This is one odd story, to be sure. :) Reading it, I was wholly intrigued by how elements of the sentimental novel (forced marriage, the defrocked priest, the "odious" man who preys on pure womanhood ...) are mixed with Arthur Conan Doyle's crime fiction, which was something very new at the time. Probably unconsciously, Doyle was drawing from and playing with different genres here, I think.
And I found it interesting that he chose to have a woman cyclist as the heroine – Violet Smith visually and in the narrative represents the new "modern" woman. One could read the story as Doyle saying that for all her athletic and spirited nature, even the modern woman needs men to protect her (against other men, no less). Personally, it seems to me that Doyle (through the figure of Sherlock Holmes) was intrigued but also unsettled by this modern womanhood. Doyle himself, of course, is in his writing developing new images of a modern masculinity. I find it fascinating how in this story (and others, the Copper Beeches, f.e.), Doyle seems to be sorting out which kind of new woman would fit his new, rational man – not as a love interest, I think, but as a literary counterpart.
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And I found it interesting that he chose to have a woman cyclist as the heroine – Violet Smith visually and in the narrative represents the new "modern" woman. One could read the story as Doyle saying that for all her athletic and spirited nature, even the modern woman needs men to protect her (against other men, no less). Personally, it seems to me that Doyle (through the figure of Sherlock Holmes) was intrigued but also unsettled by this modern womanhood. Doyle himself, of course, is in his writing developing new images of a modern masculinity. I find it fascinating how in this story (and others, the Copper Beeches, f.e.), Doyle seems to be sorting out which kind of new woman would fit his new, rational man – not as a love interest, I think, but as a literary counterpart.