Sensation fiction is a mix of attention to detail and wild abstraction:
“The typical sensation novel was a catholic mixture of modes and forms,
combining realism and melodrama, the journalistic and the fantastic, the
domestic and the romantic or exotic.” (Pykett, 5) The sensation novel
depicts tiniest nuances and singular objects as clues to underlying secrets and guilt. At the same time, characters’
emotions are overwhelming: “everything in a sensation
novel is larger than life … Humanity is seen in extremis, perpetually at the point of crisis.” (Hughes, 22)
Sensation novels combine domestic realism and older forms of Gothic romance and
melodrama (Brantlinger, 1). This is reflected in the narrative style, which
alternates precise descriptive detail of setting, objects and external
characteristics with tempestuous and hyperbolic expressions of emotion and
sensation. This “violent yoking of romance and realism” (Hughes, 16) is also
present in Conan Doyle’s A Study in
Scarlet and The Sign of Four.
Holmes’s irrational excitement
about detective work and his scientific, analytical method of detection are the
most striking example of this combination of romance and realism. Watson
observes Holmes at the crime scene in A Study in Scarlet:
“… he trotted noiselessly about
the room, sometimes stopping occasionally kneeling, and once lying flat upon
his face. So engrossed was he with his occupation that he appeared to have
forgotten our presence, for he chattered away to himself under his breath the
whole time, keeping up a running fire of exclamations, groans, whistles, and
little cries suggestive of encouragement and of hope. As I watched him I was
irresistibly reminded of a pure-blooded, well-trained foxhound as it dashes
backwards and forwards though the covert, whining in its eagerness, until it
comes across the lost scent.” (A Study in
Scarlet, Part ,1, Chapter3)
Holmes is performing a forensic
examination of the scene, analyzing the footprints, the blood stains and the
tobacco ash. In the process Holmes himself appears to have lost his senses, he
is so excited. A similar combination of realism and romance is, of course,
built into the concept of proximity as shown in the depiction of the crime
scenes. Mysterious, terrific and fantastical murders are discovered in houses
located at common-sounding suburban addresses. It can also be argued that a mix
of realism and romance is built in to the formula of detective fiction: fictional
crime and mystery are always romantic; clues to its resolution tend to be the
realistic detail spotted by the skillful detective. When Holmes criticizes
Watson’s narrative as too romantic and Watson claims it is realistic (The Sign of Four, Chapter 1), Conan
Doyle draws attention to this tug-of-war of realism and romance which permeates
both novels.
Watson is seemingly recording the triumphs of his friend’s science
of deduction – logical and analytical, hence realistic, reasoning. But the
nature of the events - mysterious, exciting and sensational – is pulling his
narrative in the direction of romance. Examination of the murder scene in The Sign of Four is a good example of
this (The Sign of Four, Chapter 6).
In it Holmes points out the various clues. Watson interprets them initially as
terrifying and strange (“That is not a footmark.” “It is absolutely impossible.”
“a child has done this horrid thing.” “I cannot conceive anything which will
cover the facts”), and Holmes keeps dismantling the mystery with his
interpretation (“It is the impression of a wooden stump.” “How often have I
said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” “but
the thing is quite natural. … You know my methods. Apply them.”)
Throughout the two narratives
there is a tension between the romantic, melodramatic experience of the exciting
events, and Holmes’s apparent realistic interpretation and handling of them.
The most dramatic fault line
between the realistic and the romantic in both A Study in Scarlet and The Sign
of Four, is the maligned ‘Gaboriau-gap’, so called because it is thought
that Conan Doyle copied the narrative device from Emile Gaboriau’s novels. When
the culprit has been caught and Holmes is ready to reveal the reasoning
that led him to solve the mystery, the narrative is suddenly hijacked by the story
of the criminal and his growing obsession for revenge. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes says: “we
have reached the end of our little mystery. You are very welcome to put any
questions you like to me now, and there is no danger that I will refuse to
answer them.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part
1, Chapter 7) You turn the page and find yourself “on the Great Alkali Plain” (A Study in Scarlet, Part 2, Chapter 1) and meet a grizzled cowboy with a little girl in “dainty
shoes and smart pink frock” (Ibid.). The
transition is dramatic and disorienting – 221b Baker Street has been whisked
away and we are in a strange, distant land, where a romance develops and turns
into murderous monomania of a heart-broken lover. In The Sign of Four the ‘Gaboriau-gap’ is better integrated; it is
presented as the culprit’s own words (The
Sign of Four, Chapter 12).
The stories of the culprits are
wildly melodramatic, exotic and romantic. One involves a forced marriage and a
broken heart, the other an Indian treasure and imprisonment on tropical islands
inhabited by cannibals. In the narrative structure, Watson’s realistic
narrative of Holmes’s detective investigation is overwhelmed by the romantic
drama of the criminal’s experience.
Watson says of Holmes: “So swift,
silent, and furtive were his movements, like those of a trained bloodhound
picking up the scent, that I could not but think what a terrible criminal he
would have made had he turned his energy and sagacity against the law instead
of exerting them in its defence.” (The
Sign of Four, Chapter 6) The ‘Gaboriau-gaps’ develop a thrilling parallel
between the criminals and the detective.
