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Alicia Wang
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 39B
30 April 2014
Conan Doyle Literature Review Essay

Conan Doyle had an obsession to not only please his audience but also to bring
history into his work. The reasons why Conan Doyles stories were so popular during the
Victorian Era, was they were catered toward the audience and gave the audience what
they wanted. Doyles aim was to attract the middle class white male audience who
needed a consistency in their hectic lives, which was surrounded by crime and
reassurance of their socioeconomic status. The Sherlock stories provided a genius hero,
an incompetent police force, a character that was a reflection of the middle class, and a
underlying enforcement of Britain being the greatest empire in the world. Panek
discusses the historical background where he explains the popularity of the Sherlock
Holmes novels. Keep, Dove, and McBratney discuss the Britishs consumption of
authority and how it reflects in Conan Doyles stories. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes
and Watson solve a crime involving two criminals who stole from India and murdered a
British gentleman. On the surface, The Sign of the Four looks like a typical detective
novel, but if we look critically, the book reveals the mentality of the British middle class.
Many different scholars argue on different reasons as to why the Sherlock Holmes
novels were so successful during the Victorian Era, but Panek, a scholar who wrote An
Introduction to the Detective Story, argues Doyle was able to reflect the situation of the
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middle class, and had the increasing support of technology to set up his detective short
stories. Panek wrote the middle class was growing because of new and recent education
laws along with the rise of technology, for the first time, a growth in reading and
producing books and short stories were introduced to the public. In order to understand
more of Paneks argument for why the middle class enjoyed the Holmes novels we must
look at the history of the 1900s. During the time, the police were inadequate and had little
or no training. Many officers were fired since they were drunk while they were on the job
and so the norm was criminals would escape and justice would not prevail. In The Sign of
the Four, Thaddeus Sholto did not want to involve the police because he knew he would
be accused of killing his brother. Sholtos character reflects the mistrust of the police the
British audience had during the 1900s. Previous stories during this time focused on
criminals and not the police because the police did not have a stable reassuring
relationship with the public. Panek comments on the police force, it is easy to see why
the public asked not, why do we need snooping policemen, but why arent the police
doing anything (76). The British grew up in a world where justice and a happy ending
did not exist in reality. With the increasing anxiety and fear about crime, the audience
needed an outlet to end their sense of fear. George N. Dove, the writer of the book, Read
The Reader and the Detective Story, wrote the detective story is transitory without long-
range goals or purposes; it is fundamentally an intellectual undertaking; it is recreational,
intended primarily to relax (2). Dove continues on to describe how a reader could curl
up with a good detective novel and expect, in the end, the criminal would be caught. The
consistent knowledge of a happy ending is what appealed to the audience.
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Another appeal to the audience was Watson, Sherlocks better half. Doyles
intended audience was the rising white, male, middle class gentleman. Watson was the
perfect representation of the ideal English gentleman. Dove says, Watson allows the
audience to not only play the intellectual game within the novel but also to relax and
enjoy the mystery as it unfolds. Dove tells the reader, the pleasure a reader gets from the
detective novel is not that of listening to a story but of watching a magic trick, which the
magician immediately explains (3). In the beginning of all of the Sherlock stories,
Holmes shows Watson his deduction skills and then tells him how he was able to observe
all the facts. In The Sign of the Four, Sherlock explains how he observes and deduces
Watsons dead brother based on just looking at Watsons watch. Watson is shocked and
surprised by this amazing feat that Sherlock sees as just a simple deduction. When Doyle
allows Holmes to show off his deduction skills, Doyle also enforces the idea of Holmes
as a genius. Panek claims the rise of romanticism encourages this creation of the pocket
genius who the audience loved as a hero and that is why Sherlock was so popular.
The time period, which Doyle lived in is easily reflected and shown in his
Sherlock stories, but a big part of the British 1900s was the mentality of the British. The
British had the sense of being the greatest empire in the entire world. In 1857, India had
rebelled against Britain and tried to regain independence from Britain. The British people
tried to see this rebellion as a criminal act and regain their belief of Britain always being
a good empire that tries to help others. Doyle tries to reassure the audience that the
mutiny was not the Britishs fault by adding subtle hints of criminal behavior among the
Indians.
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Christopher Keep and Don Randall, authors of Addiction, Empire, and Narrative
in Author Conan Doyles The Sign of the Four, tell us the British had this general
acceptance and addiction to taking from India and control over other colonies. It was seen
as normal to take from India because after the mutiny, Indians were seen as criminals.
John McBratney, author of Racial and Criminal Types: Indian Ethnography and Sir
Authur Conan Doyles The Sign of Four, wrote about Doyles way of enforcing the
stereotype that Indians were criminals by using ethnography. Ethnography at the time
enabled the British to see Indians as criminals because their skin was dark. In The Sign of
the Four, Conan Doyle describes Tonga, the Indian partner of Small, as a horrifying
criminal who murdered Bartholomew Sholto. McBratney says, I will argue that, with
important qualifications, Doyles novella works to legitimate the concepts of the racial
and criminal type as they appear in the ethnography of the time (150). McBratney
repeats his voice on how Doyle creates a negative image of Indians and encourages the
negative image during the 1900s.
With the negative image of India, the British saw it as a right to take from India.
Keep and Randall point out in The Sigh of the Four Sholtos house is filled with exotic
Indian goods and treasures. These goods were obviously stolen from India but just this
small hint enforces the audiences belief that it was their right to take things from the
colonies. The recent Indian mutiny was perceived as the wrongdoings of the Indians and
not of the British.
Conan Doyles Sherlock stories were successful because Doyle reassured and
gave the audience a way of escape from reality. Doyle created a setting where the
audience could escape the real world police, join the adventures of heroic main character,
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and encourage their belief that the British Empire was the best in the world. After Conan
Doyles time period, we understand the mutiny was not the fault of the Indians and so his
bias against the Indians are almost nonexistent in the popular detective genre today.
However, the past belief of a genius hero, and a sidekick who is similar to the audience is
still the same in todays conventions of the genre. As Panek explains, the thrill of
Sherlocks ability to create a situation similar to a magic trick and explaining how the
trick works is still something we enjoy in todays mystery novels. The modern-day
version of the detective genre is still a way for the audience to relax and enjoy a story.
The current day authors keeps in the thrill and adventure of Sherlock Holmes but the
reality we the audience escape from are different than those in the past.













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Works Cited
Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Sign of the Four. Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2013.
Kindle eBook. Online.
Dove, George N. The Reader and the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1997. Print.
Keep, Christopher and Don Randall. Addiction, Empire, and Narrative in Arthur
Conan Doyles The Sign of Four. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 32:2 (1999):
207-221. JSTOR. Web. 01/15/2014.
McBratney, John. Racial and Criminal Types: Indian Ethnography and Sir Arthur
Conan Doyles The Sign of Four. Victorian Literature and Culture 33:1
(2005): 149-167. JSTOR. Web. 01/15/2014.
Panek, Leroy. An Introduction to the Detective Story. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling
Green State University Popular Press, 1987. Print.