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possiblyimbiassed · 5 years ago

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Poisonous connections

While re-reading John’s blog post The Poison Giant, I realised something:

There’s a subtle connection between The Six Napoleons /Thatchers, Mary Morstan and The Sign of the Four/Three, in ACD canon as well as in BBC Sherlock. And the blog’s author might have used a reference to a Rathbone movie to further highlight this connection.

Indeed, ACD seems to reiterate certain events, elements or symbols of his stories throughout his whole Holmes work, just like Mofftiss are doing in BBC Sherlock. In this meta I’ll try to point out some of them, and speculate a bit on their meaning as subtext.

“It all started when i received an email. There was no text just a picture of a pearl. I assumed it was spam, but then, the next day, there was another one. Another email, another picture. Another pearl. And again and again. Six days, six pearls.”

This blog post is written directly after The Empty Hearse, and the case happens after Sherlock’s return, when John is already living with Mary. Apart from the dates and the order of the blogposts, we can deduce this from the fact that Sherlock calls John on his heart phone in the morning to discuss the case, which he wouldn’t need to do if they lived together at the time:

But to me this whole case, with six anonymous pearls, sounds very much taken from canon’s The Sign of the Four (SIGN), where Miss Mary Morstan first was a client who seeked help from Holmes regarding her father’s disappearance.

Miss Morstan: “The same day there arrived through the post a small cardboard box addressed to me, which I found to contain a very large and lustrous pearl. No word of writing was enclosed. Since then every year upon the same date there has always appeared a similar box, containing a similar pearl, without any clue as to the sender.”

Watson goes on to tell us how Miss Morstan “opened a flat box as she spoke and showed me six of the finest pearls that I had ever seen.” So just like in the blog post, there were six pearls in total. But in canon Mary was the one who received the pearls, while in BBC Sherlock it was John, at least that’s what he says.

In BBC Sherlock, when John and Sherlock go to investigate the origin of the pearl e-mails, they find a laptop and a man murdered by a poisoned dart. In TSoT Sherlock very briefly tells the guests on John’s wedding about this case:

The dart-blowing James Swandale from this case is not very unlike the character Tonga in SIGN; a small man who is killing his victims by blowing highly poisonous darts at them.

While re-reading SIGN I encountered some themes that I know are repeated with similar stories later in ACD’s work:

The six valuable pearls that Miss Morstan receives by mail have similarities to the six plaster busts that are smashed in The Six Napoleons (SIXN). One of them contains a hidden, valuable pearl (Pearl of the Borgias). The pearls in SIGN are part of the Agra treasure, which is ultimately lost. In SIXN, however, the pearl is the treasure, and it’s ultimately found.

In SIGN we learn that Miss Morstan’s father was a retired military officer, whose emotion while confronted with someone from his past caused him a heart attack. He fell, hit his head on a sharp edge and died. Very much like the retired Colonel James Barclay in The Crooked Man (CROO), who was shocked when confronted with his old rival, fell and hit his head on a sharp edge, and died. Neither of the characters from the past was actually guilty of murder, but they both found it wise to either get out of there or get rid of the body, in order to not get incriminated.

Another retired officer in SIGN, John Sholto, had the sins of his past reaching up on him in the shape of a fellow officer and accomplice (Morstan). This meant a threat of exposure, scandal, loss of his wealth and probably prison, which ultimately worsened his enlarged spleen so much that he died. Before he passed, he told his son about his criminal past. Very much the same thing happened to Victor Trevor’s father in The Gloria Scott (GLOR), who had a stroke, confessed to Victor (via a letter) and later died.

I think ACD’s way of writing recurring themes is very much imitated in BBC Sherlock.

But if the killer in the blog post case was small, why does John call him “The Poison Giant”? Why does John, who isn’t very tall himself, mock a considerably shorter guy by calling him the opposite? A rather low blow, isn’t it? Well that was my first impression, but there might actually be something more to this.

For a start, here we have something that’s repeated by Eurus in TFP:

Someone is trying to inject our protagonists with something dangerous, administered by small darts. John tells us, in his blog post, about Swandale: “He was, to be honest, terrifying. And he had his poisoned dart with him.” At the end of the story we learn that someone apparently wanted to kill both Sherlock and John.

But there’s also another criminal involved: “And he had a friend. A big friend. A really big friend. Sherlock recognised him as Phil Dickinson, known to some as The Headcrusher. So, there we were being chased across a rooftop by Swandale and his poisoned dart only to run straight into this bloke who could break me in half with his bare hands.”

And, to top it, a third ‘feature of interest’ (my bolding): “The big clue we had to go on was that Swandale had got hold of the plans of a house belonging to some pop star from the 90s called Giles Conover.”

A quick Google search reveals that Giles Conover is a character from one of the Basil Rathbone adaptations of Sherlock Holmes: The Pearl of Death from 1944:

Conover is one of the criminal antagonists to Holmes in the film (which can be seen here), and the other one is "The Hoxton Creeper", a giant man who is known for breaking the back of his victims with his bare hands.

The Headcrusher in John’s blog post doesn’t seem very far from The Creeper in The Pearl of Death, does he? Both are extremely tall men. But this also seems to tie into The Golem from TGG:

The Golem is not specifically described as “tall” by John’s blogpost The Great Game, though, only as “a monster” and “barely human”:

“He also worked out what had killed the security guard. I say 'what' although technically it was 'who'. But, having seen the man, 'what' is probably a better definition. He was an assassin known as the Golem. He killed people by squeezing the air out of their body with his bare hands!”

