Mormons and India in Sherlock Holmes

After I took the GRE Subject, I decided that now, at last, was the time for me to actually read something that other people actually read for a change, to actually read leisurely, with no pressure, no deadlines, no burn-out. The question then became as to what I should therefore read; my mind had long ago rebelled against so-called "light" or "vapid" or "escapist" reading as insufferably unreadable--there's a reason I first picked up Dante's Inferno instead of another Dan Brown novel all those years ago; like Sherlock Holmes, "my mind rebels against lack of stimulation." So I split the difference between fun and literary by picking up "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" itself at Barnes & Noble, and then just kicked back and let Sherlock do my thinking for me.

So imagine my surprise when I read the first novella in the collection, "A Study in Scarlett," wherein we learn how Watson met Sherlock, are introduced to Holmes's acute abilities of reasoning and observation, and see him one-up Scotland Yard in catching a vengeful murderer, only to find roughly 5 chapters of intense anti-Mormon propaganda. Part I of "Scarlett" ends with Sherlock aptly nabbing the murderer, named Jefferson Hope, who then goes on to explain at length as to why he went about with his murders; it is a tale involving salacious Mormon polygamists in Salt Lake City kidnapping Hope's bride-to-be under the direction of Brigham Young. She dies shortly after she marries one of them in the endowment house; Hope swears vengeance, tracking the two polygamists responsible across the United States, then across Europe, finally catching them in London where he exacts revenge.

Mormonism itself has absolutely nothing to do with how Sherlock solves the crime; he resolves the crime through logic and clues, as he is famous for; he isn't finding clues in the Book of Mormon or Temple symbolism or any nonsense like that. My point, simply, is that the Utah back story is utterly gratuitous; Doyle could've saved himself five chapters by having Hope just say, "they murdered my wife so I tracked them down and killed them," and none of Sherlock's dazzling detective work would've been upset. The long Mormon back-story all smacks of pure penny-dreadful sensationalism, exploiting the worst slanders of Mormonism then circulating in England, just to make the story "sexier" and create sympathy for the villain.

Upon finishing the first tale, I reflected that, well, Mormons were hardly the only marginalized group to be characterized by degrading stereotypes in Victorian England; this thought was apt going into the second novella, "The Sign of Four," which features degrading stereotypes of India. For while the clues and deduction varied, "Sign of Four's" basic structure remains the same as "Scarlett's"; sensational murders, bizarre clues, the police baffled, Sherlock catches the sympathetic villain, who then gives his lengthy back story.

In this case, Jonathan Small is a British Army enlistee stationed down in India during an infamous mass uprising of the barbarous natives (that the people of India perhaps did not wish to be occupied by a foreign force and were justified in revolt never seems to occur to anyone). Down in India, "where a man's life is not as valued" as in Worcestershire (as though to commit murder is solely the predilection of "uncivilized" nations needing the restraining influence of noble Anglo-Saxons), Small has a knife put to his throat by one of his Indian guards; they tell him that if he swears to join him and two others (hence the "Four") in murdering a nobleman traveling in disguise, that they will split his wealth with him. He consents, the dirty deed is done that night, but after the uprising is quashed, all four of them are caught and put in prison, but not before they hide the fortune so none can find it.

Years past, and he finds that the English Captain running his prison is hard up in gambling debts; he uses the buried treasure to bargain with the Captain for an early release. But, the Captain betrays him, and takes the whole treasure for himself and returns to England. Small, with the help of an Indian "savage," escapes from prison and slowly makes his way back to London where he exacts his revenge. As in "Scarlett," all this back-story could've been spared if Doyle had just written,"He stole my money so I got revenge."

Just as the Mormons are portrayed as salacious and perverted in "Scarlett," the Indians are gratuitously portrayed as uncivilized and savage in "Sign of Four;" Doyle certainly wasn't deviating from established stereotypes when he wrote Sherlock Holmes.

Except...he still kind of was. Sherlock himself, for example, is a confirmed bachelor, which in family-friendly Victorian England was itself socially deviant (a BYU English prof. once said Mormon lit. is like Victorian lit; lots of kids runnin' around, nobody talkin' about how they got there). Times have certainly made that particular deviancy less jarring; but then, perhaps to ensure that time wouldn't lessen Holmes's brand of deviancy, "Sign of Four" explicitly opens with Holmes jabbing a hypodermic needle up his vein while Watson says with a sigh, "What is it this time, morphine or cocaine?" Now that's all sorts of deviancy, even for today.

At one point in "Sign of Four," Watson, while admiring Holmes's incredible intellect, says how lucky it is that Holmes chose to be a detective rather than a criminal, for he would have been unstoppable. In other words, Sherlock Holmes the detective, punisher of crime, champion of justice, help of the police and bane of crooks everywhere, is only a notch away from being a full-fledged deviant himself.

All this is just a round-about of saying that although Doyle was still reinforcing dominant stereotypes about "deviants" like the Mormons and India, their mere inclusion in the opening tales of Sherlock Holmes reveals a preoccupation with deviancy itself, implying that deviancy is where Sherlock's true sympathies lie. Now, neither Mormons nor India are the better for their portrayal in Sherlock, but it is note-worthy that both groups are used to to create actual sympathy for the chief deviant, the murderer! Rather than the standard Scooby-Doo ending where the captured villain says, "And I would've gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!", Doyle goes long out of his way to ensure the readers' sympathies are not with the police, not with law and order, not with the victims even, but with the deviants themselves!

Also, in both novellas Sherlock employs "the Baker Street Irregulars," a gang of filthy "Arab" street urchins, to gather his intelligence, preferring them over the entire police force; that is, Sherlock excels at catching deviants precisely because he prefers the deviants themselves. Sherlock constantly declares his distaste for the "common" and "mundane" of the "everyday," because it is out in the margins, in the deviancy, where he prefers to exist, even flourish. Sure, he protects the "everyday" through his detective work, and he keeps the deviant marginalized as the "everyday" demands; hence in Sherlock's world, the Mormons must remain salacious, and India must remain uncivilized. But I suspect that even if Doyle had known better, even unconsciously, he still couldn't have "legitimized" the Mormons and India, even he'd wanted to; for to legitimize something is to normalize it, so that it is no longer unusual, no longer stimulating, and Holmes's mind "rebels at lack of stimulation."

Doyle makes the murderers sympathetic even as he punishes them; he brings in Mormons and India without redeeming them. In every case, Sherlock Holmes casts in his lot with the deviants without normalizing them, because somehow, intuitively, Holmes understands that the greatest crime he could commit would be to normalize something interesting.

Perhaps the kindest thing Guy Ritchie's recent Sherlock Holmes movie did was make Sherlock deviant again (any who complain about his Ritchie's characterization clearly hasn't read the books).

And though I can't speak for India, perhaps the kindest thing Doyle did for Mormonism was to keep us in the margins; Hugh Nibley once said that we in the Church spend far too much time trying to include ourselves in the world, to participate in Babylon, to go "mainstream," sweeping the "weird" things we do under the rug, forgetting that the scriptures themselves say that we are to be a "peculiar people." Brigham Young himself said that his greatest fear was that this Church would become popular, and thus all earth and hell would join and drag us down to hell with them.

So, while I can't excuse Doyle's regressive characterizations, I can at least give thanks to Sherlock Holmes himself, for keeping us "peculiar," for keeping us unpopular, deviant, and interesting; in this manner he keeps us from stagnating, he keeps us stimulated, he keeps us from being dragged down to hell.