{"id":499,"date":"2013-03-24T04:25:39","date_gmt":"2013-03-24T04:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=499"},"modified":"2015-03-12T11:18:54","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:18:54","slug":"the-woman-irene-adler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2013\/03\/24\/the-woman-irene-adler\/","title":{"rendered":"THE Woman: Irene Adler"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Art by Casey Sprague SC ’14<\/p><\/div>\n

Ladies and gents, we are about to embark upon a journey into the world of Sherlock Holmes. If you haven\u2019t read the original Conan Doyle story \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia,\u201d seen the 2009 and 2011 Guy Ritchie adaptations of the original stories starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, or watched the Sherlock<\/em> episode \u201cScandal in Belgravia,\u201d then consider yourself warned that you are entering the Land of Egregious Spoilers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo Sherlock Holmes, she is always the <\/em>woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

So \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia,\u201d one of the most famous Sherlock Holmes short stories, describes Irene Adler. She is the only woman to outwit Holmes in the original series, and as a result, has become something of a feminist icon in the Sherlock Holmes fandom. Recent years have seen a spate of Holmes adaptations, including two Hollywood movies directed by Guy Ritchie and the BBC miniseries Sherlock<\/em>. Both adaptations prominently feature Adler. But does she really deserve to be seen as a feminist character? And, if so, how has she fared in more recent adaptations?<\/p>\n

Although \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia\u201d was written in 1891, you\u2019d never guess it from the way Irene Adler is written. For those a little fuzzy on the details, let\u2019s review:<\/p>\n

She outmaneuvers Holmes at several points. First and foremost, she gets away with the photograph he\u2019s been hired to steal from her. But she also railroads him into serving as best man at her wedding, sees through one of his disguises, and even manages to don a disguise and follow him back to his rooms at Baker Street to bid him goodnight without his knowledge.<\/p>\n

Although Adler is the antagonist of the story in the sense that she keeps Holmes from getting what he wants (namely, the picture his client is afraid of getting blackmailed with), she never behaves villainously. She makes it perfectly clear to Holmes at the end of the story that she doesn\u2019t plan on blackmailing anyone. Holmes\u2019s royal client assures the detective that \u201cher word is inviolate.\u201d Holmes sympathizes with and respects her; when his client laments that Irene isn\u2019t \u201con his level\u201d in terms of class, Holmes snarkily replies, \u201c\u2018From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty.\u2019\u201d Irene is a powerful female antagonist, but she doesn\u2019t fall into the stereotypical femme fatale<\/em> role that gobbles up so many female villains.<\/p>\n

Far from existing only to help male characters, Adler has her own goals and isn\u2019t shy about going after them. Even though Adler does spend most of the story trying to get married, she\u2019s marrying a character who only says a few lines in the whole piece; if anything, he<\/em>\u2019s the one stuck in her<\/em> shadow. There is never any question that Adler is chasing her own happiness, not living for anyone else.<\/p>\n

Finally, Adler changes the mind of Sherlock Holmes, a misogynist even by 19th<\/sup>-century standards, about women\u2019s intellect. Though Watson, narrating the story, insists that there was never anything romantic between the two of them, Holmes still keeps a picture of Adler over an emerald ring as payment for the case. Furthermore, Watson testifies, \u201c[Holmes] used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, Irene Adler\u2019s reputation as a strong female character is well-deserved. Unfortunately, her incarnations in recent adaptations have been substantially altered from the original, and then changes are often not for the better.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with the 2009 and 2011 Hollywood movies directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. There is no denying that the Adler in these movies (played by Rachel McAdams) proves her badassery time after time, outwitting Holmes and giving a pair of back-alley muggers a taste of their own medicine. It\u2019s also readily apparent that she\u2019s made an impression on Holmes\u2014he keeps a picture of her on his desk, much like in the original stories. No, what this Irene fails at is being her own person.<\/p>\n

The movie implies that Adler was only chosen for the job she\u2019s doing (long story\u2026) because of her previous connection with Holmes. This proves to be a double-edged sword for our corseted courtesan, when she winds up falling for Holmes for real. I believe Moriarty sums it up best when he snaps, \u201cYour job was to manipulate Holmes\u2019s feelings for you, not succumb to them!\u201d She only sticks around after that because of her devotion to Holmes. In other words, she\u2019s only in the story to begin with because she knew Holmes, and she has no visible motive outside her attraction to him.<\/p>\n

If the 2009 movie hasn\u2019t convinced you that Hollywood\u2019s Adler is a pale distortion of the original, maybe its 2011 sequel will. Adler is killed off about fifteen minutes in, by Moriarty, for getting too friendly with Holmes. This serves to make Holmes rather melancholy for the first few scenes and lends credence to Moriarty\u2019s threats to kill Watson (who, let\u2019s face it, is the one Holmes really cares about) later in the movie\u2026 and that\u2019s it. Irene\u2019s death isn\u2019t a plot point. Nor does it have any thematic importance. It\u2019s just there to prove that, yes, the bad guy is bad, and to serve as an emotional bump in the road on the male main character\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n

