A Study in Scarlet

“His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his hand over his heart and bowed as if to some applauding crowd conjured up by his imagination.”

The image of a self-satisfied Holmes bowing to an imaginary audience quickly establishes his arrogance. Moreover, despite the fact that he spends most of the novel pretending that he doesn’t care what other people think about him, in reality, he is desperate for recognition and validation from others.

“Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of the City.”

The implication here is that Holmes is visiting the poorest—and by extension, most crime-ridden—areas to solve cases or just familiarize himself with these parts of the city. The connection between the lower classes and crime is a common trope of Victorian literature, at times reinforcing the stereotype and at times exploding it.

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.”

Holmes singular focus in life is being able to deduce the truth from seemingly unrelated observations. By tightly controlling what takes up space in his “mind attic”—in other words, the things he chooses to learn and remember—he removes any clutter that might slow things down or lead to false conclusions. Thus, while he is exaggerating to Watson when he claims to not know that the Earth revolves around the sun, his larger point is that by keeping his mind clear and focused on the things that matter, he can more quickly make deductions.

“When I had got so far in my list I threw it into the fire in despair. ‘If I can only find what the fellow is driving at by reconciling all these accomplishments, and discovering a calling which needs them all,’ I said to myself, ‘I may as well give up the attempt at once.’”

Two things make Watson an effective narrator and a stand-in for the reader. First, he notices details and, like Holmes, is also interested in the truth. Second, despite his close observation and detailed notes, Watson does not have the ability to deduce anything, which means Holmes frequently has to explain his thinking to him in a way that lays it out clearly for the reader as well.

“‘Wonderful!’ I ejaculated.

‘Commonplace,’ said Holmes, though I thought from his expression that he was pleased at my evident surprise and admiration.”

Holmes constantly tries to downplay his abilities and achievements to emphasize his brilliance. If what he is able to do really is commonplace for him, that just makes him that much more special. Likewise, he brings Watson to the crime scene because it provides him with a new, captive audience to witness and appreciate what he does.

“I had imagined that Sherlock Holmes would at once have hurried into the house and plunged into a study of the mystery. Nothing appeared to be further from his intention. With an air of nonchalance which, under the circumstances, seemed to me to border upon affectation, he lounged up and down the pavement, and gazed vacantly at the ground, the sky, the opposite houses and the line of railings. Having finished his scrutiny, he proceeded slowly down the path, or rather down the fringe of grass which flanked the path, keeping his eyes riveted upon the ground. Twice he stopped, and once I saw him smile, and heard him utter an exclamation of satisfaction.”

Holmes’s approach to solving the mystery is much more methodical and carefully considered than everyone else’s, and he has a much wider view of what information can be gleaned from a crime scene. By gathering data outside the house first, he is able to make a more purposeful and effective examination of the body. Once again, he cannot help making a show of his abilities either—he wants people to notice that he is doing things differently, and he wants the acknowledgment that they couldn’t solve the case without him.

“I am afraid, Rance, that you will never rise in the force. That head of yours should be for use as well as ornament. You might have gained your sergeant’s stripes last night.”

Holmes admonishes Rance for not realizing that the drunk man he discovered at the scene of the crime was in fact the murderer. Rance, another example of police incompetence, demonstrates the difference between Holmes and the force. For Holmes, solving crimes is a vocation. It is what he has dedicated his life to, and he cannot fathom how someone could miss such an obvious opportunity to catch the murderer. Yet, for Rance, being a police officer is simply a job, and if Holmes hadn’t asked him questions, he wouldn’t have ever known about his mistake.

“I must thank you for it all. I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn’t we use a little art jargon. There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

Holmes’s use of “art jargon”—here, he euphemizes the grisly, blood-spattered crime scene as a painting, “a study in scarlet”—reveals his careful repression of his emotions. Rather than considering the inner life of victims or murder—something the novel itself is interested in, as Part 2 shows—he distances himself from this kind of involvement, analyzing the crime as a work of art to understand its aesthetics and meaning. However, Holmes is not immune from the desire to philosophize, as his metaphor shows. For him, most of life is a boring “colourless skein”—only the “scarlet thread of murder” animates its inner passions and desires; the job of the detective is to “unravel,” “isolate,” and “expose” these usually hidden motivations.