“The Golem was there and it killed her. Then, it attacked Sherlock. I don't think I've actually seen him scared before. Me, I was bricking it! I'd seen horror in Afghanistan. But this man was barely human. He really was a monster! I managed to rescue Sherlock (by whacking the Golem with my gun - I never said I was subtle) but the creature got away.”

So, we have two cases in BBC Sherlock where the criminal they’re chasing is an extremely tall man; once in John’s blog description and the other one in the visual description of the show. And they both fit in nicely with this Rathbone adaptation character. But not with canon, as far as I can see?

In summary, we have the following ‘features of interest’:

The Pearls from the Treasure

The Sins of the Past

The Heart

The Poison and the Darts

The Small Man

The Giant

What subtext can we see in this? Well, there’s this couple of male friends - one small, one big. Who might that resemble? ;) There’s also the matter of the Heart, leaning hard on the Sins of the Past. Seems familiar? Then we have the Pearls, connecting to a treasure. But these things seem a bit unattainable, don’t they? At least this far... In SIGN there’s also a couple of twins - Thaddeus and Bartholomew Sholto. One of them - Bartholomew (for some unknown reason) has a chemistry lab in his house, just like Holmes. And he is murdered by the small man Tonga, basically because he wants to keep the Agra treasure. Thaddeus, the other twin, gives (at least parts of) the treasure to Mary Morstan, and he lives. But Thaddeus is a nervous, twitchy little man who seems rather isolated. Is he happy? I doubt it. And he even loses the treasure - the part that he has not already given away.

And finally, there’s the Poison. Why do Sherlock and John always get drugged, or (almost) poisoned? Is their connection so dangerous - is it poisoned? Well, that might be what Sherlock believes, sadly. But the only real, successful poisoners we have had in this show are a) Jeff Hope, b) Doctor Frankland and c) Jim Moriarty. And they’re all dead. But what if the ‘poison’ that Sherlock and John so fear is actually The Chemistry of Love? Administered by Darts = Cupido? ;) ;) ;)

As a little bonus, there’s also another curious detail from SIGN; this illustration by Richard Gutschmidt:

Look at Thaddeus Sholto’s neat little oriental side-table! It does have a high resemblance to this prop from 221B in BBC Sherlock, hasn’t it? (X) :)

Tagging some people who might be interested: @ebaeschnbliah @raggedyblue @gosherlocked @sarahthecoat @sagestreet @mathilderunout @loveismyrevolution @tendergingergirl @tjlcisthenewsexy

#The Sign of Four #the crooked man #the gloria scott #the pearl of death #the poison giant #the six napoleons

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ebaeschnbliah · 5 years ago

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CHANGING OF THE GUARD

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A metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three (and beyond)

The beginning of Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three, really leaves no doubt what the theme of its story is about. When the eye of the camera zooms slowly in on Speedy’s and the famous black door with the number 221 in Baker Street, it seems to take it’s path right through a literal wood of pointy, black spears. Fences built of iron spears that guard the place..

It starts with a row of spears in the forground. When those get blurry, even more spears from midfield move into focus. Finally the camera reveals spears also in the background. That makes three levels of spears, one might say.

Three levels of spears stand like guardians in front of 221b Baker Street. Could those three levels symbolize the three stabbing victims of The Sign of Three? After all, each one of the three characters is depicted as guard, as protector ... and each one of them gets stabbed.

TBC below the cut ...

Stephen Bainbridge

He is a Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. The current regiment is known as the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards … ’Every foot soldier bears the mark’ (Soo Lin, TBB). How surprising is it that the ‘East’ zooms in on Bainbridge before he gets stabbed by Jonathan Small?

Also … the gesture of the woman is interesting. Two Vs make a W (or a M … depends on the turning). It also lets me think of Culverton Smith’s W-gesture in TLD, in the short clip with the man disguised as cock (x).

Modern Grenadier Guardsmen wear a cap badge of a "grenade fired proper" with seventeen flames (x). Foot soldiers linked to exploding grenades … what a lovely coincidence, especially regarding the ‘passions’ grenade from TFP. :)

When the changing of the guards takes place, Bainbridge is already wounded and slowly dying. He got stabbed before the changing.

The name Stephen is of Greek origin and means ‘crown’ and ‘that which surrounds’. Saint Stephen was stoned to death and is regarded as the very first Christian martyr.

Another little detail caught my attention as well. Just a word used twice to describe a person.

SHERLOCK: “Elite Guard.” JOHN: Forty enlisted men and officers. SHERLOCK: Why this particular Grenadier? Curious.

And in TRF Sherlock sais:

SHERLOCK: This little boy; this particular little boy ... who reads all of those spy books. What would he do? JOHN: He’d leave a sign?

Max Bruhl left a sign. Stephen Bainbridge wrote a note. Not much of a difference, I think.

Guardsmen Max and Claudette

James Sholto

He is a retired Major of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and Captain John Watson’s old commanding officer. A decorated war hero but not to everyone. Something went wrong when he led a team of new recruits into battle. ‘They all died’ (just like AGRA). Major Sholto, badly wounded, was the only survivor. Press and families gave him hell. Deaththreats and hate almost turned him into a recluse, into a most unsociable man, who spends his retirement way out in the middle of nowhere.

I’m quite sure this has been mentioned before, the 5th Northumberland Regiment on Foot (’foot soldiers’ too) still uses their ancient badge … St George killing the dragon (x) Every quiver of his beating heart

‘He destroyed us all’ … somehow these words sound very similar to the one Sherlock uses in TFP, in a situation where he considers himself to be a soldier: ‘Five minutes. It took her just five minutes to do all of this to us. Well, not on my watch.’

