sign of Four -- in which they say that
Holmes is an analogy for the British Empire on a whole -- use the character of Tonga from the
The Sign of Four as a basis for their arguments. To Keep, Tonga is representative of the other,
or the in terms of the classical body (i.e, England) vs. that of the exotic and grotesque other, as
they are associated with the dejected, the abjected, and the rejected, Tonga[is an] aspect [of]
the grotesque[which is] open, protruding, irregular, secreting, multiple, and changing (Keep
215). The task, then, of Sherlock is to expel the colonial other, that which is an abnormality in
Britain. When Holmes and Watson catch a glimpse of [Tongas] venomous, menacing eyes
amid the white swirl of the waters (Doyle), it seems to be shown, according to Keep, that the
science of deduction, together with a measure of sheer British ingenuity and courage, has
effectively restored the spatial and ontological integrity of the imperial caste (216), or, as
McBratney would say, the Social Taxonomy. This, then, would confer with McBratneys
argument as Keep proceeds to cite authorship that argues that Doyle employs nineteenth
century typologies of gender, class, and race, and thus creates a detective designed to enforce
the fixity and naturalness of established social order (216). Yet, in another agreement with
McBratney, Tonga has not yet been eliminated and Sherlocks duality of character is revealed
through his cocaine usage. Even though Holmes is crucial in eliminating, or purging, the other
from the system that is England, what is left of it is symbolized by the return of Sherlock to
cocaine at the end of the novel. Cocaine, like the other in the form of the poison dart used to
Sholto (214) - he both removes the other from Britains system and keeps the remnant of it;
thereby, according to Keep, symbolizing the British Empire. As a result, Sherlock, according to
Keeps view, is a symbol of society, and a product of that which he was created for by Doyle.
Historical and Social context, it would seem, are crucial to understanding literature.
Doyles The Sign of Four is not immune to this, and understanding the time period that
surrounds the audience as well as the plot helps modern readers understand a bit of what is
going on underneath the surface that is the plot. Although Scholars debate over the symbolism
and meaning behind the character of Sherlock Holmes from Doyles novels, particularly the The
Sign of Four in this instance, it would seem that most agree that Sherlock is a product of his
time, and his society - whether it is the notions of imperialism and racism, or the audience,
Sherlock Holmes is a man of his time- dated by the fiction that contains him.
Works Cited
Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Sign of the Four. Seattle: Amazon Digital Services,
2013.
Kindle eBook. Online.

Doyle, A. (1892). Adventure 1: A Scandal in Bohemia. The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes (Lit2Go Edition). Retrieved April 30, 2014,
fromhttp://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/32/the-adventures-of-sherlock-
holmes/345/adventure-1-a-scandal-in-bohemia/

Doyle, Arthur Conan. "Adventure 2: The Red-Headed League." The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Lit2Go Edition. 1892. Web.
<http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/32/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes/346/adventure-
2-the-red-headed-league/>. April 26, 2014.

Dove, George N. The Reader and the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1997. Print.

Farrell, Kirby. Heroism, Culture, and Dread in The Sign of Four. Studies in the Novel
16:1 (1984): 32-51. JSTOR. Web. 01/15/2014.

Keep, Christopher and Don Randall. Addiction, Empire, and Narrative in Arthur
Conan Doyles The Sign of Four. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 32:2 (1999):
207-221. JSTOR. Web. 01/15/2014.

McBratney, John. Racial and Criminal Types: Indian Ethnography and Sir
Arthur
Conan Doyles The Sign of Four. Victorian Literature and Culture 33:1
(2005): 149-167. JSTOR. Web. 01/15/2014.

Panek, Leroy. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1987. Print.