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.”

Despite his devotion to hard reason and logic, Holmes still has a deep appreciation for the arts. He not only plays the violin and attends a classical music concert, but also sees what he does—solving crimes using deduction and analysis—as a kind of art as well. Referencing Charles Darwin, whose work on the process of natural selection elevated humans above other animals in the lay imagination, valorizes music as a particularly important art form—one whose mathematical precision evokes cultural memory.

“‘All this seems strange to you,’ continued Holmes, ‘because you failed at the beginning of the inquiry to grasp the importance of the single real clue which was presented to you. I had the good fortune to seize upon that, and everything which has occurred since then has served to confirm my original supposition, and, indeed, was the logical sequence of it. Hence things which have perplexed you and made the case more obscure, have served to enlighten me and to strengthen my conclusions.’”

What sets Holmes apart from the likes of Gregson and Lestrade is his ability to observe and pinpoint which facts are relevant. Gregson and Lestrade approach the case very conventionally, generalizing from past experience, so they readily fall for red herrings. Because Holmes considers each case on its own merits exclusively, he remains on the right track, and additional information—such as the wedding ring—only reduces the number of possibilities for the truth.

“Their escort did not halt, however, but pushed on, followed by a great crowd of Mormons, until they reached a wagon, which was conspicuous for its great size and for the gaudiness and smartness of its appearance. Six horses were yoked to it, whereas the others were furnished with two, or, at most, four a-piece.”

The Mormons are a seeming answer to John and Lucy Ferrier’s prayers, as they rescue them from certain death. However, even in their first meeting with Brigham Young, there are hints that things are not as auspicious as they seem. The fact that the Mormon leader’s wagon is significantly larger than everyone else’s foreshadows his exploitative and tyrannical rule.

“[Jefferson Hope] soon became a favourite with the old farmer, who spoke eloquently of his virtues. On such occasions, Lucy was silent, but her blushing cheek and her bright, happy eyes, showed only too clearly that her young heart was no longer her own.”

The Hope depicted at the end of Part 1—a murderous, furious, seemingly “manic” man who attempts to throw himself out the window to get away—is very different than the one readers meet in Part 2. The revelation that Hope was a virtuous man raises a lot of questions about what happened in the interim, and how he could fall so far.

“Yes, a dangerous matter—so dangerous that even the most saintly dared only whisper their religious opinions with bated breath, lest something which fell from their lips might be misconstrued, and bring down a swift retribution upon them. The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description.”

Salt Lake City quickly turns from being a prosperous land of the free into a dystopian surveillance state that punishes even the mildest perceived infractions. Brigham Young rules through fear, and he creates fear by fostering distrust between neighbors and friends. This way, he doesn’t even need to enforce the rules—or even actually surveil much— because everyone is constantly worried everyone else could be an informant.

“Upon rising next morning he found, to his surprise, a small square of paper pinned on to the coverlet of his bed just over his chest. On it was printed, in bold straggling letters:—

‘Twenty-nine days are given you for amendment, and then—’

The dash was more fear-inspiring than any threat could have been. How this warning came into his room puzzled John Ferrier sorely, for his servants slept in an outhouse, and the doors and windows had all been secured.”

Brigham Young uses fear as a means of control. Leaving the threat open-ended makes it that much scarier because it allows Ferrier’s mind to fill in the possible horrific consequence of disobeying Young’s directives. When combined with the mystery of how the notes are being left in his house, Ferrier feels completely powerless to prevent what is coming.

“As he stood by the desolate fire, he felt that the only one thing which could assuage his grief would be thorough and complete retribution, brought by his own hand upon his enemies. His strong will and untiring energy should, he determined, be devoted to that one end.”

Lucy’s death is pure tragedy; Doyle relies on the tropes of melodrama to elicit as much pathos from her fate as possible. In some ways, what happens to her is an interesting inversion of some of the Western narratives that became popular in the preceding several decades. Many featured the abduction and rape of young white women by Indigenous people; here, Lucy is similarly abducted and raped, but at the hands of the white settlers who have displaced the Indigenous tribes originally living on the land.

