In sensation fiction, plot comes
before character: “plot and incident predominate” (Hughes, 19). The interest of
the narrative is in the flow of events, not in the developments taking place
within individual characters. In Conan Doyle’s stories, Holmes is the protagonist
and his mind is presented as the central wonder in the narratives. However, Watson’s
object of study is not Holmes’s internal life and character; his motivations, sensibilities
and psychology. Watson’s records of Holmes’s adventures focus on the detective’s
actions, both physical and cerebral. In chapter 2 in part 1 of A Study in Scarlet, Watson tries to
learn more about Holmes: “The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody,
when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity.” Holmes is a mystery
for Watson, and Watson endeavours to unravel this mystery by charting Holmes’s
intellectual abilities and knowledge. Neither Watson, not the narrative, shows
any curiosity to explore Holmes’s character in terms of his emotions or
motivations. Watson remarks in Chapter 2 of The
Sign of Four: “You really are an automaton – a calculating machine.”
The only emotions Holmes
experiences are boredom (when not detecting) and mental exultation (when
detecting). Holmes displays no pity for the victim, no horror and hardly even disapproval
for the criminal and no motivation for his detective work other than the desire
to experience the thrill it provides. Holmes is not interested in justice. Like
any reader of sensation fiction, Holmes is only interested in experiencing the excitement
of unravelling a mystery and pursuing a criminal. Detection in Conan Doyle’s
stories shares the drug-like qualities of reading sensation fiction: they are
both “called into existence to supply the cravings of a diseased appetite, and
contributing themselves to foster the disease, and to stimulate the want that
they supply.” (H. L. Mansel. “Sensational Novels” in Quarterly Review, 1862)
Detective work for Holmes is
pursued for personal gratification and for the sensation of excitement that it
provides. This activity is clearly addictive, since Holmes has even created his
occupation of the consulting detective to “supply” his “craving” for the
stimulation of detective work: “I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I
have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the
only one in the world.” (The Sign of the Four,
Chapter 1).
Another indication of the primacy
of the plot in the Holmes stories is that Holmes and Watson do not change
during the narrative: neither character develops. This is neatly illustrated in
The Sign of the Four, which opens
with Holmes injecting cocaine and ends with Holmes stretching his hand for
cocaine bottle again. The case of the Agra treasure and Sholto’s murder has
been but a short interregnum in the flow of the drug, and once the real
stimulant (the mystery) is removed, only the artificial stimulant of cocaine
remains (The Sign if Four, Chapters 1
and 12).
Holmes makes an ideal hero for a
narrative where plot takes first priority. His character is centred on
intellect and logic. He is driven by his innate, irresistible desire to examine
evidence carefully in order to build a logical narrative and achieve the final
unravelling of a mystery. The importance of the plot is built into the
character of Conan Doyle’s protagonist, who gets his kicks out of figuring out
a course of events, in other words, from determining a plot. As Radford writes
about sensation fiction, in A Study in
Scarlet and The Sign of Four too,
we have “the subordination of character motivation to fluidity of plotting,
which is calculated to excite overwrought feelings.” (Radford, 10)
Sensation
novels display “Unwholesome interest in deviant figures to elicit heightened
uneasiness from the audience.” (Radford, 11) Deviant figures are useful in two
ways. First deviance alone is sensational. It arouses the reader’s curiosity and
an emotional response, whether it is fascination, repulsion or a mix of the
two. Secondly, deviance is a short-cut to characterization. Characters in
sensation fiction are generally shallow and often established using external
characteristics (Hughes, 25). One step further, and deviance, oddity or simply
disability serves as a quick identifying label for a character.
Leaving aside
Holmes’s own eccentricities, both A Study
in Scarlet and The Sign of Four contain
a number of odd, colourful characters. Enoch J. Drebber and Joseph Stangerson are
Mormons, whose religion is presented as a morally corrupt tyranny. Drebber is a
drunk and an abuser of women. The Sholto brothers are misshapen twins,
Bartholomew spends his time behind high walls topped with broken glass in a
chemical laboratory, Thaddeus is a timid aesthete with characteristics seemingly
borrowed from Oscar Wilde. Jefferson Hope is a man obsessed with revenge, travelling
the world in pursuit of his victim. Jonathan Small, too, is monomaniacal in his
hatred of Sholto. He has a wooden leg. And perhaps the oddest character of all
is Tonga, the Andaman islander “the little hell-hound” “as venomous as a young snake.”
Watson and Mary Morstan are more or less the only utterly commonplace
characters in these stories; everyone else is out of the ordinary.
