University of Nish

Faculty of Philosophy
Department of Philology

The detective stories and Sherlock Holmes

Student:
Aleksandra Todorović, 87

Nish, june, 2017.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created and written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In order to understand his works, we should introduce ourselves with the author first. Doyle’s
father was an English Catholic and his mother was Irish, but due to his father’s alcoholism, the
family was temporarily separated, and so it happened that Arthur was born in Edinburgh,
Scotland on the 22nd of May 1859. He wrote science fiction and historical stories. Arthur Doyle
became an agnostic by the time he left school. He studied medicine at the Edinburgh
University from 1876. to 1881. He wrote short stories in his spare time. In 1882, he started
working as a doctor in Southsea. He carried on writing fiction while he waited for patients. His
first Sherlock Holmes story that was published was A Study in Scarlet (1887). Doyle's great gifts
as a writer were story-telling and character. He created really memorable characters.1 After A
Study in Scarlet came The Sign of the Four, The Valley of Fear and The Hound of the
Baskervilles. The other Holmes stories were published in the Strand Magazine. They were later
collected together in five volumes, starting with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Conan
Doyle also wrote The Lost World, published in 1912. In it, Professor Challenger and his
companions travel to find a large plateau in South America where dinosaurs still live. Doyle died
of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are
wonderful." At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as
he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11th
of July 1930. in Windlesham rose garden. Later he was reinterred together with his wife
in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.2

Stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes are usually thought of as a crime and detective
Bible. These literary works come as a crown to all the forerunners such as Edgar Allan Poe’s The

1
Some of the researches show that a lot of his characters were based on real people he knew or had heard of. It is
believed that the character of Sherlock Holmes was probably based on a doctor called Joseph Bell. Also, the
character of Moriarty was inspired by Adam Worth, a real-life criminal mastermind.
2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyl
murders in the Rue Morg, Mystery of Mary Roget and The Purloined letter, and Hoffman’s
Madmoiselle de Scuderi and other chronicles of crime, that were popular during the 19th century.
This sudden interest for detective adventures came from the 18th century gothic fiction that
situated mysterious events in abandoned castles and rainy nights, with the extraordinary
individual who was the only capable person to put the pieces together and conclude the motives
and outcomes of the situation. The newspapers were full with cases of arsenic poisoning,
mysterious homicides and arsons, and naturally these easily crossed from daily news to literature
and became the male version of easy reading. And so, the detective genre was born! But, what
makes a detective story?

When it comes to giving one and precise definition of the detective genre, the scientist
faces with a multitude of viewpoints and various interpretations. Some find it that the detective
genre is a unique and stable form, characterized by the protagonist – the detective, the crime that
needs to be solved, and the inversion in storytelling – first the reader finds out about the crime,
and then, going in reverse, the motives and execution of the act are being revealed. On the other
hand, there is a whole lot of theoreticians that consider detective stories to be a mere subgroup of
crime fiction. The difference between these two is that the crime story usually focuses on the
criminal and the way he plots and executes the criminal act, so the narrative perspective is
usually the perspective of the “bad guy”, whereas in the detective stories, the reader and the
detective in most cases have the same knowledge about the events that are being investigated,
and are both rooting for the justly ending – the bad guy being caught and the peace being
restored. The third genre that detective stories usually relate to is the mystery genre. The mystery
is commonly defined as the presence of a secret that cannot be revealed, or that remains
unexplained. Therefore, the connection isn’t at all surprising, because the detective genre is
based on the mysterious motives and methods in which the crime (often murder) happened, and
that need to be discovered. The main difference is that in mystery fiction the end doesn’t bring
the answer and peace to the reader, but the question remains unanswered, and the reader can only
make assumptions, but on the contrary, the detective story always ends with the dismissal, the
catharsis. The feature that these three (detective, crime and mystery fiction) have in common is
the suspense. The suspense is a state of anxious uncertainty about what may (have) happen(ed).
It’s the exact thing that urges the reader to continue reading in pursuit of the answer. 3

The romantic ideal embodied in a unique extraordinary individual and positivist model
were joined and in this joint lies the creation of one of the most famous detectives of all times!
Sherlock Holmes has all of those romantic features that could make him a modern hero – his
intellectual capacities are above average, he possess various talents such as playing the violin
and composing (which represent his artistic side), and fighting skills (he’s an ex-boxer), his
knowledge in the field of chemistry is impressive, but completely unsystematic, he is exceptional
and one of a kind. On the other hand, Sherlock’s method is entirely positivist – he uses different
clues and facts, and then rationally arranges them in a way that Doyle likes to call deduction, but
which is, in fact, induction. The objects that symbolize Sherlock are the deerstalker cap, which
he usually wears when going undercover, his smoking pipe and a magnifying glass.