Sherlock<\/em>, the BBC\u2019s new adaptation of Sherlock Holmes transposed into modern-day London, is generally a much more quality show than most of what Hollywood churns out, so you might forgive me for expecting better of them re: Irene Adler. Alas, I was wrong. Sherlock<\/em>\u2019s missteps are different than Hollywood\u2019s, but they\u2019re just as bad.<\/p>\n

A brief summary of the first seventy-five minutes, for those of us Americans who don\u2019t have precognition and therefore haven\u2019t seen it on PBS yet: Did Irene outmaneuver Holmes? Well, if you call \u201coutmaneuvering\u201d someone stripping naked, poisoning him, and beating him with a riding crop. Allow me to apply my head to my keyboard for a moment. Hyju. Okay, we\u2019ll call that one a yes even though it burns my soul to do it. Female antagonist, but not a stereotypical femme fatale<\/em>? Clearly an epic fail. Following her own goals? Check, although these goals are mysterious to us. Changing Sherlock\u2019s mind about women? He certainly reacts to her very differently than he has to other female characters, so let\u2019s call that a check. So far, we\u2019re doing marginally better than Hollywood.<\/p>\n

And then come the last fifteen minutes. First we have Adler\u2019s confession that Jim Moriarty \u201cgave [her] a lot of advice on how to play the Holmes boys,\u201d a revelation to which I shall return. Then comes another shocker: Adler\u2019s password actually makes her phone\u2019s screen read \u201cI am S_H_E_R<\/span> locked.\u201d As Sherlock puts it, \u201cYou could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you worked for. But you just couldn’t resist it, could you? I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage. Thank you for the final proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bringing Moriarty into the equation robs Adler of the intellectual prowess she displayed earlier in Scandal<\/em>. The only talent she actually had, to paraphrase Mycroft, is one for making lonely men feel special\u2014that is, that they are in love. But as Sherlock sneeringly tells her as he punches in the code to her phone, \u201cLove is a chemical defect, found in the losing side.\u201d In Sherlock<\/em>, where intellect is prized above all else, highly-sexualized love\u2014the<\/em> woman\u2019s way of getting what she wants\u2014is actually the cause of her own undoing. In the original stories, Irene Adler was the one woman who caused Sherlock Holmes to reassess his views on her entire gender. In the Sherlock <\/em>continuity, she merely provides a stunning confirmation of the emotional weaknesses of the gender she comes to symbolize.<\/p>\n

And then Irene somehow winds up in Karachi about to be beheaded and Sherlock swoops in on a pony and saves her. Okay, there wasn\u2019t a pony, but everything else is right.<\/p>\n

Many feminists have criticized the episode, to the point that Steven Moffat, co-creator of Sherlock and author of Scandal, felt the need to explain in an interview that \u201cboth [Sherlock and Irene] are clearly defined as deranged \u2013 it’s love among the mad. He’s a psychopath, so is she. [\u2026] I’m not saying this is how people should date!\u201d (Jeffries)<\/p>\n

Apparently Moffat thinks that this statement makes it all better. But really, it doesn\u2019t do anything to address the fundamental problem with this adaptation of Irene Adler. Moffat took a strong, independent icon of the Holmes canon and turned her into a mere pawn of the series\u2019s main (male) villain. He took a witty, resourceful woman and turned her into a manipulator whose only weapon was sex\u2014a weapon which ultimately turned against her. He took the one woman who outwitted the great Sherlock Holmes and turned her into a damsel in distress. In conclusion, what was Moffat thinking?<\/em><\/p>\n

It might have been a little more forgivable if Irene Adler were original to these adaptations, but she\u2019s not. All Ritchie and Moffat had to do was stick with the character as she\u2019s written in the source material, and they would have been fine. But by re-appropriating an iconic strong female character and making her just another stock femme fatale<\/em> or damsel in distress or emotional roadblock for Holmes, they drag us backwards. Backwards, I might add, from 1891.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

\u201cA Scandal in Belgravia.\u201d Sherlock<\/em>. Steven Moffat. BBC1.<\/p>\n

Doyle, Arthur Conan. \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia\u201d (1891). Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, October 1992. Accessed 16 Feb 2012.<\/p>\n

Jeffries, Stuart. \u201c’There is a clue everybody’s missed’: Sherlock writer Steven Moffat interviewed.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, 20 Jan 2012. Accessed 16 Feb 2012.<\/p>\n

Jones, Jane Clare. \u201cIs Sherlock<\/em> Sexist? Steven Moffat\u2019s Wanton Women.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, 3 Jan 2012. Accessed 16 Feb 2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cIrene Adler: How to Butcher a Brilliant Woman Character.\u201d Blog entry, Another Angry Woman<\/em>, 1 Jan 2012. Accessed 16 Feb 2012.<\/p>\n

Sherlock Holmes.<\/em> Guy Ritchie. DVD. Warner Brothers, 2009.<\/p>\n

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. <\/em>Guy Ritchie. Warner Brothers, 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dominatrix and female mastermind, Irene Adler, is known as the most famous woman in the Sherlock Holmes stories. How has this character fared in recent adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s source material?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-vol-4-issue-2"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/05\/sherlocked.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}