#senora victor durando

[ragnell]

It's be interesting if the woman from "I've been defeated four times, 3 by men and once by a woman" was actually EFFIE because the Irene situation is arguably a draw. At the very least, he ran Irene off the board. But with Effie, Holmes outright told Watson to bring it up to remind him he got things wrong.

When it comes to courage and resilience, there's a lot of women in the canon who don't get their due when they should. Emilia in the Red Circle, the unnamed woman in Engineer's Thumb and Anna from the Golden Pince-Nez showed superhuman endurance.

Helen Stoner walked away from an abusive situation that had killed her sister, which had to take a ton of strength.

Annie Phelps from the Naval Treaty and Lady Hilda from the Second Stain both are striking characters, made moreso from all having the same plot hook which diverges based mainly on THEIR presence and their actions in the story. Both are active, determined, caring women that impress Holmes.

But the characters shouldn't need to be strong to be notable, or at least not morally/physically strong and active. One of the best defined women in a story is poor Miss Mary Sutherland from A Case of Identity. Lady Frances Carfax is similarly well-defined, but has a much darker end. Both of these women leap off the page without having to be active, and are easy to contrast with the other women in the canon who have better luck.

But the absolute biggest badass of the canon, for my money, is Senora Durando from Wisteria Lodge and it's a shame we very rarely see her in adaptations and pastiches. If Isadora Klein is the femme fatale a lot of men see in Irene Adler, Senora Durando is the daring spy a lot of writers try to make Irene Adler into.

A lot of writers interpret the sentimentality Holmes has for Adler as romantic interest, so they love to ignore that she found the love of her life in someone else and stick her into that love interest role. Then they make her into Isadora Klein or Senora Durando to make her more interesting, because in canon she's a singer and a socialite and notable for her mental acuity, not her heroics or villainy. They want Holmes with a woman and they'd rather a dominatrix or a superspy than a rock star for some reason. Never mind that canonically he is The Aro Ace and she has a soulmate, or even that an asexual detective who hates his fame and a hypersexual rock star would be a far more interesting dynamic than the cliche one they keep using, this is what those writers want. It's very tiresome, and irritating because I LIKE Irene and I hate to see her twisted out of character over and over and over.

This is what we lose when they write in service to a romantic formula.

The Women of the Sherlock Holmes Canon: Some random thoughts

Much as I love Irene Adler, I can’t help but feel that the fandom’s fixation on her does a disservice to the surprisingly large number of other formidable females in the Canon; asides from Isadora Klein of the understandably unpopular “The Three Gables”, who actually is the femme fatale people mistakenly believe Irene is*, we’ve the ferocious Kitty Winter and icy Violet de Merville (granted she’s a dupe, but her determination to cling to her delusions are rather impressive) from “The Illustrious Client”; the unnamed avenger of “Charles Augustus Milverton”; Effie Munro of “The Yellow Face”, the one person who unequivocally pulled one over Holmes; Violet Hunter, whom Watson himself ‘ships with Holmes, Elsie Cubitt of “The Dancing Man”, who had the wherewithal to escape her criminal family and withstand Abe Slaney’s attempts to intimidate her into returning, and bore that burden alone lest her husband’s family honor be besmirched (which seems a bit weird nowadays, but I imagine would’ve been viewed more positively back then); Lady Mary Brackenstall of “The Abbey Grange”, who fooled Inspector Hopkins and almost fooled Holmes into buying her cover-story for the killing of her husband…that’s just a sampling of the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Really, the non-Irene women of the Canon deserve way more respect. Huh, I wonder if that could be a hook for a future adaptation? Like, I dunno, Mary Watson deciding to look into all these other beautiful ladies her husband is gushing about, and ends up forming some kind of support group or something? As an odd side note, is it weird that, despite my distaste for the idea of a heterosexual Holmes**, I’ve long felt that I would be willing to give props to an adaptation that had him romantically linked with Violet Hunter or Maud Bellamy or one of the other Canonical ladies other than Irene to which people have made arguments Holmes was involved with? *I believe she’s probably the only one in the canon, although some others come close.

**Dude is 100% ace; Doyle (or Watson if you prefer) practically says so, or as close as Victorian/Edwardian terminology and propriety allows. More than once even.