I was listening to a playlist of classical music when a certain piece caught my attention: Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy. It immediately reminded me of Mary’s perfume, so i thought….why not? there’s always subtext and hidden messages in this show, let’s do some digging and see what we find out. Well, i’m pleased to say that after a brief research i was able to come up with some pretty interesting stuff.
Actually, this song was inspired by a poem named (guess what) ‘Clair de Lune’ written by Paul Verlaine. Originally in french, here is the english translation (not made by me):
“The poem Claire de Lune by Paul Verlaine consists of three stanzas where the poet takes the readers through a journey where he gets in touch his soul, with the hopes of finding himself. Translated to English, the name of the poem means ‘Moonlight’. The poet does an intense soul searching under the moonlight where he has created another superficial universe for himself where he associates his soul to a picturesque landscape. He invites all kinds of distractions to feed his soulin the form of masquerades, singing and dancing. The poet talks about his imaginative distractions, especially in lines 2-4, where he mentions ‘playing the lute’ and being ‘sad beneath their fanciful costume’.
In the second stanza the poet dedicates the whole to ease his soul with the sound of melody. The lines ‘singing together in a minor key’, and ‘their song melts into the lunar beam’ reflecthis soul connecting his imaginations under the moonlight with his aching for melody.”
The way i see it, this is totally John after Sherlock’s “death”. As we know, John was completely devastated. Understandable, since before meeting him, he was a loner with no purpose and, most likely, with suicidal tendencies, who didn’t have any kind of happiness. Sherlock gave him life again, and with that gone, John seemed to think he was back at stake zero.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that Mary was a safe scape, a “distraction to feed his soul” after his world had been torned apart. They explicitly acknowledge in the show that Mary was the best thing that could’ve happened to him in that time. Either you like her or not, it’s undeniable that she was vital for John’s sanity. He “created another superficial universe for himself” where he could get some joy despite the pain. Yes, of course he was in pain. Two years later and he still thought that it was only right to go to his dead friend gravestone to let him be the first to know of his engagement. And then and only then did he find the courage to go to their old flatand “move on”.
He was, after all, “sad beneath the fanciful costume”, because we all know that his soul was broken, so he tried to connect with his own self under the moonlight (Mary) while he was aching for melody (Sherlock).
~Please feel free to add and tell me your thoughts~
I’ve been obsessed with this All is Vanity meta since the start of my blog, and I’m excited cause you found something that pertains to it!
”Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,-”
All is Vanity as a painting from The Abominable Bride episode (replacing Sherlock’s skull painting) seems like a direct connection to the poem:
All is Vanity is a reference to Ecclesiastes 1:2 “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.“
It also has a connection to William Shakespeare’s sonnet 59.
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burthen of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe’r better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O! sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.
Modern translation:
“If it’s true that there’s nothing new and everything that now exists existed in the past,
then we are really fooling ourselves when we struggle to write something new, winding up, after much exhausting, painful labor, with a tired imitation of an imitation!
If only I could look back into the records, even as far as five hundred years ago, and find a description of you in some old book,
written when people were just beginning to put their thoughts in writing, so I could see what the old world would say about your amazingly beautiful body.
Then I could see whether we’ve gotten better at writing or worse, or whether things have stayed the same as the world revolves.
Oh, I’m sure the witty writers of the past have devoted praise and admiration to worse subjects than you.“
(William’s sonnets are noted throughout the show. Perhaps as precursors to story similarities. Irene texts Sherlock 57 times, John misses Mary’s 59 emergency calls, Sherlock claims that he could have followed Mary to Serbia using 58 different tactics and calculations.)
Ecclesiastes 1:2-9:
“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens[c] to the place where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. 8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”
William Sherlock Scott Holmes mutters in reference to William Shakespeare “The wheel turns, nothing is ever new.”
Mycroft’s/Sherlock’s warning of the east wind also (i’m not sure how loosely or directly) references numerous biblical passages regarding a terrible wind and rush of enemies coming from different directions, including the east. (The references including Ecclesiastes 1:6).
John’s depression and loss/renewal of purpose as op stated reminds me of sonnet 57, but more especially 58!