As mentioned above, Mary’s dialogue in TST matches the description about the incident with Sholto’s recruits almost identically … ‘something went wrong’/’but it went wrong’ … ‘I was the only one who made it our’/’they all died; he was the only survivor’. And Mary considered AGRA to be her family ... ‘we were family’.

Major John Sholto is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His sons are called Thaddeus and Bartholomew. The renaming of the Major’s first name - from John to James - must have been a deliberate choice. A choice which is reflected in the skip code of TEH ‘John or James Watson … saint or sinner ... James or John’, as well as in John Watson’s middle name … Hamish (Scottish for James).

Major Sholto’s room number is ‘two oh seven’. This reminds me of the ‘double oh seven’ codeword for the ‘flight of the dead’ in ASIB. Two and double …. both means 2. Sure, the number on the door reads 207 but then, it happens several times in this story, that things told and things shown are sometimes not quite the same or vis versa.

When the wedding guests leave the church and the reception takes place, Sholto is already wounded and slowly dying. He has been stabbed before.

Sherlock investigates the cases of both guardians

Bainbridge’s note reaches him sometime during the wedding preparations. John and Sherlock arrive just in time to save Private Bainbridge’s life. The case though remains unsolved.

Without knowing it at the time, Sherlock investigates Sholto’s case during John’s stag night. They call the investigation of the ghost-man the ‘Mayfly Man’ case. It remains also unsolved.

Sherlock includes both unsolved cases into his best man speech at John’s wedding and here at last, all the puzzle pieces fall into place and Sherlock is able to solve both cases, which are closely related. As a consequence Major Sholto’s life can be saved as well.

The person responsible for the attempts to kill Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto is:

Jonathan Small

‘Brilliant, ruthless, almost certainly a monomaniac - though, in fairness, his photographs are actually quite good’ … that’s how Sherlock describes the killer. Small’s motive is revenge. He is convinced that Major Sholto is responsible for the death of Small’s brother Peter, who had been among the killed recruits. It seems that Private Bainbridge merely had the misfortune and got randomly chosen for the rehearsal of Sholto’s murder. But ... why this particular 'foot soldier’? (I’ll come back to that question later)

Jonathan Small grins like Jim Moriarty and wears a checkered shirt like John. He is a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac and obviously also a womaniizer who has no problems to woo half a dozen women, almost at the same time, into telling him well-kept secrets. Basically … a perfect blend of Jim Moriarty and traditional John ‘three continents’ Watson.

Like Major Sholto, Jonathan Small too is an original character from ACDs novel The Sign of Four. His name has not been changed. Only together with his female and not-canon counterpart Janine, Mary’s bridesmaid, who seems to be a lovely blend of Irene and Jim, the name chosen for the antagonist of this episode, appears to gain a special significance.

Janine - deiminutive of Jeanne, female form of John … ‘little Johnny’

Jonathan - diminutives are Jon, Jonni ... though not related to ‘John’ regarding the meaning of the name, it can still be heard as … ‘little Jonny’ (’You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead.‘ Jim, TGG)

None other than ‘little Jo(h)nny’ (the H makes the difference) is responsible for the almost murder of Private Bainbridge and Major Sholto, the first two stabbing victims of this episode.

‘Little Johnny’ also happens to be another word for penis … the ‘meat dagger’.

Who’s the third ‘victim’ then?

Mary Elizabeth Morstan

She is a character full of surprises who starts as a simple nurse who marries John Watson in TSOT. Among Sherlock’s deduction-word-cloud in TEH the term ‘guardian’ can be found and only one episode after the ‘wedding’, Sherlock outs her as facade … his very own facade, because the Empty Houses in Leinster Gardens, on whose front walls Mary’s face is projected, are Sherlock’s property.

Mary Elizabeth Morstan isn’t her real name either. It’s the name of a stillborn child from a gravestone in Chiswick Cementry. This connects her character to the other stillborn child of this story ... Rachel Wilson, the pink lady’s daughter from ASIP. The initials A.G.R.A. stand for Mary’s true name, she tells later … but soon this turns out to be incorrect as well. A.G.R.A. was a group of four undercover agents who worked for the British Government. Prior to her ‘retirement’ Mary had been a member of that group. Sherlock describes her as ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Based on the current status, her two first names are Rosamund Mary … the family name is still unknown (if there even is one).

Why should Mary be the third stabbing victim?

Readers of my theories will probably know that I’m playing for a long time now with a mind palace scenario which stretches from the beginning, most likely in PILOT (or even before) to the end of S4 (x). Back then I wondered ...

Is it really so farfetched to consider the possibility that Sherlock tries to deduce and solve the mysteries and problems of his own live - and his falling in love with John - at first in his mind? Before he comes out?

Over decades - since ACD - the story of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson has been told by the famous 'unreliable narrator’. Could it be that this time - with Sherlock BBC - the world will get the true story? Finally told by Sherlock himself? By looking right into his heart and mind and soul? By showing how his brilliant mind works? How his heart and soul expand and grow?

