For Monday: Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: “A Scandal in Bohemia,” and “A Case of Identity”

Group “C” should answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What connections does the BBC Sherlock series (which we watched in class) make with these two stories? What characteristics, mannerisms, themes, and ideas did the show translate from the page to the stage? Another way of thinking about this is, how did the show help you read or understand the Sherlock (or the Watson) of the stories?

Q2: Both stories are about the dangers women in the late-19th century face while trying to be independent. While Irene Adler is much more aggressive and clever than Miss Sutherland, what makes each one especially vulnerable? Is Holmes sympathetic or oblivious to their situation?

Q3: Iain Pears, a critic and mystery novelist, wrote of Sherlock Holmes that he “is the archetypal ‘new man’ of the Victorian age, a meritocrat, living solely off his brains, dislocated socially and scornful of the society in which he lives.” Where do we see this in the stories? What makes him an ‘outsider,’ yet someone who earns his own way in the world without relying on class or wealth?

Q4: In “A Case of Identity,” Holmes writes, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.” This sounds like a statement someone might say in Carrie, or “The Mark of the Beast.” However, since he’s not talking about ghosts and monsters, what does he mean by the “strange” things which are completely “normal” all around us? Why would we perceive these things as uncanny?