"A Scandal in Bohemia" and Sherlock Holmes's Ultimate Mystery Solved

"A Scandal in Bohemia" and Sherlock Holmes's Ultimate Mystery Solved Pascale Krumm North Georgia College LN "A SCANDAL LN BOHEMIA," the first Sherlock Holmes story, published in 1891, Holmes is upstaged and tricked, for the first and the last time, by a woman.1 The story involves the beautiful and cunning Irene Adler, a retired opera singer and "well-known adventuress"2 and the hapless King of Bohemia, her former lover. The Monarch plans to marry someone of his own rank: consequently, Ms Adler threatens to ruin his betrothal by exhibiting a compromising photograph of the couple. The King hires Holmes to find the ruinous evidence, and using one of his famous schemes the detective discovers the exact location of the photo in Adler's sitting room. Both men return the next morning to retrieve the object, only to find Adler and the photograph gone. She has, however, left a snapshot of herself and a letter for Holmes, promising never to release the damaging item. This is the only time when "the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit."3 Upon learning that he has been fooled by a woman, Holmes is embarrassingly "white with chagrin and surprise,"4 an odd and uncharacteristically emotional reaction from the brightest detective in the country, known for his coolness and composure. The trauma and the impact of that failure are so great on Holmes that, years later, he still cannot bring himself to refer to Adler by name, calling her "the woman"5 instead. At the close of the case, Holmes also behaves strangely when, in an unusually sentimental gesture, he asks to keep the photograph of Adler as payment of services rendered, in lieu of a valuable emerald ring. This selfless gesture is even more extraordinary when one remem193 ELT 39:2 1996 bers how adamant Holmes had been about payment at the beginning of the story. When he first sees the King, the detective remarks that "there's money in this case;"6 the fee is then discussed with great intensity as Holmes inquires "as to money?" to which the Sovereign replies, "you have carte blanche.... I would give one of the provinces of my kingdom to have that photograph." Holmes insists "and for present expenses?" He then gets "three hundred pounds in gold and seven hundred in notes."7 The request seems even stranger as Holmes already possesses a memento of Adler: when he served as a surprise witness to her hasty marriage "the bride gave me a sovereign, and I mean to wear it on my watch-chain in memory of the occasion."8 But let us examine Irene Adler more in depth. In light of the common Victorian perception of woman as either housewife or harlot, Adler obviously belongs in the second category and thus quite literally epitomizes the nineteenth-century myth of the femme fatale, as "she was a lovely woman, with a face that a man might die for."9 Nineteenth-century woman is seen as alien and alienating, an outsider, or, to use Freud's term, "a dark continent," and the element of foreignness, of otherness always associated with that type of woman, is a recurring theme in "A Scandal in Bohemia."10 Most obviously, Adler was "born in New Jersey in the year 1858,"11 and has lived in several European cities. Her romances similarly have an international flair; she had an affair with a German heir, and later married a British lawyer. In fact, the story is peppered with references to foreign places, from Bohemia to Warsaw.12 On a more subtle level, Adler's alien status comes out doubly in her name, as Adler is German and means eagle; she is thus not only associated with a different nation but a different species. Adler's residence also reinforces the animal connotation, as she lives on Serpentine Avenue, a detail referred to on countless occasions. Adler's menacing nature is likewise revealed through a duality of female physiology and male psychology. The King remarks that "she has the face of the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men."13 She...