Would TPTB do such a thing? Stay in Sherlock’s mind over the span of multiple episodes? Follow his train of thought … show his evolution … in such a way? I don’t know. But it sounds thrilling to me. (Nov 2016)

Based on those early ideas I gradually came to the conclusion that Sherlock BBC tells the story of how Sherlock Holmes deduced his own persona. He does this the same way he investigates his criminal cases … by setting up scenarios in his mind and repeating those until he has found the correct solution (The Stage is set). Investigating his own case - the pink one - in such a way, would mean that all the characters which appear on Sherlock’s ‘mind stage’ represent different aspects of himself. Some of them may be based on real life persons, most of them are probably entirely created by Sherlock’s imagination. I like to compaire this process to a ‘mind journey’ or to a long (dramatic) dialogue, Sherlock holds with himself. This propably doesn’t happen during a dream or in a state of coma, as I thought back in 2016. A lot of time and thinking has gone by since then. Nowadays I presume that a conscious thinking process would fit better with the literal character Sherlock Holmes, whose deductions are always built on facts, science, reason and logic. It would be rather OOC that a man like Holmes would base an important, life changing decision on anything else than his razor sharp mind. Anyway, it’s just one of many theories.

Mary now … ever since I noticed the lot of similarities this character shares with Sherlock (x) my view on her started to change considerably. To me she isn’t the woman anymore who comes between Sherlock and John but instead the facade Sherlock Holmes created and married to his traditional, eternal friendship with John Watson for the sole purpose, to hide his romantic feelings and his sexual desire for the friend behind this protective wall. Mary is Sherlock’s facade, his guardian, his firewall … because:

John can’t ever know that I lied to him. It would break him and I would lose him forever – and I will never let that happen. Please … understand. There is nothing in this world that I would not do to stop that happening.

In my opinion, these are Sherlock’s own words and they express his fear of what might happen to the uinque friendship he shares with John, if the friend ever discovers the true nature of his feelings for him. Sherlock would do anything to stop that happening, even if this means that he has to incarcerate his emotions inside a high-security facility, behind elephant glass and chain his sexuality with iron bonds to a wall in a padded cell, like a hound from hell.

The ‘meat dagger’ incident

Sherlock tells the wedding guests - Major Sholto sits among them - about the unsolved Bainbridge case and asks if any of them has got a theory how that guard might have been stabbed. What kind of murderer can walk through walls, which weapon can vanish? Molly’s fiancé Tom (both characters are mirrors for John and Sherlock) assumes it could be a case of ‘attempted suicice by meat dagger’ ... something that would have been self administered.

A lot has been written since then about the ‘meat dagger’ as a metaphor for 'penis’ …. for ‘little Johnny’. :)

Sherlock sees only one feature of interest in the whole case … while he tried to solve the mystery, the eternal friend saved the life of the guard. And just the same happens a little while later with Major Sholto, the other guardian. It turns out that both men - both guardians - have been stabbed by the same killer … Jonathan Small … little Jonny, the meat dagger ....

There’s only one other character in this episode who has been stabbed unknowingly as well. That’s Mary. And in her case it’s indeed … ‘stabbed by meat dagger’ because Sherlock deduces her pregnancy by the end of the episode. Or expressed in computer language: the firewall has been penetrated by the virus.

The ‘father’ might be John or David, Mary’s ex. It doesn’t matter if one views the story metaphorically where all characters represent aspects of Sherlock himself. Going by his looks, David is clearly a mirror for John, while his history regarding the constant online observation of Mary, connects him to Mycroft, the brain. David seems to be a ‘blended’ mirror like Jonathan Small (John/Jim) or Janine (Irene/Jim). A mirror who represents the ongoing interest of the brain in the feelings hidden behind the facade.

When Sherlock marries John and Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend. He tries to ‘downgrade�� those feelings. And yet, Sherlock allows three ‘social ancounters a year’ but ‘always in John’s - the traditional friendship’s presence’. That sounds very much like the ‘calculated risk’ Mycroft takes with Eurus. Both ‘brothers’ seem to be ‘love-addicts’ in need of a fix, once in a while … when the burden of ‘holding oneself to a higher standard’, of ‘keeping oneself right’ gets too heavy … or too boring. In that case it could propably happen that one takes the frustration out on the wall … then the wall has it coming … :)

The moment of revelation

When Sherlock is blinded by the flashlight of ‘little Jo(h)nni’s’ camera, he suddenly realizes that the cases of Bainbridge and Sholto are connected. That the stabber has to be the same person. It’s the moment when the first domino piece falls and knocks over the next, and the next, and the next …. leading to a chain reaction of revelations at the end of which Sherlock knows without any doubt that his new facade had been penetrated again … this time though by a ‘kill shot’. He’d been hit by AMO (the perfect ammonition), fired by the crack shot that is his eternal friend. The seed of love has been laid without Sherlock noticing the ‘chink in his armour’ through which Cupid’s arrow hit home. Now love has taken root behind his facade and is growing.

The name chosen for that love is Rosamund - Rose of the world, as the dialogue in TST confirms. There’s a real rose of that name - Rosa Mundi - an old rose depicted in a work of Sandro Botticelli “Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child”. This rose is also known by the synonym ‘rosa versicolor’ - which means ‘rose of many or changing colours ... iridiscent’.

The word iridescence is derived in part from the Greek word ἶρις îris , meaning rainbow, It is the phenomenon of certain surfaces that appear to gradually change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes. (X)

Sherlock - the ‘virgin’ he is called in ASIB by Jim and Irene - announces the pregnancy of Mary (I still wonder if this means that he is the 'Gabriel’ of A.G.R.A. - the angel who announces virgin Mary’s pregnancy). And during the stag night, John is labeled with ‘Madonna’. Another name for Virgin Mary. This turns the eternal friend also into the ‘virgin’, just like Sherlock and Mary. Another ‘sign of three’ one could say.