Of course, as every famous hero, Sherlock has his side-kick, his right hand man, his
faithful friend doctor Watson. Watson is an ex-army doctor, Sherlock’s flatmate and assistant in
most of his cases. He is usually clueless about what’s really going on, his theories are mostly
groundless and while Sherlock represents the ratio, Watson is more emotional and susceptible to
weaknesses. His character allows the reader to notice all the Sherlock’s superiority making the
simple comparison between these two. In terms of narrative theory he is a reflector character.
But, the most important roll of doctor Watson is the fact that he is the narrator of all the stories.
Through his perspective we perceive Sherlock Holmes, his behavior, his attitude towards the
clients and cases, the way he reacts and the way he thinks. Basically Watson is Sherlock’s
biographer. The third party in Sherlock’s “gang” is his landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Holmes’s relation
with Mrs. Hudson is somewhat ambivalent – she has to put up with his loud music, occasional
gun shots and chemical experiments, but on the other hand, he treats her with kindness and
courtesy, and also, he pays nicely. One may even say that Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock have a
“mother-son” relationship. Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock’s older brother, intellectually far
superior, but unwilling to do any of the detective work and with no ambition towards crime
solving. His character urges the reader to compare the brothers and offers the version of Sherlock

3
Dejan Milutinović, Historical Poetics of the Detective Story, PhD dissertation, Nis, 2012. Available on
https://www.scribd.com/document/127524136/Istorijska-poetika-detektivske-pri%C4%8De-Milutinovic-Dejan-
Ni%C5%A1-2012
as he could have been, in some other reality, under some other circumstances. Sherlock’s arch
nemesis is professor Moriarty, the criminal mastermind. This character appears only in two
stories and is referred to as “the Napoleon of crime”. He is created to enable the author to
motivate the death of Sherlock Holmes. The end comes in Reichenbach fall where symbolically
these two antipodes fall together into their death. Some of the minor characters that also appear
in the stories and novels are the police inspectors Gregson, Bradstreet and Hopkins, Watson’s
wife Mary Morstan, Sherlock and Mycroft’s younger sister Enola Holmes, etc.

The Sherlock Holmes stories usually begin with Sherlock and Watson sitting in
armchairs, smoking and having some intellectual conversations, embodying the stereotype of a
Victorian gentleman. Then, their peace is being disrupted by the upset client that barges in, the
alarming telegram, or some sort of plea for help.

The clients’ motives for asking the consulting detective for help vary from asking for the
case to be solved in secrecy and discretion, or wanting their secret to remain hidden from the
public and their reputation unharmed, to the fear of revenge, or even the incapability of the
police to untangle the mystery. But one thing is always the same – all these people belong to
similar social classes – upper middle class, or more often, aristocracy, and they all can afford to
pay for his services. However, money isn’t Sherlock’s motive in solving cases. While Holmes
does hand criminals over to the police, serving justice is not his primary concern. Instead,
Holmes is primarily interested in the case as an intellectual challenge, a puzzle to be solved.4

Sherlock’s superior intelligence and the power of deduction (induction) start expressing
themselves from the very second the person enters the room – based on the mud on the shoes he
knows where the person comes from, according to the look of the clothes, he decides on their
personalities, he gathers all the important information sitting in his armchair, and in no more than
ten minutes.

When it comes to the investigation itself, Sherlock goes to the crime scene, visits the
potential suspects, and never hesitates to put on disguise, meet up with the members of the

4
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Red-Headed League.” SparkNotes LLC. 2007.
http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-red-headed-league/ (accessed June 2, 2017).
underground, or even engage in a fistfight. He risks his life, consumes opium, travels to foreign
countries. One may even say he has some action hero features!

One thing is certain – the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes always “cracks the case”.
The bad guy is discovered, caught and put behind bars. The good wins. And this represents the
ethical dimension of these stories. The reader’s perspective is such, that he always disapproves of
the crime (unlike the crime fiction), and wants the justice to be served and peace restored. The
moral of the story is always – the good wins. This dimension can categorize detective fiction as a
part of socially engaged literature. It shows the country (in this case Britain) as a completely
arranged system in which the justice always wins, the police does its job rightfully and protects
the innocents. Of course, the fact that Sherlock Holmes steps in whenever the police doesn’t
know how to handle the case, can also be understood as a sort of a mockery towards the state
police and their abilities.

Without any doubt, Doyle’s stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes and his adventures
represent the very peak of the detective genre, its golden age, the rulebook for the other great
authors like Agatha Christi, Alexander McCall Smith, etc. These timeless classics are as popular
today, in the 21st century, as they were in the 19th, and have inspired countless TV and cinema
adaptation for decades.