Canon Holmes and Irene Adler had literally three interactions. In two of them, he was in disguise. In one of them she was in disguise. They didn’t even have a conversation. Canonically happily married to a man. Literally moved Holmes out of her way using just her pinky finger.
Fuckbois throughout the ages : HE LOVES IRENE ADLER. HE TOTALLY WANTED TO SLEEP WITH HER. THAT’S WHY HE ADMIRES HER. #TRUELOVE #SOULMATE #STAR-CROSSED LOVERS
Sherlock Holmes in ACD canon : I wanna fly out of the window and over London holding Watson’s hand. My Boswell. My conductor of light. IF YOU TOUCH WATSON I WILL KILL YOU AND YOUR ANCESTORS.
People: They are friends. #NOHOMO #PLATONIC #JUST BROS
Heteronormativity is a powerful drug.
Holmes’ canon reaction to Irene Adler getting married:
Putting his hands into his pockets, he stretched out his legs in front of the fire and laughed heartily for some minutes.
“Well, really!” he cried, and then he choked and laughed again until he was obliged to lie back, limp and helpless, in the chair.
“What is it?”
“It’s quite too funny.”
Holmes’ canon reaction to Watson getting married:
“I get
a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what
remains for you?”“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there still
remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his
long white hand up for it.Irene getting married made Holmes laugh for literal minutes until he choked, and then laugh again until he could laugh no more.
Watson getting married made Holmes reach for his drugs.
And there it is 🙌
I’m hijacking this post to be salty about how Irene has been treated…sorry.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, repeatedly – Irene Adler did not give a fuck about Sherlock Holmes! That’s been the most frustrating thing about her portrayal everywhere! She didn’t give a crap! She just wanted security so she could go get married to Godfrey!
I wish we had that Irene. Instead of being another character whose star is hanging in Sherlock’s solar system, she’s the person who reminds him he’s not the center of the universe – he can make mistakes, he can get cocky, he doesn’t know everything and his methods aren’t full-proof. And best of all, she teaches him these lessons…as a sort of aside. Like, it was a side-effect of her doing her own thing.
He’s the one who learned something. He was bested. They weren’t chasing after each other and she wasn’t some mysterious minx or clever coquette whose sole purpose in the plot was to be sexy and confident and then have that sexiness used against her and the confidence pulled out from under her feet so that Sherlock could be clever and prove how awesome he was (I’m looking at you, BBC and Ritchie versions).
I mean, I’m an absolute sucker for anything, anything Sherlock Holmes. I loved the stories, I love every piece of media I can get my hands on.
But Irene is my favourite character. And she. Gets. Shafted.
(John is my very close second favourite, ofc)
You just said what I occasionally scream in the void. The mistreatment of canon Irene Adler. Except Granada, no one got even close and that sucks. A strong feminine character reduced to damsel in distress. A Scandal in Bohemia has always been one of my favourite stories because it thrilled me that how a woman outsmarted Sherlock Holmes easily. And made him do a double take on his self confidence. Irene didn’t give a single fuck really. I bet she was kind of annoyed and did the most beautiful thing. Tricked Sherlock Holmes, happily got married to the man she loves and did everything gracefully. That is the beauty of her character.
And then I look at the modern adaptations and I just sigh.
Yes and yes! Irene Adler–actually, Irene Norton, because she is happily married by the end of the story–is a total badass who barely noticed Holmes getting in her way. The way she is treated in almost every adaptation is beyond disappointing. She’s such an intelligent and vibrant character and yet she gets treated as a prop for forced romance.
Anyway, just to continue quoting from canon, here we have Holmes saying that he hopes she loves her husband:
“Irene Adler is married,” remarked Holmes.
“Married! When?”
“Yesterday.”
“But to whom?”
“To an English lawyer named Norton.”
“But she could not love him.”
“I am in hopes that she does.”
He hardly seems heartbroken over it, and is more interested in dissing the King than anything at this point in the story.
And here we have Irene saying it herself:
As to the photograph, your
client may rest in peace. I love and amloved by a better man than he.
Irene Norton loves her husband. She doesn’t love the King of Bohemia. She doesn’t love Holmes. Both Holmes and the King got in her way of trying to marry the man she loves, but she outsmarted them both and got what she wanted. The whole case is about this and yet I get the impression that many adaptations fail to realize that her whole story is about her trying to be with the man she loves without all these other people interfering and trying to control her. And she is the one who saves herself in this story. Holmes is not the hero, he’s just an annoyance.
I’m going to bring the attention back to Holmes again for a moment: I want to point out too that SCAN, the story that gives us “the woman” is also the story that gives us “I am lost without my Boswell.”
Holmes would be lost without Watson, he says it himself. When the story opens, Holmes is living alone at Baker Street, cycling through fits of energy and lethargy, and “alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition” after Watson’s marriage. Watson drops in on him, and Holmes does what he can to get Watson to stick around for a case. Once he finally gets Watson to stay, Holmes’s mood begins improving, going from aloof and barely talkative until we reach the point of him laughing uproariously about Irene’s marriage. I don’t want to make this post much longer, but I wrote a post about it here that analyses the story step-by-step (under the assumption that Watson’s marriage is real and that SCAN occurs after SIGN–perhaps in the future I’ll approach it from a different angle).
Just to throw in my two cents–Irene Adler (in the Guy Ritchie movies) is killed off by Moriarty to further Sherlock Holmes’ character development. I mean, what BBC did with Irene-is-a-lesbian-but-also-not-really was bad, but Ritchie’s thing was almost worse. I think one of the main problems with Sherlock Holmes interpretations is that most of the major ones are engineered by men who either 1) didn’t read A Scandal in Bohemia or 2) genuinely don’t give a flaming fuck. I agree with all above analyses^^ Irene is a good character and doesn’t deserve all this subpar treatment.
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