Three virgins - three novices - who will now start a new journey on a way they have never travelled before. Sherlock will finally encounter romantic love and accept it ‘it is what it is’, the facade will ‘get retired in a pretty permanent sort of way’ as the brain blatantly puts it in TST and the traditional ‘eternal’ friendship will have to change into a romantic-sexuell relationship. A morphing together of friendship and sex - John and James - would be a quite logical consequence, I guess.

In TST the little baby is christened with the name Rosamund, a name that can be traced back to ‘rainbow’ … Rosie for short. And rosy=pink!

‘Oh, what a night! ... I was never gonna be the same … I felt a rush like a rollin' ball of thunder spinnin' my head around n' takin' my body under’

No wonder this song has been chosen by the creators to accompany this scene. Overwhelmed by emotions - surprise, confusion, amazement, shock, joy, panic, uncertainty, concern, fear - Sherlock isn’t able anymore to carry on with this ‘wedding’ .... with this renewed ‘changing of the guard’. He walks away alone into the night. The case is solved. Sherlock is aware of what happened. Now he has to deal with the consequences. Should he really replace his guardian again or should he finally stop pretending, stop lying, drop the facade and confess his deepest secret?

Because if you tell them and they decide they’d rather not know, you can’t take it back. You can’t unsay it. Once you’ve opened your heart, you can’t close it again.

This confrontation, Sherlock fights with himself, becomes the centrepiece of the following episode (HLV) where Sherlock is completely torn into. One half of his being, still protected by the facade, is at war with the ... ‘other one’, the slowly increasing emotional side of him. But somewhere deep inside his mind he probably knows already that this is a war ‘he must lose’. And so Sherlock has to go deeper ...

TAB doesn’t only take Sherlock back to his literal roots. In this episode Sherlock investigates again two of the main threads of the story and ties them together through the ‘bride’ … FALL and HOUND. Mary, the facade, feels already ‘left behind’ and John, who represents Sherlock’s now fully acknowledged, tender feelings, directed at his friend ... ‘does grow up so fast’. The episode ends with Sherlock, who throws himself into a torrent of water=emotions and follows Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex, down the Reichenbach Fall … right into the emotional rollercoaster that is Series Four.

Like the investigation in TAB, this series runs backwards as well. TST repeats the events of S2 and S3 while TLD zooms in on S1. I persume this happens because Sherlock applies an ability he describes to Dr. Watson as ... ‘reasoning backwards’:

“In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practise it much. In the every-day affairs of life it is more useful to reason forwards, and so the other comes to be neglected. There are fifty who can reason synthetically for one who can reason analytically…Let me see if I can make it clearer. 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. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backwards, or analytically.” (ACD A Study in Scarlet, Conclusion)

There’s one important change though, which will alter everything. Sherlock now adds baby Rosie, the pink seed of love, the AMO-factor, to his equation. As a consequence his mask, his facade - that what ‘thatched’ and guarded him - crumbles and falls. And Sherlock accepts the change … It is what it is.

Then, in TFP, the third episode of S4, Sherlock puts the results of his deductions under the sharp lens of his emotional core, for the ultimate experiment … the final distillation … to produce at last a clear solution. Still missing is the chemical reaction that should follow the application of that solution, one might say. :)

Back to the three ‘guardians’

My husband is three people

During the wedding preparations, John tries to interst Sherlock for this curious case. John says the sentence ‘my husband is three people’ twice, interupted only by this short dialogue:

SHERLOCK: Major James Sholto. Who he? MARY: Oh, John’s old commanding officer.

Taking John’s words ‘my husband is three people’ literally, then he is talking about his own husband … which will soon be Mary. Husband, not wife, because Mary represents an aspect of Sherlock, his facade, his cover ... his ‘thatch’. As mentioned above, when Sherlock marries John to Mary, he puts a guardian in front of his true feelings for the friend … one could also say …. he places a commander at their/his side. And this is exactly what Mary does in later episodes. She decides who mowes the lawn, chooses the name of the baby and that it is her to take John home and not vis versa.

Husbands can be equated with facades, with commanders, with guards. All of them serve as protectors and defenders of Sherlock’s true feelings for the friend.

Who could have been the first ‘husband’ … the first facade, the first guardian?

Neither of us were the first

This is what Mary tells Sherlock, while John welcomes his ‘privious’ commander. Is she really talking about sexuell experiences of her brand-new husband with another man, just to taunt Sherlock? Viewing the Mary-character as an aspect of Sherlock himself and not as a real wife that comes between two men, I heavily doubt this. Applying a metaphorical reading to the story, wouldn’t it be much more likely that this conversation is about their - Mary’s and Sholto’s - assigned profession. Neither of us were the first … guardian.

Mary is the husband to be, the most recently chosen facade, John’s new commanding officer, an undercover agent of the government.

Major James Sholto is John’s old commanding officer, Sherlock’s previous facade, which turned out to be not strong enough.

The only other guard in this story is Stephen Bainbridge, Private in the Household Guard of the Queen. The foot soldier named after Saint Stephen, the first martyrer.

And isn’t there somthing strikingly similar regarding those three guards as well as a noticeable increase in drama and strength, which so often happens when sequences are repeated on Sherlock’s mind stage?

Private Bainbridge guards the Queens Palace. The ‘East’ zoomes in on him, then he get’s stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - without noticing it. A changing of the guard takes place. Bainbridge almost dies beneath a shower of water.

