you don’t need to study literature (although this is what I do) to see that these two men are in L O V E
BONUS: this is what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle says himself
just a few of many, feel free to add more
@nerdycauseimme actually, according to his official biography, ‘Conan Doyle’s feelings about homosexuality were more liberal than the norm, which may have been the reason why, he later was not elevated to sit in the House of Lords’! Homosexuality was a criminal offence in England until 1967, however, so, like most people wishing to avoid the law, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had to be covert in his support and portrayal of it.
@mionewatts actually, queer readings of the Sherlock Holmes canon have been around for decades!
They go back, on paper, as far as 1941, when Rex Stout gave a talk to the Sherlock Holmes society The Baker Street Irregulars entitled “Was Watson a woman?” Although mostly tongue in cheek (and unfortunately quite sexist), this set a precedent in the Holmesian community for reading Holmes and Watson as romantically involved.
The Adventure of the Three Students begins ‘It was in the year ‘95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great university towns, and it was during this time that the small but instructive adventure which I am about to relate befell us.’ 1895 was the year in which Oscar Wilde (with whom, according to the aforementioned official biography, Conan Doyle ‘got along famously’) was tried and sentenced to two years of hard labour for ‘gross indecency’. While the Labouchere Amendment had devised this sentence in 1885, there hadn’t been an enormous amount of convictions up to this point, as the law generally preferred to just pretend that something they deemed as shameful as homosexuality didn’t exist and cover it up rather than expose it. However, Wilde’s case brought the issue to public attention and many men were tried and charged in 1895, making London one of the most dangerous places to be for men who were attracted to men at that time, and many of them left the city as a result.* Samuel Rosenberg also makes an excellent argument for Wilde as a source of inspiration to Conan Doyle in Naked is the Best Disguise. *See Neil Bartlett’s Who Was That Man?: A Present For Mr Oscar Wilde for more information.
There are two instances in the canon where one man kills another in defence of the woman he loves, and Holmes allows him to walk free in light of the circumstances. One is The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, in which the perpetrator asks, after making his confession, ‘Was I wrong? Well, then, what would either of you gentlemen have done, if you had been in my position?’ The other is The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot, in which the perpetrator says ‘Perhaps, if you loved a woman, you would have done as much yourself.’ This time, Holmes concedes, and says: ‘I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?’ Holmes never does fall in love with a woman, but in The Adventure of the Three Garridebs, Watson is shot, and Holmes leaps to his defence, about which Watson says ‘For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.’ Assured that Watson is alright, Holmes turns to his assailant and says ‘By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.’ As you can see, this very clearly parallels the romantically coded actions described in Abbey Grange and Devil’s Foot.
Of course, Conan Doyle couldn’t make Holmes and Watson’s relationship explicitly romantic – as I mentioned earlier, homosexuality was a criminal offence at the time, and The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence against Wilde during his trial – but he dropped more than enough hints for many people to have been noticing and writing about them for over 75 years!
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