Sonnet 57:
“Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.”
Sonnet 58 (pt. 2 of 57):
“That God forbid, that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O, let me suffer (being at your beck),
Th’ imprison’d absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime. I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
This sonnet (historically known Shakespeare writing about a man) in the context of Sherlock, could be seen as John/Sherlock having one-sided views of their relationship. Unaware of their impacts on each other and need for each other.
Your finding of Claire de la lune explains so much in so many ways. It makes use and sense of Sherlock’s consistent noticing of the perfume, other than sniffing out Mary’s intentions.
It seems like it’s almost Sherlock understanding he and John’s situation (relationship-wise), but never being able to properly place the meaning or a face to what he’s noticing.
Your soul is a moonlit landscape fair,
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim,
That play on lutes and dance and have an air
Of being sad in their fantastic trim.
The while they celebrate in minor strain
Triumphant love, effective enterprise,
They have an air of knowing all is vain,-
And through the quiet moonlight their songs rise,
The melancholy moonlight, sweet and lone,
That makes to dream the birds upon the tree,
And in their polished basins of white stone
The fountains tall to sob with ecstasy.
“He’s writing sad music. Doesn’t eat, barely talks – only to correct the television. I’d say he was heartbroken but he’s Sherlock. He does all that anyway..” – John
Polished basins of white stone remind me of the Thatcher case.
And the poem’s mention of fountains remind me of @fandeadgloves ‘s lovely meta. Mofftiss is out here putting together all these lil hints!
The laundry list of problems with Sherlock’s last two seasons is long and convoluted, but one person seems to crop up on it frequently: Mary.
Unfortunately, Mary’s character seems to be the wrench that first threw the show out of alignment in S3. It’s not that Mary Morstan shouldn’t have been introduced, or that Amanda’s performance wasn’t well done. It’s that Mary was inserted into the show and then manipulated in a way that broke the logic of the plot, not to mention the dynamic of the two leads. More than that, the writers used her repeatedly to bait-and-switch the audience, without ever following up on the ideas they planted.
For some reason this meta I wrote after S4 is going around again, and when I re-read it, I was reminded of a recent conversation that gave me some perspective on the Sherlock fandom experience. (@bendingsignpost, I hope you don’t mind if I paraphrase you here.)
When I was in full Sherlock-obsessed mode, I took Sherlock very seriously, because the show seemed to be a serious show. It sent out all the signals of a real-deal drama. The problem was, it turned out to be a farce – ultimately, it made no sense, especially from a character development perspective. I wrote dozens of metas like the one above, trying to work out how this could have happened.
When you are deeply invested in something, as I was, and then realize it wasn’t what you thought it was, you feel betrayed. Angry. Taken advantage of. And you feel like maybe you shouldn’t get so invested in something again.
But Ben and I were chatting recently, and he pointed out the value of finding a fandom that isn’t so serious. A fandom that recognizes that its canon is flawed from the outset. And you know, that sounds pretty damn fun.
Sherlock fandom has taught me this: question the source material.
As lovely as you made my “wisdom” sound, I think I should state for the record that I said something like “a fandom that recognizes the canon is a dumpster fire, and is rescuing the bits we liked from the flames.”
Yes. This. ^^^^^
The precise quote is even better. ❤
@marsdaydream, I can’t thank you with for all the meta and fic you have written… And the venting, which was therapeutic to me and for the writing of my meta article (which I link here in case it helps others like it did me–also I’m a writer who craves feedback): https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/1465 😀
So I honestly can’t believe I’ve never seen anyone talking about the art direction of this scene. If I’m repeating something, Ah,well. But I’ve honestly never seen it pointed out that this is the very first time we see Mary, and there are three important things here:
Mary reaches for John’s hand. John takes it, of course—he is used to being offered comfort for his loss, by now—but he is not reaching out to her for comfort in his sadness. She is inserting herself into his grief. Reflexively, he lets her.