Major Sholto guards the Queens country. He fights on a battlefield in the East beneath a burning hot sun. Something goes wrong and all the recruits under his command die. Badly wounded himself, Sholto has to leave the service and change into retirement. He gets stabbed by ‘little Jonny’ - the meat dagger - and almost dies.

Mary secretly works for Mycroft, the government, the ‘queen’ - as an undercover ‘super-agent with a terrifying skill set’. Her last operation took place in the East. Something went wrong and a lot of people died. It first looked as if Mary had been the only surviver (like Sholto). She marries ‘Johnny-boy’ Watson, gets stabbed by his meat dagger, becomes pregnant and …. dies not long after ‘PINK-RAINBOW-ROSIES’ birth.

The Sign of Three is about the ‘changing of the guard’. It takes place inside Sherlock’s head. But the marriage of John and Mary, that Sherlock arranges so heartbreakingly beautiful (and so strikingly yellow), turns out to be utterly pointless. Because the bride, the husband, the new commander, the facade is already pregnant ... had been stabbed before the wedding ... before the changing of the guard.

The Yellow Face connection

This isn’t new. It has been discussed before in this interesting meta About Yellow Face by @darlingtonsubstitution (sadly the part below the cut is gone) from 2017. As mentioned in the comments there, the creators of Sherlock BBC once refered to their favourite ACD stories. Yellow Face was among them but ... they wouldn’t be able to adapt it, because of the sensitive content, they said. This isn’t quite true though, it seems. On the contrary, the colour yellow features most prominently in Sherlock BBC … and not just the colour itself.

It starts with Sherlock’s and John’s first date at Angelo’s. The whole scene is drenched in yellow. PILOT even more than ASIP.

A secret code of ancient cyphers, sprayed in yellow paint, leads to the Yellow Dragon Circus.

Golden cats and big ‘yellow’ felines - lions - roam the story.

Yellow is the colour of the smiley face on the wall of the 221b living room.

There’s an assassin who carries a yellow ladder and a yellow tool case with a gun in it.

A bright yellow mask has been placed inside a box, alongside a train, a phone, nicotin patches and a note.

The main colour of the wedding ... bright yellow. It’s the wedding that leads Sherlock to the revelation ... to his love deduction.

A canary trainer, a trainer of yellow birds, turns out to be the killer.

Norbury, the case of the Yellow Face from canon, plays a vital role in TST

The finish of a race is marked with a bright yellow band that floats slowly to the ground while a ‘confessing’ serial killer, who is a mirror for John, passes as winner, signaling a W with his fingers, while the fingers from the ‘East’,, next to Private Bainbridge, signal a double V.

Yellow is the colour of the sun, of fire, flames and explosions.

Yellowbeard ….

But one of the most important links to Yellow Face is the following one:

JOHN: Mary, I may not be a very good man, but I think I’m a bit better than you give me credit for, most of the time. (Sherlock BBC, TST) 'I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.' (Grant Munro, The Adventure of the Yellow Face)

This piece of dialogue connects John to Grant Munro, the husband of Effie, the woman who hides her secret child from a previous marriage behind a yellow mask. She doesn’t do it out of some dark or sinister motive as Sherlock Holmes is convinced at first. Her former marriage had been legal and she'd loved her late husband dearly. Lucy, her little girl, can truly be called a child of love. But Effie fears to reveal Lucy, because the girl is ‘different' and the mother is anxious to lose the man she loves now, because of this. She is torn into between the love for her child and the love for her husband.

She (Effie) drew a large silver locket from her bosom. 'You have never seen this open.'

'I understood that it did not open.'

She touched a spring, and the front hinged back. There was a portrait within of a man, strikingly handsome and intelligent, but bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent. (ACD, The Yellow Face)

ACDs Yellow Face is a case without crime, without any devious betrayal. Instead, it’s about love and the fear to lose love, because at that time in ACDs story, it’s about a love not accepted by many.

'That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,' said the Lady (Effie), 'and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him; but never once while he lived did I for one instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine. (ACD, The Yellow Face)

In ACDs Yellow Face, the ‘first husband’ is of ‘African descent’ … just like Private Bainbridge, who is the ‘first guardian’ - the first of the three ‘identical husbands’ - in Sherlock BBC, The Sign of Three. He is the one who represents Sherlock’s earliest facade … the guardian of the Queen’s Palace.

Just like @darlingtonsubstitution presumed more than two years ago, I’m now more convinced than ever, that Moffat and Gatiss did adapt ACDs Yellow Face and they not only included it in Sherlock BBC, they made it into the main theme of their story (beside ‘hound’, ‘fall’ and ‘scarlet/pink’). In their version though, the focus shifts from ‘unacceptable’ skin-colour to ‘unacceptable’ sexuality.

Sherlock BBCs baby ... Rosie ... Sherlock’s baby ... represents love. And this love is pink and has been given a name that can be traced back to ‘Rainbow’. The Sign of Three tells the story of the ‘changing of the guards’ and how Sherlock finally discovers the AMO-factor that will alter his life completely.

When I discoverd Sherlock BBC for the first time (back in 2011) I was thrilled by that fascinating crime drama and its two charismatic leads. Now, after 13 episodes, it has grown into so much more than just an excellent crime drama among others. The way I read it, Sherlock BBC is a wonderful and stunning story about equality. Inside Sherlock’s mind, the great detective doesn’t only solve the greatest secret of his life. No, the actors Sherlock chooses to represent the different aspects of his persona, are as diverse as the colours of the rainbow. They are old and young, male and female, beautiful and ugly, strong and weak, rich and poor. Neither gender, sexuality nor the shade of skin colour or from which corner on this planet someone comes, is of any importance. Anyone can be a part of this Sherlock Holmes. That’s what makes this adaptation so absolutely unique to me. Sherlock himself becomes the rainbow of his own story.

