Discussion Post: A Study in Scarlet
Sep. 2nd, 2012 12:21 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sherlock60Welcome, readers! Let's talk about A Study in Scarlet, a legend in literature and culture in general. As always, I've written up a few of my random thoughts and questions, which are behind the cut. Please add your own in the comments!
- Holmes and Watson meet, and a storied partnership begins. It begins the instant they meet, in fact. Watson certainly needs a friend, a home, a place to belong after his long death-defying battle with injury and illness. He finds all of that in Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes. For his part, Holmes seems almost to have been waiting for him. A man who regards nearly everyone with mild to utter disdain takes to Watson immediately, agreeing to share rooms with him on the spot. Any thoughts on that? Holmes was in the flush of a great discovery at that moment -- do you think their meeting would have gone differently if his experiment had failed?
- The novels sometimes send us on long voyages away from the familiar climes of London to far-off places of desperation like the Country of the Saints. The middle section of STUD is blackly beautiful in a way, as harsh and unforgiving as the barren land it describes.
- What would have happened if Jefferson Hope hadn't been conveniently hours from death from an aortic aneurysm? Do you think he could have been deliberately trying to set it off (or hurry it) during that futile attempted jump through the window glass?
- There's no Granada version of A Study in Scarlet, depriving us of that imagining of the meeting of Holmes and Watson. There's no version of their last case together (His Last Bow), either. I prefer it that way -- there is no beginning and no end to their friendship. It is eternal, or better said, always 1895.
Join us next week for The Speckled Band in canon and Granada!
- Holmes and Watson meet, and a storied partnership begins. It begins the instant they meet, in fact. Watson certainly needs a friend, a home, a place to belong after his long death-defying battle with injury and illness. He finds all of that in Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes. For his part, Holmes seems almost to have been waiting for him. A man who regards nearly everyone with mild to utter disdain takes to Watson immediately, agreeing to share rooms with him on the spot. Any thoughts on that? Holmes was in the flush of a great discovery at that moment -- do you think their meeting would have gone differently if his experiment had failed?
- The novels sometimes send us on long voyages away from the familiar climes of London to far-off places of desperation like the Country of the Saints. The middle section of STUD is blackly beautiful in a way, as harsh and unforgiving as the barren land it describes.
- What would have happened if Jefferson Hope hadn't been conveniently hours from death from an aortic aneurysm? Do you think he could have been deliberately trying to set it off (or hurry it) during that futile attempted jump through the window glass?
- There's no Granada version of A Study in Scarlet, depriving us of that imagining of the meeting of Holmes and Watson. There's no version of their last case together (His Last Bow), either. I prefer it that way -- there is no beginning and no end to their friendship. It is eternal, or better said, always 1895.
Join us next week for The Speckled Band in canon and Granada!
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Date: 2012-09-02 07:44 am (UTC)Mostly, I'm curious - what do we know about how the Mormons were viewed in Britain at the time of STUD's publishing? Were they even known at all? Or was ACD really the first to bring them up in a public forum? Because certainly, his portrayal of the religion isn't a very positive one.
I should probably note that I am NOT Mormon. I grew up in southern Arizona and so have known Mormons all my life and still have good friends who are Mormon. I've got no problem with the religion in the least. I really don't want to start wankage or a debate on the merits or otherwise of the religion itself; I'm just curious about how it was perceived at the time. Mods, if you think this vein is inappropriate, please feel free to delete!
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Date: 2012-09-02 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-02 02:18 pm (UTC)Perhaps it was the Mountain Meadows?
Date: 2012-09-03 03:49 am (UTC)The even though the massacre took place in 1857, but investigations were interrupted when the Civil War broke out, so an actual trial had to wait until 1875. All the settlers on the little wagon train were killed, with the exception of some children under the age of 8.
Some links...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre
http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/mormons.html
http://www.mtn-meadows-assoc.com/
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mountainmeadows/leetrial.html
There were several articles on the trial during the late 1870s. There was even a book published about 1910.
So I would assume it was something 'familiar' to British readers at the time, and idea of evil Mormons wouldn't have been far fetched.
(Maybe it's like reading Sax Rohmer? First time I read one of his Fu Manchu novels, it really seemed pretty unrealistic and racist. But I'm sure the idea of "The Yellow Peril" was familiar to readers at that time, and they probably didn't see it as slightly racist.)