Canon Discussion Post: The Cardboard Box

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Welcome back! Let's have some Sherlock Holmes canon discussion, shall we? What did you all think of The Cardboard Box? As always, I've written up a few of my own random thoughts and questions, which are behind the jump. Add your own in the comments!

Discussion about the Granada adaptation of The Cardboard Box is available in this week's Granada discussion post.


- This is another case that doesn't make much sense chronologically. Watson is at Baker Street instead of on vacation since he says he's short of money, so he says. So how does that square with the fact that according to the Baring-Gould timeline, Watson was living at his own home with his wife at this point? B-G, the renowned Holmes expert, gives the contrived and evidenceless theory that Watson sent his wife on for vacation but stayed behind to spare his own expense, then, lonely without her, came to spend a fortnight with Holmes. If that isn't fanfiction, I don't know what is.

- Holmes has written not one, but two monographs on ears.

- There is not a way to describe how much I am in love with the idea that not only does Holmes read Poe, he reads it out loud to Watson.

- Lestrade, Holmes, and some big swarthy man were involved in "the bogus laundry affair"? Oh, now that begs for elucidation.

- Jim Browner is observant like Holmes. Both make large, correct, intimate conclusions about their companions based solely on the way they hold their eyes.

- What is the meaning of it, Watson? - Holmes' closing speech is a mirror of the opening, where the detective catches Watson reflecting in his thoughts on the futility and waste of war. Both of them are lamenting the cruelty and capriciousness of "this circle of misery and violence and fear", the inescapable dark side of human nature they both have seen too closely and too often.

Comment away and join us next week for The Engineer's Thumb!

Comments

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Bogus laundry affair - I tell you, it's because Holmes tends to leave notes on his sleeves. The washerwomen might have gotten a bit red-faced.

What I hated about this story is how Browner tries to almost invoke pity when he tells his case. 'Oh it's not my fault, my sister-in-law did it all, and then my wife did it all, and I've been drinking, see' - other people get a divorce. This guy goes and kills his wife, and the man she confided in once she felt threatened by her husband of all people (obviously rightfully so), cuts their ears off and sends them to yet another woman. None of that happened in a mere ten minutes, so cold blood it is. He could have turned around a hundred times, he could have sobered up a hundred times. The sending-off of ears at the very least happened a sea journey later. And now he thinks he's haunted by the people he killed? Excuse me if I don't feel sympathetic.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Divorce not really an option in those days, unless you had a LOT of money for lawyers. But people did just abandon their spouses, so in the main I completely agree with you. Usual BS excuses for male violence towards women, and I am deeply disappointed in Holmes here.

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Ah sorry, yes, of course, fact mistake of mine. As you say, simple abandonment was the option, not divorce.

I don't quite know how to interpret Holmes's statement in the end. Maybe he was just completely baffled by all that violence to come to his own judgement? Not surprising Watson's in on the guy side though, and he's the one presenting the story to us. :/

[debriswoman]

A sad tale, with no one coming over as completely sympathetic and jealousies and manipulation leading to a very grisly end. I wonder how long it would have been before anyone seriously looked for Mrs Browner, if id hadn't been for the ears?