Why I don't buy into Sherlock Holmes/Irene Adler

[rj_anderson]

I found this old essay today -- had almost forgotten I'd ever written it. For the fellow Sherlockians among you, here it is:

In Defense of Mr. Godfrey Norton, Esq.

Also, has anybody out there read Carole Nelson Douglas's Irene books up to and including Chapel Noir? If so, what did you think of the latter? Because I have a pretty strong opinion on it and I'd be interested to find out if I'm not alone...

Comments

I haven't read "Chapel Noir"...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

But I did read the Irene books up and including the one where she gets back to Bohemia. Haven't been able to find any later ones, which I was sorry for, since I liked them. IMO, C.N. Douglas avoids the trap Laurie King fell into with "The Beekeepers Apprentice" - Mary Sue'ing her heroine. Also, her Geoffrey (and your essay is perfect) is the decent guy in canon Irene is in love with. Mutual appreciation between her and Holmes notwithstanding.

Oh, and I like Nell.

Re: I haven't read "Chapel Noir"...

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

IMO, C.N. Douglas avoids the trap Laurie King fell into with "The Beekeepers Apprentice" - Mary Sue'ing her heroine.

Wow, you really think so? I can only say that this just confirms my long-held suspicion that when it comes to otherwise competently written stories, Mary Sue is very much in the eye of the beholder. I like both the Irene books and the Russell series, but if I had to play "Pick the Mary Sue" I would choose Irene long before I got to Russell.

Of course, it all depends on which classic Mary Sue attributes tend to ping your radar first. For me, hearing that a heroine is not only the mental match of Sherlock Holmes but also outstandingly beautiful, endowed with a perfect figure, able to charm everyone she meets, sings divinely, can act as well as any professional, and is continually on the cutting edge of fashion (with whole pages of the story devoted to describing just exactly what she happened to be wearing on any given day) makes said heroine a much less sympathetic and plausible character in my eyes.

Russell is like Irene in that she's highly intelligent and an excellent detective, of course, but she's also more fallible and ordinary in a lot of ways. There are times I want to smack her, as I do Irene, but not for being nauseatingly perfect.

Re: I haven't read "Chapel Noir"...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Okay, here's why I saw Russell as Mary Sue.
1) Takes place of canon character (Watson) and is much more suitable companion than him. (Poor Watson - the damage those films of the 40s did to his character, as opposed to canon!)
2) Is the equal of hero of original series.
3) Is teenage girl when inserting herself in said hero's life. (Yes, she grows up. But that's how she's introduced.)
4) Romance with hero. Ending with marriage to hero.

Irene's traits of being beautiful, a great actress and singer and the mental match of S.H. WERE established by Conan Doyle, so Douglas didn't make them up. And Irene does not become romantically involved with Holmes.

Re: I haven't read "Chapel Noir"...

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit baffled by #3. Being a teenager when introduced makes Russell a Mary Sue? Why? It's not like Laurie King was a teenager when she created Russell -- far from it, she's the mother of teenagers -- so it's not a problem with self-insertion.

#4 is also, IMO, a matter of taste and has nothing to do with Mary Sueness in itself. If Conan Doyle had been the one to write a wife for Sherlock Holmes, we wouldn't be accusing him of creating a Mary Sue, would we? And when William Gillette married off Holmes in his stage play (with Conan Doyle's own, quite famous, line of permission "You may marry or murder or do what you like with him"), I doubt the theatre patrons were running around grumbling about Alice being a Mary Sue (or the Edwardian equivalent thereof). They might well have objected to the idea that Holmes would ever fall in love or marry at all, and they might have complained that Alice was not in their opinion the sort of woman who would attract Holmes, but I can't imagine anyone just deciding out of hand that any female character who has a romance with Holmes and/or marries him is a badly drawn, superficial, cliched character (which is, after all, what the epithet "Mary Sue" implies) by default.

I'm also not quite sure about the "equal of hero". More than once Holmes beats Russell to the solution of a case, and/or she ends up on the sidelines while he does the heroic catching-the-villain part. I also get the distinct impression that Russell doesn't have her heart in detecting the way that Holmes does; theology is her first love and she would much rather sneak off in a corner with a pile of books and manuscripts and not be bothered with detective stuff at all.

On the other hand, I agree about the mishandling of Watson -- it's been a long-time complaint among Russell fans, and Laurie has got an earful from us about it. :) But the idea of Holmes working with Russell rather than Watson doesn't bother me, because Watson is in retirement. And the whole idea of the series is the chance to see Holmes through eyes other than Watson's -- feminine eyes for a change -- so it would defeat the purpose if Russell didn't take Watson's place as narrator.

I understand that some readers don't like Russell and don't approve of what Laurie King is doing, and that's fine. Not everything is to everyone's taste. But I don't think the difference between Irene Adler and Mary Russell is the difference between a well-drawn character and a "Mary Sue". In fact, for all that she's ostensibly taken from canon, Irene strikes me as far more idealized and glamourized by her author (which is the thing that pings my personal Mary Sue radar most of all) than Russell. I don't get the sense that Laurie King wishes she were Russell, or that she writes as though everyone ought to love Russell unconditionally; I do get the sense that Carole Nelson Douglas wishes she were Irene, and that anyone in or out of the story who doesn't worship Irene for being so clever and beautiful and witty and chic is wrong. That's really what I meant. But of course, YMMV.

Re: I haven't read "Chapel Noir"...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The teenager thing: didn't have anything to do with Laurie King per se, but rather with the fact that at the time I read "The Beekeeper's Apprentice", I had just discovered a new fandom and, as always with new fandoms, had to wade through a lot of teenage girls popping up left and right to canon characters before finding the good stuff. Which is why Mary's age struck me. Call it an unfortunate coincidence.

You're right about marriage not being a necessary qualification for Sue-ness. But I think I might have continued the Russell books beyond No.2 if she hadn't married Holmes, or fallen in love with him. Because yes, a female perspective on Holmes could have been intriguing. As it is, the falling-in-love and marriage hit two of my personal squick buttons - the other being mentor/student relationships. (Which is, for example, why I don't read Giles/Any of the Scoobies stories in the Buffyverse.

Watson: let me just add it would have been possible, imo, to have Russell as narrator without mishandling or even retiring Watson.

One last aside re: Douglas' attitude towards Irene. She contributed a rather witty short story to a vampire anthology in which Irene rescues a chorus girl from the attentions of a vampire and is rather terse about the silliness of falling for aristocrats because of their looks and fancy titles and ignoring the obvious signs of something being wrong, while mentioning (the whole story is a letter to Nell) the charming Willie of Bohemia. Meaning: Douglas is kidding her character now and then, and I got the impression she also wanted us to see Irene as an egocentric. A charming, charismatic one, but an egocentric nonetheless (as Holmes is, too, another reason why Holmes/Irene wouldn't work out).