Prospectus: Chapter Descriptions: Chapter 4 - Draft 1 Complete

Chapter 4: Powers of Observation and the Illusion of the Supernatural in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Study in Scarlet (1887), Sign of Four (1890), and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901)

Sherlock Holmes, while identifying himself as a professional detective, is one by way of science. In the first novel to feature Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle portrays the detective as a man so struck by curiosity and so unbounded by institutionally perpetuated assumptions about reality that he, like Griffin, conducts experiments in private. His unmatched skills of detection are directly dependent on his empirical approach, but an empirical approach not restricted by assumptions about reality. Even though they are in fact based on observation, Holmes’ powers of deductive reasoning are often described by the narrative in supernatural terms, as if his conclusions are acts of divination more than exercises in observation and logic. When Watson describes an article written by Holmes, for example, he says "It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity" (Doyle). And so Holmes exists in opposition to, say, what Griffin of The Invisible Man represents, shoring up the idea that seeing is in fact the only way of knowing; it’s just a matter of seeing well.

There are also interesting connections to be made with Wells’ The Time Traveller here. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes explains to Watson his theory of deduction, which involves “reasoning backwards” (Doyle). He says, “Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result” (Doyle). This explanation echoes the Time Traveller’s explanation of time travel theory in that human consciousness can account for a particular scientific principle’s unrealistic qualities. Holmes implies in this passage that the average person cannot “evolve from their own inner consciousness” to achieve this advanced reasoning, and that is why his performances of solving cases strike others as magical or inexplicable.

Why not assume that realism contains, regulates, or shuts down the supernatural in these narratives? Science, instead of giving a novel the authority to allow the supernatural to participate in realism, might be a way to tame the beast, so to speak. Looking at the Sherlock Holmes stories casts this doubt on popular fiction most of all, because out of all the texts under discussion here, those by Doyle dispel the supernatural with science rather than representing the cases of the supernatural as realist experiments. Holmes faces several seemingly supernatural cases – a ghostly hound turns out to be a large dog covered in phosphorous in The Hound of the Baskervilles and Indian “mysticism” permeates The Sign of Four. Rather than finding this troubling, I think this makes Doyle’s fiction all that much more important to include so that this project avoids a one-note repetition of the mantra “the supernatural is a part of realism” and instead exists as a complex and nuanced discussion of these texts.

The most recent film adaptation of Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes (2009) directed by Guy Ritchie, while not directly following any of Doyle’s plots, directs one’s consideration of Holmes’ relationship with the supernatural and with science in interesting ways. The film’s narrative opens by introducing a villain by the name of Lord Blackwood who, after being hanged, seems to rise from the dead and escapes. He plans to put all of British parliament under a trance, but, as Holmes exposits at the end of the film, Blackwood’s supernatural feats can all be traced back to chemical and biological experiments as well as innovations in electrical/radio engineering. This is another example of how a film adaptation might facilitate discussions of realism and the supernatural in any one of these chapters.