We only see the back of her. It’s unusual to introduce a major protagonist any other way than by showing their face pretty much immediately. A major antagonist, however…a baddie…well, they often are introduced in a cloud of cigarette smoke, from a distance, in the shadows, as a mysterious voice on a phone, or in some other way that doesn’t tell us right away who they are. Our first glimpse of Mary gives us only the most vague information about her. Obviously a woman, obviously someone John is close to, as he holds her hand. Other than that…who is she? We don’t know.
Finally, it’s no mistake she is wearing a long, grey coat which flares slightly from the waist, and a blue scarf. But they are paler shades of those colours than Sherlock’s coat and scarf were, because Mary is but a pale imitation of the person we are used to seeing standing beside John Watson (even once, when they were handcuffed together, holding John Watson’s hand in a manner similar to what we see here). Her coat and scarf look cheap, “less than,” and her denim jeans are “less” than Sherlock Holmes’s designer trousers. Her dark hat is a visual echo of Sherlock’s dark hair. This whole shot is set up not only to remind us that Sherlock used to stand here at John Watson’s side, but also that This is some lesser, fake, replacement-Sherlock standing at John Watson’s side, and whether consciously or unconsciously, John has chosen a pale imitation indeed.
I was thinking about this post a couple months ago, which I wrote in 2014. I know there is a segment of fandom who accept Mary’s redemption arc, and that’s fine. For myself, though, I do still maintain that Mary was initially designed to be a villain, and was handled that way all through S3 and into The Abominable Bride’s present-day segments. I like her as a villain because she is interesting as a villain. A woman with agency who just fucks shit up for giggles, with power-over, even if ultimately defeated (as one assumes she would be) would have been fun to watch; that idea appeals to me much more than the “motherhood and the love of a good man turns a bad woman into a saint” trope we got in S4. Unfortunately at least one of the Sherlock writers has a long history of writing flimsy female characters, so perhaps it’s no surprise he fell back on old habits rather than do the interesting thing.
(Of note: I think there’s an argument to be made that not only was Mary meant to be a villain–she was meant to be Moriarty. The pink phone, woman’s handwriting, and “voice so soft” in The Great Game…all good clues Moriarty was a woman. Maybe Richard Brook really was an actor. Up until The Six Thatchers, I felt sure this was where it was going.)
I’m not trying to persuade anyone away from embracing Mary’s now-canonical redemption arc, I’m just pointing out that it’s not crazy of me (or anyone else) to have felt like it was a rug-pull. There was a lot of evidence from moment one with Mary that she was not designed to be a good guy, but that over the course of time, the early plan for her changed.
I guess one thing I will push a little on is something I hear from peeps who like Mary a lot: that those of us who think of her/write her in fic as villainous are always only doing so because she “got in the way of Johnlock,” so we demonise or fic-murder her out of spite. I, for one, never expected Johnlock to become canon, so I ain’t mad at Mary and never was. I’m mad at the writers for writing the beginning of one story only to write the end of an entirely different one.
The main problem I have with Mary’s “redemption arc” is that she didn’t GET a redemption arc. The exact thing that I was worried would happen post-s3 is exactly what happened: rather than letting her be a really interesting villain OR giving her an interesting, believable arc where she actually did things to earn redemption, moftiss gave us Sherlock’s assertion that John (and thus we) should forgive her, based on very flimsy reasoning… And then just assumed we’d done as instructed and proceeded into s4 as though the audience had clearly already forgiven her. Then made her fuck up AGAIN (but not in an interesting villain way even) and failed to adequately redeem her AGAIN other than by killing her and making her into a wise ghost.
I don’t blame anyone for expecting her of be a villain, because it would have made worlds more sense than what we got. The only reason I didn’t expect it was because I’d already lost most of my trust in them with TEH.
This. Both of these.
I will not pretend I wasn’t hoping for Johnlock. I was. But I thought Mary was a fascinating read on Moran. She had the skills. She was even in the damn Empty House. And it felt like a shift. Maybe because Elementary made love interest Irene a baddie so they no longer thought it was clever and different enough? Anyways. I agree wholeheartedly with the above assessment.