“There had been a schism among the Chosen People a few months before, some of the younger members of the Church having rebelled against the authority of the Elders, and the result had been the secession of a certain number of the malcontents, who had left Utah and become Gentiles. Among these had been Drebber and Stangerson; and no one knew whither they had gone. Rumour reported that Drebber had managed to convert a large part of his property into money, and that he had departed a wealthy man, while his companion, Stangerson, was comparatively poor.”

Given Brigham Young’s autocratic and, at times, tyrannical rule, it is not surprising that some members of the community eventually rebelled. Drebber and Stangerson both have fathers who are Elders, so they would not have been able to sell much of their property unless it was property they acquired themselves. Drebber left Utah a wealthy man because he inherited Ferrier’s vast estate upon Lucy’s death—his actual motivation for marrying her. This explains the financial situation between Drebber and Stangerson in Part 1.

“Our prisoner’s furious resistance did not apparently indicate any ferocity in his disposition towards ourselves, for on finding himself powerless, he smiled in an affable manner, and expressed his hopes that he had not hurt any of us in the scuffle.”

Importantly, the novel doesn’t reveal Hope’s upright nature until his full story has been told. This makes the difference between past and present Hope seem more pronounced. Interestingly, none of the characters comment upon the morality of what Hope has done after hearing his full story, and the novel leaves the question of whether he was justified open for interpretation.

“[Hope] spoke in a calm and methodical manner, as though the events which he narrated were commonplace enough. I can vouch for the accuracy of the subjoined account, for I have had access to Lestrade’s note-book, in which the prisoner’s words were taken down exactly as they were uttered.”

It is jarring when Part 2 of the novel flashes back to decades earlier, changes setting to another continent, and is told via a third-person narrator rather than Watson’s reportage. Here, Watson explains the shift and sets up the framing device. The novel is a first-person recollection of events by Watson, so framing the parts of the story that take place in America as an adjoined set of police notes provides a sense of verisimilitude to the entire thing.

“‘It don’t much matter to you why I hated these men,’ he said; ‘it’s enough that they were guilty of the death of two human beings—a father and a daughter—and that they had, therefore, forfeited their own lives. After the lapse of time that has passed since their crime, it was impossible for me to secure a conviction against them in any court. I knew of their guilt though, and I determined that I should be judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. You’d have done the same, if you have any manhood in you, if you had been in my place.’”

Hope’s success at taking the law into his own hands contrasts with the constant ineptitude of Gregson and Lestrade. By and large, the novel depicts an unjust world, where the powerful can get away with murder, and the police are more worried about reputation than the truth.

“There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him. I had my plans arranged by which I should have the opportunity of making the man who had wronged me understand that his old sin had found him out.”

Hope has spent over 20 years obsessively pursuing Drebber and Stangerson in the name of vengeance. For this reason, it is vital to him that they recognize who he is and why they are being killed. This aligns Hope with Holmes, who is equally obsessive and in a constant search for recognition of his life’s work.

“‘It was not I who killed her father,’ [Drebber] cried.

‘But it was you who broke her innocent heart,’ [Hope] shrieked, thrusting the box before him. ‘Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. There is death in one and life in the other. I shall take what you leave. Let us see if there is justice upon the earth, or if we are ruled by chance.’”

Hope feels that all of society’s structures and systems that are supposed to ensure justice have failed him and thus has taken things into his own hands. His willingness to take whichever pill Drebber doesn’t and his belief that doing so means God will decide who is guilty and who is innocent suggests that he feels justified in his actions by divine right.

“‘What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,’ returned my companion, bitterly. ‘The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done. Never mind,’ he continued, more brightly, after a pause. ‘I would not have missed the investigation for anything. There has been no better case within my recollection. Simple as it was, there were several most instructive points about it.’”

At the end of the day, regardless of how much Holmes desires recognition and validation, he wants an interesting investigation even more. While his insistence that the case was simple can be read purely as arrogance, it also reveals a lot about the way Holmes sees the world. Everything can be logically broken down and explained—it is just a matter of figuring out how. Once this is done and things are laid out as a causal chain of events, even the most complex case does appear simple.

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically.”

What sets Holmes apart from those around him is his ability to approach problems from a different angle, and what allows him to do this so effectively is the way he observes and collects data. The same clues and information are available to everyone at any given crime scene, but only Holmes can see the connections.