Thanks for reading to anyone who is still there. :)))) I leave you to your own deductions. And thanks @callie-ariane for your invaluable scripts.

December, 2019

________________________________________________________________

Episode spanning metaphorical reading of Sherlock BBC:

From PILOT to TGG …. About the meaning of S1

From ASIB to TEH …. The big question - what is the meaning of Reichenbach

#changing of the guard #sherlock bbc #metaphorical reading #the sign of three #guardians #commanders #husbands #edited pics

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raggedyblue · 6 years ago

Text

THE EMPTY BOX

The Sign of the Four is an intricate house of mirrors, in which the reader is invited to enter and to which, in a very veiled manner, a way out has been indicated.

It’s not a coincidence that one of the first things we are told is that "Some facts should be suppressed". This immediately after the opening that deals with the bad habit of Holmes, an opening that is a perfect counterpart of the closure. The story opens and closes with Holmes dedicated to drugs, and in the middle we are explained why, suppressing the real reasons, or rather hiding them behind others, reflecting them in a mirror, telling their exact opposite.

If you notice carefully, in the first part of the novel there is a continuous play between the OPPOSITES. A suggestion that what is happening could be the exact opposite. NEGATIVE vs POSITIVE. First of all we introduced Mary Morstan. I have often seen her description as proof that Watson was actually describing Holmes and I honestly never understood the point. Actually it would seem to describe its exact opposite: FEMALE, BLONDE, MINUTE, IMPERFECT INCARNATE, BEAUTIFUL BUT NOT REGULAR FEATURES, SWEET AND AMABILE EXPRESSION. Holmes we know well: MALE, DARK, TALL, PALE, only a few lines after his features are described as "his clear-cut, hawklike features" and without even a precise reason. Rarely if ever the expression of Holmes is called sweet and lovable. The only thing certain is that Watson is infatuated from the beginning of the woman, but he thinks he is not at her level, and this even before any treasure is named in history.

On the first evening of their adventure, the doctor admits, because of the great stress, that he has repeatedly been confused. It seems he had told how during the war he had shot a musket entered his tent with a tiger, and advised caution with castor oil and ease with strychnine (CONTRARY).

During the evening the three pass the bridge of Vauxall Bridge Road, crossing the river to reach a more neglected part of the city. Here they stop in front of a house, squalid like the neighborhood that houses it, and the door is opened by an exotic Indian servant (CONTRARY). The house itself is a surprise, squalid outside, inside it hides incredible treasures and is luxuriously furnished (CONTRARY).

After all these opposites, perhaps it would not be so crazy if we asked ourselves if, by chance, the unreliable narrator, is not trying to tell us that yes he fell in love with someone, yes he probably did it when he set his eyes on he, yes, the first time they were close to each other was in the moment of danger, but he is not Mary Morstan but her CONTRARY.

"Miss Morstan and I stood together. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two who had never seen each other before That Day, between-whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other . I have come to you so far, but I have been able to do it for you” . So how many times have we seen Holmes and Watson doing exactly the same thing? holding hands in the dark, looking for comfort? is this therefore love ?.

At this point in history we come to know the two brothers Sholto and we enter another dimension, from the opposite to the mirror.

The two are brothers, to be precise twins. One of the things that tormented us in BBC Sherlock is the sentence "they are never twins", even if then the solution of the case "my husband is three people" actually turns out to be a case of twins, even three identical ... are they twins or are they never? Does it refer to something else? With this I don’t want to imply that Thaddeus Sholto and Bartholomew Sholto aren’t twins. At the textual level there isn’t doubt that they are, but on a metaphorical level? On a metaphorical level they aren’t twins because they are the same person. They are identical twins, the same coin with two faces.

Thaddeus Sholto a refined esthete, an arts lover, a pipe smoker, a hypochondriac who believes he has a heart condition ... he asks Watson to check his heart.

Bartholomew Sholto is a chemist, misanthrope, he is found killed in a closed room. He kept a treasure hidden, a treasure that he didn’t want to share with anyone, but his killer took his treasure away from him (I understand that the fandom has irremediably corrupted my mind, but I would dwell on the murder weapon: "It was long, sharp, and black, with a glazed look near the point”.)

I would say that it is quite evident that the SHOLTO dyad represents SHerlock Holmes or SH which is good at the same.

Both share the same treasure, the treasure of Agra, which represents homosexual love (it comes from the east). A brother wants to share it with Mary Morstan. Attention, as I said here the games change, we aren’t longer in the realm of the opposite, but in the house of mirrors.

To better understand the mirrors you have to take a step back in time and forward in history (this meta is a bloody mess, I believe that nobody will ever understand anything).

Before Mary, Thaddeus and Bartholomeus there were their parents.

The CAPTAIN ARTHUR (really not too thin) MORSTAN, father of Mary who will marry CAPTAIN WATSON and MAJOR SHOLTO father of the twins that as we said can be seen as the perfect sum of Holmes. The two were inseparable.