Sensation novels use doubles. Hughes writes
of “the generic principle of doubling” (Hughes, 20, also 21, see also Brantlinger, 23, 24), both in terms of
events (think of the theft of the Moonstone and the re-enactment of the theft
to solve the mystery) and in terms of characters (think of Anne Catherick and
Laura Fairlie in The Woman in White).
In A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four there are several
doublings. In characters, in addition to the double act of Holmes and
Watson, we have the mirroring characters of the detective and the villain:
Jefferson Hope and Jonathan Small both share Holmes’s expertise in chemistry
and his obsession with the crime at the heart of the narrative. This depiction
of both the detective and the villain as men as intoxicated and utterly
obsessed with the same crime is a powerful element in the narrative and links
up the overall moral ambiguity created by the texts, which in itself is a
recognized characteristic of sensation fiction. Also, in The Sign of the Four, there are the Sholto twins, but also Tonga,
Jonathan Small’s faithful companion who functions as a murderous outlet of
Small’s passions. In A Study in Scarlet,
Jefferson Hope prepares two pairs of pills to use as a murder weapon. In terms
of narrative structure, both novels are built around scenes at 221b Baker
Street – the first scene introduces the detective’s science of deduction and
starts off the case; the second scene demonstrates the detective’s application
of this skill and wraps up the case.
The characters in sensation novels are not in charge of their own
destinies, instead they constantly struggle and do battle with circumstances
thrown at them by the intricate plot: “circumstances rule characters,
propelling them through the intricate machinations of plots that act like
fate.” (Brantlinger ,13. See also Hughes, 22 and Pykett, 5) Because of this
chaotic rule of coincidence and circumstances, the characters in sensation
fiction often simply cannot behave logically and consistently. The plot
dictates that they have to react to event sometimes in unexpected,
uncharacteristic and implausible ways. As a result, “the characters in
sensation fiction tend to be weak, vacillating, and inconsistent; they lack
wholeness; they lack an integrating central core” (Hughes, 58). Seeking to
explain the behaviour the characters, the narratives often resort to what
Hughes calls “various provisional solutions to the problem of character
motivation” (Hughes 59): most notably insanity, also idiocy, mental aberrations,
all manner of irrational impulses, brain fever, somnambulism, monomania etc.
In Conan Doyle’s two stories such irrationality of motivation is most
powerfully demonstrated in the nature of detective character (the overpowering “craving”
for detection) and the behaviour of the culprits (their equally overpowering
desire for revenge). The dictates of the plot also demand other actions of
questionable logic and vague motivation from the characters: the word “rache” scratched
on the wall with blood and the ultimate fate of the Agra treasure are examples
of this. Despite Holmes’s apparently watertight reasoning from effect to cause covering
all aspects of his investigation (see particularly A Study in Scarlet, Part 3, Chapter 7), there are a number of
significant coincidences required by the plot. In both novels, the culprits, like
the detective, happen to have knowledge of dispensing drugs. Jefferson Hope
happens to die of a burst aneurism before he can be brought to justice. Both of
these coincidences contribute to the moral ambiguity of the stories. Holmes’s
assumptions about Small’s movements after Sholto’s death seem “a little weak”
to Watson (The Sign of Four, chapter
10), but coincidentally Holmes is absolutely right in all his conclusions – in other
words, the plot dictates that Small (and other characters) behave exactly
according to Holmes’s logical deductions. There is curious paradox here: the
culprits whose motives are beyond reason (monomaniacal obsession with revenge)
must act logically in order for the plot to work and Holmes’s logical deductions
to be successful. This is a neat balancing act by Conan Doyle.
Conan Doyle indicated that his aim was to improve the detective
story by eliminating coincidence: “I had been reading some detective stories,
and it struck me what nonsense they were, to put it mildly, because for getting
the solution of the mystery the authors always depended on some coincidence” (“A Gaudy Death,” p189). He succeeds in
eliminating coincidence from Holmes’s investigation, but he does not succeed in
removing coincidence entirely from his plots. The most significant coincidence
takes place in A Study in Scarlet , when
Jefferson Hope prepares the two pills, one with poison one harmless. He forces
Drebber to play Russian roulette with the pills. Providence will decide who
will die: “Let the high God judge between us. Choose and eat. … Let us see if
there is justice upon earth or if we are ruled by chance.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part 2, chapter 6). By
this method of murder Hope is more or less cleared of guilt and Drebber’s death
is down to good old melodramatic providence, to the same “hand of fate” that
guided Robert Audley in Lady Audley’s
Secret.
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