The Woman Who Arrived With a Problem
📖 The Woman Who Arrived With a Problem
Chapter 2. Mary Morstan enters 221B Baker Street: "a blonde young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste." Watson, the novel's narrator, has seen nothing and told us everything — not what Mary says, not what she thinks, but how she looks. Doyle signals at the very first moment of her arrival that gender in this novel operates through the male gaze. Watson cannot help himself. He never can, whenever Mary is present. By the final chapter, Holmes is alone with his cocaine-bottle and Watson is engaged. Doyle positions romance not as a reward but as a separation — the cost of domestication.
English Literature glossary
- Define these three terms: foil · domestic ideology · New Woman
- Foil: a character whose contrasting qualities highlight traits in another. Holmes is a foil to Watson on gender — his misogyny and rejection of domesticity throw Watson's romantic impulses into relief. Domestic ideology: the Victorian system of beliefs that naturalised women's confinement to the home and care roles. Doyle both reflects and subtly pressures this ideology. New Woman: the 1890s cultural figure of educated, independent, professional femininity — a challenge to domestic ideology. Mary shows traces of this figure (intelligence, decisiveness) even within a conventionally domestic presentation.
Doyle introduces Mary Morstan as a carefully assembled Victorian feminine ideal. She is "small, dainty" (Ch.2) — physically diminutive, non-threatening. Her face possesses "a sweet… expression" defined by sorrow rather than intelligence. Watson immediately describes her through suffering: "She was a blonde young lady…
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🧠 Gender's Trajectory in Three Words
Three stages. One mnemonic. Learn this and you have the theme's spine ready for any question:
IDEAL → FUNCTION → CRITIQUE
Why it works: IDEAL = Doyle assembles the Angel in the House — Mary arrives small, dainty, defined by sorrow, Watson immediately enchanted (Ch.2). FUNCTION = Mary operates as catalyst and prize; Holmes dismisses women ("never to be entirely trusted"), Watson is made unreliable by love; ideology distorts both responses. CRITIQUE = treasure lost, independence foreclosed, but Holmes's cocaine-bottle ending carries the novel's melancholy — gender ideology costs the men too.
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Quiz · Question 1 of 12
Why is Watson relieved when the Agra treasure is lost at the end of The Sign of Four?
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