This Victorian textuality is evident in the stories written during this time period. This paper explores the topic of Foucault’s authorship-function as illustrated by Doyle’s “signs” in three canonical Sherlock stories and their cinema and television adaptations spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This concept defines where signs and signifiers are embedded and informed by the time period in which the text was written. The foundational theoretical concepts presented are from: Roland Barthes (1967), “Death of an Author”, Michel Foucault (1969), “what is an Author”, and Saussure Ferdinand (1916), “Nature of the Linguistic Sign”, illustrates how readers imbue meanings into given text. Saussure’s “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” (1916) serves to define the terms, sign and signifier, for the audience. Sign is defined as the “sound-image” referenced by a word or image (Saussure 832). There are basic signs which popular culture identifies with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character, Sherlock Holmes. The chosen signs for this paper are: the characters, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson, Professor Moriarty, Sherlock’s hat, pipe and cape, and his cocaine addiction.Using these as Doyle’s signs, the paper will examine five cinematic adaptations as case studies to compare and contrast how the signs have transformed. The case studies are: Sherlock Holmes (1916) starring William Gillette, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939-1946) starring Basil Rathbone, Sherlock Holmes (1984-1994) starring Jeremy Brett, Sherlock (2010-present) starring Benedict Cumberbatch, and Elementary (2012-present) starring Jonny Lee Miller. These case studies represent a time period and a pinnacle actor’s portrayal of the character, Sherlock. William Gillette (1916) represents Sherlock during Doyle’s lifetime, Basil Rathbone (1939-1946), the early twentieth century, Jeremy Brett (1984-1994) the late twentieth century, and Benedict Cumberbatch (2010) and Jonny Lee Miller (2012) as the British and American versions for the twenty-first century. Doyle’s signs metamorphosis through the Sherlock adaptations illustrates Foucault’s authorship-function concept. Authorship matters as character iconography changes through adaptation from the author’s original meaning.
The first sign is the character, Sherlock Holmes. Doyle introduces his readers’ to the character, Sherlock Holmes’s, the world’s only consulting detective in his first story, A Study in Scarlet (1887). Doyle describes Sherlock Holmes as:
“His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch…” (Doyle 13).
As explored later in the paper, this is not how Sherlock is personified throughout the adaptations. According to Westmoreland (1991) Sherlock’s persona continued popularity is due to his distinguished traits that include: an extraordinary ability to separate himself from the ordinary, devotion to “the science of deduction,” scorn for women except the character, Irene Adler, from the story, A Scandal in Bohemia (1891), his medical knowledge, an un-explained “hard edge” (Westmoreland 325). These characteristics are reflective of the character as one of Doyle’s signs that mirror Doyle’s cultural context.
Holmes’s use of the “Science of Deduction” to solve the criminal cases in the stories exhibits the cultural context of the Victorian age. Doctor John Watson and Sherlock Holmes within the stories are amateur scientists in the age of Darwin. This emergence of Darwinian thought about natural selection came after the publication of the book, Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin. Doyle shows Sherlock working as a forensic investigator within the story, A Study in Scarlet (1887) when the character pull a tape measure then, magnifying glass out as he studies the scene which includes surveying the room, “kneeling and lying flat on his face” before pronouncing his deduction for Inspector Tobias Gregson (Doyle 24) . Holmes’s deduction for the crime here is:” …There has been murder done, and the murderer was a man. He was more than six feet high, was in the prime of his life, had small feet for his height, wore course, square-toed boots and smoked a Trichinopoly cigar. He came here with his victim in a four-wheeled cab, Poison,” (Doyle 27). Sherlock’s deduction with its scientific approach allows Doyle to use it as a narrative device to share the story within the story of the crime that leads back to the first moment and reveals a cause and effect sequence that enforces the Darwinian perspective. The Scotland Yard misses the details of the crime scene while Holmes is able to read the scene and make a determination about the crime in question. The post-Darwinian lens is demonstrated when Sherlock explains the scene here:
“There was no wound upon the dead man’s person, but the agitated expression upon his face assured me that he had foreseen his fate before it came upon him,….Having sniffed the dead man’s lips I detected a slightly sour smell, and I came to the conclusion that he had had poison forced upon him…this murder had, on the contrary, been done deliberately, and the perpetrator had left his tracks all over the room, showing that he had been there all the time…When the inscription was discovered upon the wall I was more inclined than ever to my opinion. “ (Doyle 94-95)
Holmes unveils the mystery to his companions explaining the cause and effect between the poison, the victim and the actions of the murderer.
Sherlock displays a scorn for the female sex with the exception of Irene Adler whom he refers to as “The Woman”. Jasmine Yong Hall (1991) in her article, Ordering the Sensational: Sherlock Holmes and the Female Gothic, argues that “Gothic elements” and the female gender enable Doyle to paint Sherlock Holmes as the “powerful, patriarchal, hero” ( (Hall 295). As the hero of the stories, Sherlock breaks the women free from their Gothic past and oppression into the “new, rational order” (Hall 297). This Darwinian worldview is the new order referenced here, where the past chaos is structured into order with the concept of the survival of the fittest perpetuated in Origin of Species (1859).