Thaddeus Sholto / SH, a Bohemian esthete wants to share the treasure with Mary Morstan / Watson while Bartholomew Sholto, a grumpy chemist wants to keep it hidden. But a man with a wooden leg arrives to take it away anyway. Now ... a man with a wooden leg. I go back to the point where the fandom ruined me, once I was a good person, but considering the Victorian pruderie for the legs, which were even covered even those of the tables or called limbs because to say legs was indecente, here we have a man, Major Sholto, literally terrorized by another man with a wooden leg, and every bloody time I can’t help, but I think of an embarrassing and persistent erection.

Anyway, I said, Bartholomew was robbed by a man with a massive erection and was killed by the long, dark, shiny, wet spine (not my words, thank you) of whom? Of a wild of Antipodes. A native of the Andaman Islands at north of Sumatra (a case? Possible?). A cannibal. One who regulalry banquets with his similars. Now it’s obvious that put it in this way is repulsive, but Tonga represents the wild, unmentionable and inconceivable side of the events linked to the treasure of Agra. The erotic and unspeakable side in an era in which even the conjugal kisses were unspeakable. The wild and primordial side that dwells in any English gentleman (or not). In this case he prefers to feast with his fellows. (is that why in TFP Moriarty refers to cannibals in the TFP? in addition to the more obvious, too obvious, reference to SAW? And the fact of making him whistle is a mockery to Fleming, considered the tone definitely "bond" of the episode? Ian Fleming had made tell to someone of his Bond that you can recognize a homosexual, because he didn't know how to whistle ... but here I went off topic...).

The same Jonathan Small (the man with the massive erection) will turn out to be a fairly accurate mirror of Watson. MILITARY, INJURED to a leg, after having been involved with the theft of the treasure and sentenced to life imprisonment, he will start working in an infirmary and learning notions of MEDICINE. In the course of history it is suggested that during his stay in India he learned a certain familiarity with the men that it was not allowed at home: "Mr. Abelwhite was a kind man, and he would often drop into my little shanty and smoke with me, for white folk out there feel their hearts warm to each other.”

And so, it’s Small / Watson that forces SHolto to separate from his treasure after having him (his uncontrollable and wild part) stabbed (with his meat dagger) ... ok, I'll stop.

But things at the end of the 1800s were not very simple, they are not yet for someone now. We have Mary Morstan not particularly anxious for the treasure to be recovered, Watson who is terrified of it, Holmes quivering for a solution, but in the meantime also strives to be at his best like never before. He plays serenades to sleep Watson and lays dinners in which he plays the part of the friendly and jovial guest. A few other times, if we never, we see behavior more like a courtship.

And then there is the pursuit on the river. Holmes and Watson chase Small, Tonga and the treasure who are on board a small and fast boat, the Aurora

I would stop for a moment on the name because it's worth it. Aurora was the name of the Latin goddess of dawn, she is who brings a new day every morning from the east. She is the mother of the four winds, one of whom has a curious name ... Eurus ...

This is a frenetic pursuit, narrated with a growing climax. Watson himself admits that he has never experienced such excitement, "I have coursed many creatures in my countries during my checkered career, but never did sport give me such a wild thrill as this mad, flying man-hunt down the Thames" , while the engines are “panting”, and in the end the guns of the two men simultaneously shoot "Our pistols rang out together", while Tonga disappears in " the white swirl". After that the Aurora gets stuck, Small tries to escape, but his wooden leg gets entangled in the soft ground.

"See here," said Holmes, pointing to the wooden hatchway. "We were hardly quick enough with our pistols." There, sure enough, just behind where we had been standing, stuck one of those murderous darts which we knew so well. It must have been whizzed between us at the instant that we fired. Holmes smiled at it and shrugged His shoulders in his easy fashion, but I confess That it turned me sick to think of the horrible LITTLE death Which had passed so close to us That Night.”

Now if all this is not a climax and an exhausted post orgasm also cloaked by a certain sadness I don’t know ... (certainly could also be a pursuit along the river).

After the capture of Small Watson is left again at the bridge of Vauxall Bridge Road, which had already crossed earlier to reach the house of Thaddeus Sholto. It seems that the river is a watershed for our two men, and interesting things happen in the middle. “SHERLOCK (voiceover): When does the path we walk on lock around our feet? When does the road become a river with only one destination? Death waits for us all in Samarra. But can Samarra be avoided?” (x)

The doctor brings the treasure to Mary / Watson who does not seem at all anxious or happy to receive a treasure (intended to be then shared with the eccentric Sholto).

To our romantic eyes the story Holme /Watson is the most beautiful that has ever been written but we must never forget that at that time it was a love that could not be told. We can therefore forgive the recalcitrance to Watson. We can understand the why of Mary. Keeping in mind that some things in history are told to us otherwise. That some facts have been suppressed. That the treasure was thrown into the river, was buried by layers of mud, and there is only one beautiful empty box left. But this doesn’t mean that the treasure is gone, it is only hidden. A full declaration of subtext. The jewels are there, they are scattered around all the stories of the Canon, the reader careful is able to find them but have been dragged around by words like the river water. For all the others the Canon remains a beautiful box of fine Indian manufacture. Wonderful to see, even if it is empty inside.

This novel is a labyrinth in which to get lost, and I found, perhaps, the exit only of some corridors. I don’t know if I managed to make me even vaguely understand, thanks for coming up here, you are heroes (or masochists).

@ebaeschnbliah @gosherlocked @sagestreet @sarahthecoat @possiblyimbiassed @tjlcisthenewsexy @sherlockshadow @devoursjohnlock @tendergingergirl @221bloodnun

#the sign of four #acd #acdc #bbc sherlock #agra #east wind #subtext

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