Agreed. It’s not “misogynistic” to think Mary was a villain. It’s not “just cause she’s a woman,” or “just cause she’s in the way of two dudes fucking,” as certain extremely homophobic members of this fandom like to claim.
It’s because it’s the only interpretation of her character that made sense. Sure, if she had never done anything antagonistic and there were no parallels between her and Moran, then calling her a villain would be questionable.
But she WAS antagonistic. Plain and simple. That’s all there is to it. Redemption arc? Exactly what did she do to deserve forgiveness or earn redemption before her final moments? There was no “redemption.”
Why introduce her the way they did, make us question her morals and history and identity, have John forgive her for flimsy, questionable reasons, make us question her AGAIN, and then kill her? What was the point of her character arc, besides to serve as a prop to John and Sherlock’s story. She served her purpose, and then they killed her. She could have been so much more than a plot device if they had just let her shine as the antagonist they wrote her as. She could have been the most interesting adaptation of Mary Morstan ever written. Instead, as stated above, she was just a “bad woman turned into a saint by a good man.” Blegh. Boring.
Like we get it that she lied to John about the whole assassin thing, but all she ever wanted to do was to protect him by going as far as to hurt Sherlock. In the end, she takes the bullet for Sherlock so that he and John can have each other companionship. I mean she risked her daughter’s future so her husband could be with his friend. The last time we hear her voice is remarking their friendship. What I mean is she ships Johnlock.
She didn’t “hurt” Sherlock to protect John. She nearly killed an unarmed man offering her help, all so that she could continue to lie to her husband and keep him in the dark. And in fact put him in more danger because he didn’t know about her past, and that people may want to hurt her by going after him. She then threatened to kill Sherlock again if he told John the truth, all so she could “keep him”. Then she abandoned her husband and daughter, again not trusting John to figure out how to deal with the AJ situation together (you know, how married couples should do). And how the hell is Rosie at risk by Sherlock being in John’s life, or any more at risk than the risk she herself brought to their family.
“Mary” taking the bullet for Sherlock was not some noble sacrifice (it was poor writing) she knew her past was going to catch up to her sooner or later (and her marriage to John was headed for disaster), and she took the opportunity to be a martyr and manipulate John yet again by forever being “the wonderful woman who gave her life for Sherlock” instead of the fact that she lied to John at every turn, never trusted him, and never treated him as an equal partner. Not to mention those manipulative, and dangerous videos she sent. She told Sherlock, a recovering addict who everyone with eyes knows would do absolutely everything for John, to essentially kill himself all so that John could save him. She was manipulating them and pulling their strings, playing with their lives, even in death (and intentionally used Moriarty-esq wording to get their attention, which is frightening and could trigger past trauma in anyone who dealt with him.)
So yeah, pardon me for not looking back fondly on a woman who brought nothing but pain and suffering to the show’s heroes.
I posit for discussion that anyone who does not see Mary as cruel, narcissistic and emotionally manipulative from the moment she was introduced, has perhaps never been unfortunate enough to be emotionally manipulated by an experienced narcissist themselves.
I think if one has been, one sees it: if one hasn’t, all the smiles and the sugary sentimentality, and the verbal and body language put-downs, the gaslighting and the control, the ruthless disdain for the needs, wishes and desires of others are not immediately recognisable for what they are … as they are not, in fact, immediately recognisable for what they are when one is first groomed by an emotionally manipulative narcissist.
I wanted to like Mary: she was part of Canon. But from the moment in TEH when I saw the way the character was subtly monitoring/controlling the primary relationship of the Holmes/Watson dyad – which for many of us should always have been the primary focus of the show anyway – there was an undercurrent of unease in my mind which increased over the episode to the point at which I realised what I was looking at was emotional manipulation.
And that’s where the character lost me. The show lost me when the writing became totally incoherent, but that’s another issue.
Where did the bullet land? How did Sherlock survive his heart stopping? Did Mary really try to save his life by shooting Sherlock? An analysis of what happened after Mary shot Sherlock, and a discussion about how Sherlock managed to come back…
*This is freaking brilliant*
Somehow this got posted onto my personal blog years ago??? Someone liked it the other day sooooo yeah
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