Holmes’s medical knowledge is based upon Doyle’s observation of his mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell (Westmoreland 327). Bell’s methods included relying on “the importance of close examination, and attention to physical details, the empirical observation of the patient,” and how a doctor can draw conclusions for diagnosis from these observations (Westmoreland 327). Sherlock’s actions within a given crime scene displays these methods. An example can be seen in the story, A Study in Scarlet (1887). Dr. Watson observes as:
“Sherlock Holmes approached the body, and, kneeling down, examined it intently….his nimble fingers were flying here, there, and everywhere, feeling, pressing, unbuttoning, examining, while his eyes wore the same faraway expression which I have already remarked upon. So swiftly was the examination made, that one would hardly have guessed the minuteness with which it was conducted. Finally, he sniffed the dead man’s lips, and then glanced at the soles of his patent leather boots.” (Doyle)
This meticulous observation with narrative exposition of the diagnosis or deduction of the crime scene demonstrates how Victorian medicine was becoming what it is today.
Doyle shares other observations of the character, Sherlock Holmes, through Watson in A Study in Scarlet (1887). These observations include that he lacks knowledge in literature, philosophy, and astronomy but displays knowledge in botany, geology, chemistry, anatomy, “sensational literature,” British law, and as a swordsman and boxer (Doyle). These character traits meld Sherlock into a British Victorian man.
The second sign is the character, Doctor John Watson. Watson frames the narrative of the stories relaying to the audience and readers,’ his adventures with his friend, Sherlock Holmes. Doyle introduces Watson in the first pages of the first story, A Study in Scarlet (1887) as a Doctor and Surgeon of Medicine whom has just returned from Afghanistan and the battlefield to London (Doyle 7). During the course of the adventures’ with Holmes, Watson becomes the readers’ voice to Holmes in the expression of disbelief at the Sherlock’s deductions and escapades. Doyle’s background as a Doctor and Surgeon informs both Doctor John Watson and Sherlock Holmes as characters. Westmoreland argues that, “ [there are] striking depictions of characters with medical problems; plot manipulations enhanced by medically related descriptions; and various emotions like pity, horror, sympathy, and even humor,” (Westmoreland 328).
The third sign is the character, Professor Moriarty. Moriarty is Sherlock’s great nemesis and executioner in The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893). Doyle describes Moriarty through Sherlock as:
“He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them,” (Doyle)
Doyle paints Sherlock and Moriarty as two sides of one coin with Sherlock on the side of the law and Moriarty the leader of a grand criminal organization. Sherlock admires Moriarty’s “brain of the first order” which is his equal.
The fourth sign is Sherlock’s hat, pipe, and cape. Thomas Leitch (2007) in his book, Film Adaptations and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ, argues that Doyle’s description for these items are basically a “close-fitting cap in The Boscombe Valley Mystery and ear-flapping cap in Silver Blaze with the pipe either a “briar-root pipe, a Cherry wood pipe, a black-clay pipe, and a metal-opium pipe” (Leitch 208). By leaving these descriptions so plain as will be illustrated later as Sherlock is adapted they become specific pieces in the iconography. Doyle’s descriptions match the Victorian male fashion of the day.
The fifth sign is the character, Sherlock’s cocaine addiction. In Study in Scarlet (1887) Watson comments on Holmes that at times, Sherlock’s eyes carry “a dreamy, vacant expression” similar to a narcotic addict (Doyle 13). Sherlock’s addiction and to what substance is debated amongst the Sherlockians. The Victorian period saw the rise of the use of opiates similar to morphine (Musto 28). Musto (1968) argues in his article, A Study in Cocaine: Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud that Sherlock’s cocaine use was in response and treatment for his boredom. When the cocaine interfered with daily life then, he quit the drug and switched to tobacco (Musto 28). Musto contends that Sherlock’s struggle was documented by Watson up to his demise at Reichenbach Falls in The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893) but upon his return that the struggle no longer exists (Musto 29). An example from The Adventure of the Final Problem (1893) is:
“I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man….Might I trouble you for a match? He drew in the smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence was grateful to him. There was something very strange in all this. It was not Holmes’ nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes and putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained the situation,” (Doyle).
Doyle showing Sherlock’s nervousness and his “pale, worn face” are evident that Holmes is affected by the situation with Moriarty and his desire for tobacco subtly could hint at the disputed cocaine addiction.
The case studies will examine Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s authorship-function through the designated “signs” transform in the adaptations. From the Sherlock Holmes canon, the three stories, “A Study in Scarlet”(1887), “The Adventure of the Final Problem” (1893) and “The Hound of the Baskervilles”(1902) with adaptations from William Gillette (1899-1916), Reginald Owens (1933), Peter Cushing (1968), Basil Rathbone (1939-1946), Benedict Cumberbatch (2010-present) and Jonny Lee Miller (2012-present). This paper will show how the remediation of the Sherlock Holmes visual signature in the adaptations contains prism pieces hearkening back to Doyle’s source text.
Works Cited
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes . New York, NY : Barnes and Nobles Classic, 2003. Print .
Hall, Jasmine Yong. “Ordering the Sensational: Sherlock Holmes and the Female Gothic .” Studies in Short Fiction (June 1991): 295-303. web.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptations and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore. John Hopkins University Press, Print.
Musto, David F. “A Study in Cocaine: Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud .” JAMA, Vol. 204, No. 1 (April 1968): 27-32. web.
Saussure, Ferdinand. “Nature of the Linguistic Sign.” Richter, David H. (Eds.). In The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. 832-835. web.
Westmoreland, Barbara F. and Jack D.Key. “Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Bell, and Sherlock Holmes .” Arch Neurol, Vol. 48. (March 1991): 325-329. web.
