Sherlock Holmes

1
Sherlock Holmes

• "The Adventure of
• Charles Augustus Milverton

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Starting Questions

• How is the story structured? (Beginning, middle
  and end? Binaries?)
• How are the three male characters presented?
• How has the story been read? (chap 2 196-97)
• Are there other ways of reading it?

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Structure revelation vs. concealment

• Watsons narrative frame
• With difficult b) the principal person beyond
  the reach of human law
• Concealment (date and fact)
• Plot revelation with justification Watson a
  companion but not involved in scheming.
• I. Beginning
• characterization of Milverton
• encounter, where reasoning and violence are no
  use.
• II. Action and building of suspense
• scheme of Holmes carried out
• the day of action

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Justification Male Protagonists and Binary
Opposition

• Milverton cunning as the Evil one, sly like a
  serpent, an
• insincerity of the fixed smile and by the hard
  glitter of those restless and penetrating eyes
  (p. 374-
• twinkle in his eyes

• Holmes
• how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot
  blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who
  methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul
  and wrings the nerves in order to add to his
  already swollen money-bags?

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Structure (2) crime vs. justification

• Justification the depiction of
• Plot (2)
• Twists the cat, the unlocked door, some sudden
  noise
• Climax Revelation and action
• Plot (3)
• resolution
• Holmes erasing all the evidence
• the visit of the policeman Mr. Lestrade
• Revelation in Concealment (1) like Watson
• Revelation in Concealment (2) visit of the
  portrait.

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The Absent Women the Textual Unsaid

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Other Readings??? (chap 2 197)

• 1) Holmes as an English gentleman a figure
  whose remodelling as the apotheosis of civilized
  humanity in the late nineteenth century was
  central to the cultural hegemony of Englishness.
  
• 2) Anxiety over London as a site of labor class
  crimes ? the enigmatic vs. a total closure
• 3) discursive formation of power (Thompson qtd
  chap 2 198) Sherlock Holmes knowledge, his
  ability to unravel the most intractable puzzles,
  gives him the power to penetrate the mysteries of
  London. The same form of knowledge that
  ultimately produced the Empire also produced the
  figure of the empirical detective hero, Sherlock
  Holmes (1993 76)

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Homles and Empire e.g.

• Grimesby Roylott (The Adventure of the Speckled
  Band) and Leon Sterndale (The Adventure of the
  Devils Foot) are characters who return home to
  Britain after venturing into India or West Africa
  as doctors. Both show dramatic changes (417-18).
• The passion for Indian animals (Doyle 2003,
  310) that Grimesby Roylott had developed in
  Calcutta facilitated his crimes Julias death
  was linked to a snake that he had passed through
  a ventilator, knowing its poisonous venom would
  be lethal (418).

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The Colonies vs. Empire solution

• The Holmes stories seem to offer reassurance to
  the Victorian society for which they were written
  that the British can, in fact, maintain control
  over their colonies in faraway places, and,
  despite the troubles that may confront them on
  their own shores, maintain law and order at
  home.. (426)

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Other Readings???

• Adventure together,
• I will take a cab straight to the police-station
  and give you away, unless you let me share this
  adventure with you.
• Experiencing sporting interest of the adventure
  
• He seized my hand in the darkness and led me
  swiftly past banks of shrubs which brushed
  against our faces. Holmes had remarkable powers,
  carefully cultivated, of seeing in the dark.
  Still holding my hand in one of his, he opened a
  door, and I was vaguely conscious that we had
  entered a large room in which a cigar had been
  smoked not long before. He felt his way among the
  furniture, opened another door, and closed it
  behind us.

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• Raheja, Lauren. Anxieties of Empire in Doyles
  Tales of
• Sherlock Holmes. Nature, Society, and Thought,
  vol. 19, no. 4 (2006).