Thank you for thinking about this. I tend to get very angry at modern portrayals of Irene Adler that always want her and Holmes to fall in love, Holmes to have to rescue her, her to get bound up with Moriarty, etc. Irene Adler has one major defining character that makes her unique in all of the Sherlock Holmes canon: She is smart enough to best him, and has the common sense to stop while she's ahead. She doesn't push it, she doesn't stick around to taunt him, she wins, and then she gets what she wants and leaves.
There are certainly plenty of gendered expectations bound up in the story, but why is it that Doyle could do something that all the 20th and 21st century writers can't: let the woman best the male protagonist. Why do the modern revisions all wind up being more sexist and less progressive than the original? I had to stop watching the BBC Sherlock after Holmes had to come to Irene Adler's rescue, and she needed to have help from Moriarty to accomplish things. She couldn't be allowed to stand in her own right.
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Date: 2012-06-05 05:49 pm (UTC)There are certainly plenty of gendered expectations bound up in the story, but why is it that Doyle could do something that all the 20th and 21st century writers can't: let the woman best the male protagonist. Why do the modern revisions all wind up being more sexist and less progressive than the original? I had to stop watching the BBC Sherlock after Holmes had to come to Irene Adler's rescue, and she needed to have help from Moriarty to accomplish things. She couldn't be allowed to stand in her own right.