Holmes and the
culprit he pursues are both obsessed by the same crime. Both lose their human
features in their feverish, agitated, excitement. Jefferson Hope is “human
bloodhound, with his mind wholly set upon the object to which he had devoted
his life.” (A Study in Scarlet, Part
2, Chapter, 5). Jonathan Small, too, experiences “an overpowering, absorbing
passion.”(The Sign of Four, Chapter
12): “To escape, to track down Sholto, to have my hand upon his throat – that was
my one thought.” (Ibid.) Tonga, Small’s companion, the extension of his murderous passions, is a “little
hell-hound,” “the little devil,” (The
Sign of Four, Chapter 11) “as venomous as a young snake” (The Sign of Four, Chapter 12). The
murderers, like the detective, are “hounds.”
Holmes, Hope
and Small all have knowledge of dispensing drugs. We are familiar with Holmes’s
chemical experiments (A Study in Scarlet,
Part 1, Chapter 1; The Sign of Four,
Chapter 9). In A Study in Scarlet,
Hope describes himself as “a fairly good dispenser” as he tells how he made two
pills, one lethal and one harmless, for his Russian roulette by poison. In the
Andaman Islands, Small learns “to dispense drugs.” This allows him to save
Tonga’s life and as a result he becomes Small’s inseparable companion. This chemical
knowledge allows both criminals to commit their crimes by providence and
coincidence. Hope’s pills are a rather unreliable method of murder which leaves
the judgement to Providence. Small’s rescue of Tonga leads to Sholto’s death
when he is unable to control Tonga’s violence.
Both crimes and detection in A Study in Scarlet and The
Sign of Four are morally ambiguous. First, the victims are immoral and their
demise is a result of their own bad behaviour. Secondly, drugs introduce into
the narratives “a hand of fate,” a supernatural agency of justice so familiar in sensation fiction. Thirdly, the detective’s motivation for detection is
self-gratification – to get a kick, to get high on crime. Fourthly, the
experience of crime is similar for both the detective and the criminal, they also
share chemical expertise.
There is
some of the ‘doubling’ typical in sensation fiction in the parallels between
the detective and the criminals. But more significantly, A Study in Scarlet and The
Sign of Four display the moral ambiguity that sensation novels were so
criticized for: “Partly because of its moral ambiguity, the sensation novel was
felt to be dangerous by many of its first critics” (Brantlinger, 5; also
Hughes, ix).
Watson as a
narrator neatly solves the classic problem of detective fiction: how to tell a
story without giving its secrets away too early. This is the perverse
requirement of any story with mystery which may sensation novelists struggled
with: “The narrative satisfactions of the sensation novel depend to a great
extent on the gradual uncovering of the central secret(s). To this end the most
effective sensation writers developed techniques of narrative concealment and
delay or deferral.“ (Pykett, 5) These “new narrative strategies were developed to
tantalize the reader by withholding information rather than divulging it.”
(Brantlinger, 1-2); see also Hughes, 26)
Conan Doyle’s technique was to introduce Watson as an internal
narrator and a Boswell to Holmes’s Dr Johnson. Watson tells us all he knows and
therefore gives the impression of a reliable narrator. Holmes occasionally
keeps information from Watson, teases him and keeps him guessing to theatrical
effect. In this way, Conan Doyle can withhold information from the reader
without aggravating her. We do not mind being kept in the dark, because Watson
is there with us.
“Whatever the technique adopted the result was the same: a
modification, in some cases quite radical, or the omniscient narrator’s role as
the reader’s guide, guardian and friend. Without this helping hand, the reader
is left to make provisional moral judgements as the narrative unfolds. The
result is a considerable degree of moral ambiguity.” (Pykett, 6)
Moral ambiguity here are the intermediate moral judgements
we make (which are often wrong) while reading a sensation novel. Because we are no longer
supported by an omniscient, reliable narrator, we cannot immediately know the
significance and moral value of each event or the true moral nature of each
character we encounter.
“At the same time as the narrator of a sensation novel seems to
acquire authority by withholding the solution to a mystery, he or she also
loses authority or at least innocence, becoming a figure no longer to be
trusted. … the narrative persona must now become either secretive or something
less than omniscient” (Brantlinger, 15)
Secretive narrators are unreliable by definition. Less than omniscient
narrators are fallible. Watson is fallible, but his less than omniscient narration
is bolstered by Holmes’s superb intelligence and deductive skills. Holmes and
Watson work as a double act to provide a solution to the most significant
problem with narrative technique created by sensation fiction: the
incompatibility of a traditional omniscient narrator with a plot involving
mystery.
To summarize my reading of Conan Doyle’s two stories: how
many boxes of ‘sensation fiction’ can we tick for A Study of Scarlet and The
Sign of the Four?
Plot: √Crime,
√Mystery,
√Proximity,
Sex, √Doubles,
√Coincidence.
Characterization: √Deviant
characters; √Irrational
character motivation; √
Abnormal mental states
Style: √Accuracy
of detail, √Expressions
of emotion, √Melodrama,
√Mix
of realism and romance
Ideas: √Moral
ambiguity; Uncertainties about gender roles
Form: √ Fractured or insecure narrative voice (narrative omnipotence problematic)
Conan Doyle’s first two Holmes stories are
sensation novels, only he pretty much left out women.
No comments:
Post a Comment