The Unreal Within the Real: Sherlock Holmes and Victorian Culture, Research Paper Example

Introduction

In Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle gave the world a detective unlike any other. A Victorian gentleman with a vast range of knowledge and artistic interests, Holmes leads a life that is removed from reality. He solves complex crimes, he challenges the brilliantly evil mind of Moriarty, he is a constant user of drugs, and he is always both successful and elegant. Holmes lives on today as a kind of superhuman hero and a model of intelligence, and one with enormous insight into the minds of all men and women. This fantasy character, however, is grounded in a culture as unique as himself. Victorian thinking, lifestyles, dangers, and social elements are all perfectly represented. If Doyle created an unreal man, the author made sure that the complicated reality of the time and place is always accurate, so there is a basis of reality adding to Holmes’s appeal. As the following then supports, the adventures of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes offer readers a fascinating account of a man who is fantasy, and on a foundation of Victorian reality giving credibility to the fantasy.

The Culture

Before the character of Holmes as a Victorian fantasy figure can be understood, it is first necessary to understand how unusual Victorian culture itself was. This was an era based, first of all, on a powerful sense of British civilization as ideal, if not superior to all others. By the mid-19^th century, England had become an imperial power, with colonies and British rule in place throughout the world.  The era is not defined by any single quality, simply because it lasted so long; the Victorian ranges from the coronation of the queen in 1837 to the beginning of the 20^th century, and a vast variety of social, economic, political, and technological changes occurred in these years. While it is ordinary for modern people to perceive the Victorians as repressed and fixated on “proper” behavior, there is no escaping that the culture was marked by many and important elements affecting and defining how life was lived. Beyond all of this, however, the era may be seen as one in which the British consistently held a sense of obligation. Powerful, increasingly industrialized, and proud of all aspects of English learning and thought, the Victorians generally saw themselves as models of civilized life (Landow). Even as the decades involved radical thinking and the development of new ideologies, the Victorians nonetheless adhered to strict standards of class and norms going to an emphasis on propriety.

By 1891, when Doyle first presented Holmes, the life portrayed in the stories was very well known to Doyle’s readers. What may have marked this beyond anything else was the factor of contrast. London itself was a great city in which extremes were everywhere. The upper classes rode hansom cabs to the theater and dining, often riding past diseased and desperately poor beggars and prostitutes. The Thames was a site for waste, even as great estates were set on its banks. The great prosperity of England, generated by industry and colonial commerce, brought with it increased crime and poverty for the lower classes, and beggars were a common sight on the streets for many decades (Stanford). In the mid-19^th century, modern treatments had not yet been created to clean the river, just as entire neighborhoods of the city were virtually controlled by crime organizations. Outside the city, Victorian towns and villages remained antiquated and resembled feudal communities of centuries past. In the city, the Victorians of wealth ignore as best as they could the conditions creating dangers, and emphasized learning, literature, music, and interest in social movements (Stanford). There was a strong belief that being English translated to social responsibility in terms of offering a model of character to the world, and this relied on living with elegance and an awareness of never behaving in a vulgar way (Landow). The complexity of Victorian culture was very real, it was the world known to Doyle, and he presented it in ways establishing Sherlock Holmes as a character who, if fantastic, lived in the “real world.”

The Character, Stories, and Culture

Sherlock Holmes, consistently presented by Dr. Watson, very much adheres to the ideal of Victorian living and culture in the later years of the era. Holmes is not an aristocrat but he is a gentleman, and Watson’s introduction of him in “A Study in Scarlet” fully represents how men of his station lived. When, for example, the two take rooms at Baker Street, it is clear that they expect comfort and Holmes has many pieces of luggage to unpack. The material was very important to the Victorians, and there is a strong sense that only items of the best quality were desirable. At the same time, the reader has the impression that Watson is shocked by the types of people Holmes entertains, and because some are from the lower levels of society (Doyle 16). This alone, however, reveals how Holmes is a man of the Late Victorian period. During the entire era, there were striking changes in thinking regarding other classes, as Marxism became a popular concept (Stanford). The British imperialism could not of course exist on such principles, but what is important is that Holmes has an “open mind” in terms of people older Victorian society saw as threatening. Moreover, that Watson is so traditional serves as a vital contrast to Holmes’s inquisitive nature and mind. In a sense, he is the “new” Victorian, interested in science and fact above all, while Watson represents the older generation’s insistence on propriety and a general knowledge of literature.

A more specific way in which Victorian culture adds credibility to the unreal character of Holmes goes to the very physical, and also emphasizes the upper class awareness and fear of the crime so common in London. In many of Doyle’s stories, a cane or walking stick is in fact a valuable asset. In “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax,” for example, Holmes and Watson face physical danger, and Holmes asks his friend if he is armed. Watson replies that he has his walking stick, Holmes is satisfied (Doyle 822), and this reinforces how a Victorian gentleman completely relied on his walking stick as both a sign of his status and a weapon. By the late 19^th century, a style of self-defense became fashionable for Victorian gentlemen, and Doyle even directly refers to it in “The Mystery of the Empty House.” In the adventure, Holmes informs Watson that he was able to defeat Moriarty by using Bartitsu, a form of combat resembling Japanese wrestling and one that also allowed men to use canes as weapons.  This refers to Barton-Wright’s Bartitsu Academy of Arms and Physical Culture, a Late Victorian institution that attracted the modern English person. What is also interesting about Doyle’s having Holmes embrace this fighting style is that the emphasis on the walking stick was seen as necessary, because “foreigners” did not fight like gentlemen; they would grab a chair or anything nearby to hurt their opponent, so the “manly” art of using only the fists needed to adapt (Townsend). Holmes, always interested in the new, then saw the advantages to the style, and once again a specific aspect of Victorian culture adds weight to the fantastic adventures of the hero.

It may be argued that Holmes can only be understood as representing the changes in later Victorian culture, even as the settings and behaviors of others more usually express traditional Victorian life and values. As noted, Watson’s “stuffy” character best embodies this. His purpose as the sounding board to whom Holmes can explain his brilliant deductions is expanded by virtue of his older Victorian shock at the unexpected, whereas Holmes is continually fascinated by new discoveries and science. The Victorians were largely responsible for the idea of inventions itself as overtaking the Western world. As the nation advanced in industry and manufacture, the thinking that mankind – and specifically British men – could solve problems through creating devices became a staple of the culture (Landow). This in turn connects to Holmes’s consistent faith in the power of science, which supports the fantasy character as based within the actual world. When Watson and Holmes first meet, in fact, it is Holmes’s excitement in scientific fact that dominates the encounter.  He has just learned that dark stains may be identified as blood, and he is overjoyed. Criminals have long escaped justice because there was no infallible means of testing the nature of suspicious stains, but: “Now we have the Sherlock Holmes test, and there will no longer be any difficulty” (Doyle 13). That Doyle actually has Holmes make this discovery strongly underscores the unreal nature of the character; it must be assumed, time after time, that the brilliance of Holmes’s mind is capable of many achievements, even though he is not at all a recognized scientist in the stories. What matters more, however, is that the Victorian commitment to discovery and invention is presented through the character.  Emphasizing this, again, is Watson’s disbelief. Of the older Victorian generation, he is baffled by his friend’s extreme knowledge of chemistry in place with an absolute lack of literature knowledge (Doyle 15-16), which defies the standard of the Victorian gentleman. The real point, nonetheless, is that Holmes represents the changing culture’s focus on science and invention.

Also adding to a realistic and cultural foundation to the hero’s unreality is Holmes’s legendary love of drugs. This reflects to an extent Victorian imperialism; as the empire expanded into the East, the British had increasing access to Asian drugs and could reproduce them within the society. There was no modern sense of the drugs as being immoral or dangerous, Watson’s scolding of Holmes aside, and this in turn also goes to the culture’s belief that a gentleman can make such choices, and that there can be no real harm as long as he maintains the correct appearance and behavior of a gentleman. The addictions of Holmes have led to a great deal of speculation over the years, but the character’s fantastic being is what most demands attention. In “The Sign of the Four,” the detective’s need for drugs is completely presented, and it argues against Watson’s claim that Holmes is ultimately harming himself. Watson sees Holmes inject cocaine into his veins three times a day and Holmes, while acknowledging that the physical risk is probably great, insists on the mental “exaltation” the drug provides (Doyle 64). Here then is a perfect illustration of the unreal as existing within the real culture. The Victorians generally looked down upon anything creating artificial senses of pleasure because this indicated weakness of character. Importantly, the Victorian idea of social responsibility that the upper classes always be in control. Holmes understands this but he is too unique to go along with such a cultural demand, and because his mind is too brilliant to settle for temporary boredom.  The cocaine and the morphine than act as dual agents in the stories. They allow for the disapproval of the “sinister” and exotic, and the pursuit of pleasure, felt by the Victorians, as they reinforce how Holmes is fiercely individual and unconcerned with cultural standards that interfere with his own ideas. This also goes to the unreality of the character, in that a man with so brilliant a mind and awareness of all reality would consistently harm his own being and brain.

Conclusion

If Holmes is both unique and fantastic as a character, his ordinary behaviors also mirror the Victorian culture which he sometimes defies. He is first and foremost a gentleman who behaves properly to others and observes all the standards of dress, expression, and conduct of a well-bred man. This is fully in keeping with the Late Victorian culture of his time, just as his fascination with evil is a more direct reflection of this in Victorians, who equated crime with overt sexuality (Stanford). What more commands attention, however, is that the enormous cultural landscape actually validates a character who is not real. Science aside, he comes to conclusions beyond human ability at times. At the same time, his presence is greatly supported by his conformity to Victorian behavior and his dismissals of certain Victorian standards.  Ultimately, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes presents readers a man who is fantasy, and who has substance because of a foundation of Victorian reality giving credibility to the fantasy.

Works Cited

Doyle, Arthur Conan. Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Stories. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1989. Print.

Landow, George P. Victorian and Victorianism. 2009. Web. 26 Dec. 2015.           <http://www.victorianweb.org/vn/victor4.html>

Stanford. Discovering Sherlock Holmes. 2006. Web. 26 Dec. 2015 <http://sherlockholmes.stanford.edu/history.html>

Townsend, Catherine. How to Fight Like a Victorian Gentleman. The Atlantic, 14 Nov. 2013. Web. 26 Dec. 2015. <http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/how-to-fight-like-a-victorian-gentleman/281163/