Saturday, February 9, 2013
One small thing
Reading "The Copper Beeches" this morning, there was a moment that resonated with the last part of our discussion yesterday, about patriarchy/the family as a capillary of discipline. Watson and Holmes are looking out over the picturesque houses in the countryside, and Watson comments on their beauty. Holmes says, "I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there." He goes on to mention "the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow." For me, these moments are "kinda subversive" -- Holmes certainly isn't raging against the patriarchy, but it made me think about the presence of some discomfort and skepticism, on Holmes's part, as concerns the family unit. He then postulates that the crowded city, not the law, is a better deterrent against such private "crimes."
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It's interesting you see this as subversive since I read it as the most explicit defense of panopticism I've come upon so far in the book. While Watson is happy to look at the houses Holmes's expresses paranoia regarding the unobserved place. It is also interesting, and goes along with Janie's post, that in the city it is not so much "The State" as such that is solely be responsible for the policing and surveillance but the people themselves. Foucault refers to power not as an object but as a network in which people sometimes function powerfully. Surrounded by people in the city I stick to the rules and follow the crosswalks partially because the presence of everyone else. In this way even the mundane acts of observation by passersby become coercive even though not necessarily used by an agent of the state. Now that I'm writing this, I realize this passage may also further link Holmes to the idea of panopticism in that he suggests that the chaos of crime can ONLY happen in unobserved spaces. This reifies the power of the state. It would be interesting to have a Holmes story in which he deduces the crime but is unable to act (this is different than failing to find criminal which is a deficiency of observation). Imagine if, as in the case of the Red-Headed League Holmes wasn't able to get in touch with the authorities or the bank manager thus preventing the force of law to act and assert itself. It would undermine Holmes's very ideology that equates power with observation.
ReplyDeletePaul, in light of your statement that it "would be interesting to have a Holmes story in which he deduces the crime but is unable to act," I think it's interesting to look at the story where he deduces the crime, but is unwilling to act, namely The Boscombe Valley Mystery.
ReplyDeleteForgive me if this was mentioned in last week's class, but I found this one particularly baffling (and unsatisfying, to be honest) because the details of the crime are revealed by Holmes, but he refuses to fully reveal them to the state. Instead, he decides that Turner's guilt should remain a mystery to the authorities, so that he can live out his last days in peace, and his family can happily live "in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their past" (101).
So here we have Holmes circumventing the power of the state to reach what he (and Watson) believe to be a higher form of justice - all while they both speak in a more religious tone than usual. This is different than Holmes not being able to utilize the mechanisms of the state for his own use, of course, and it certainly reinforces the idea that crime emerges in unobserved spaces (two men alone in the woods...). But this lack of visibility is protected by Holmes, instead of exposed to the law.
Still: that last line, quoted above, implies that there is still a "black cloud" hovering around the happy young couple. Perhaps it's because their family history was not properly brought to the "light" of full justice?
Quick question for Rose: "unsatisfying" as what? (as a reader? in terms of our expectations from detective stories? in terms of the character of Holmes? in terms of justice?).
ReplyDeleteRose speaks to the question we touched upon briefly in class, which is whether Holmes, as the "last court of appeal" ("Pips" 79) represents a crisis for state power or its triumph. Is the figure of a super-cop reassuring or totally scary?
I read Holmes for the first time when I was in fourth or fifth grade living maybe twenty minutes from where I do right now in suburban NYC. At the time, it didn't occur to me how many of the stories take place at least partially in the suburbs. This jumped out at me on this reading because it is such an interesting choice. Our abiding image of Holmes has him running around a foggy night-time London, a hyper-urbanized space. And so many mysteries, at least British ones, take place in giant country homes. I think the fact that Holmes is frequently called to the suburbs ties the controls at work to the middle class not just as agents of control but potentially as criminals. The suburbs are notorious as spaces of extreme social control and also places that falsely offer security. If the country house mystery tends to police members and the social structures of the upper class, and the city mystery tends to explore a landscape that veers between extreme privilege and poverty, what does it mean to identify so many of Holmes's cases with the suburbs?
ReplyDeleteI suppose I meant subversive in the sense that Holmes expresses skepticism about the illusion of security symbolized by the middle-class suburban home (which was touched on by Laura above). The crime Holmes imagines is not something as relatively benign as disobeying traffic laws, but rather someone beating a child, a disempowered member of the family.
ReplyDeleteI have more comments on this but I'm going to move them over to Janie's thread!
Rose, I also found "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" interesting, for similar reasons, and I agree that there is something troubling about the ending. I've read other detective stories that have a similar detective-knows-best ending and not had this hesitation - one of my favourite Agatha Christie's ends with the decision that justice has been served by the crime and would not be further served by having the culprit arrested, and I find that solution utterly satisfying for that story. I think what I find troubling about this story is not the failure to expose the crime to the law per se, but rather the lingering "ignorance." The lack of the broader reveal, and thus the fact that this story remains a mystery for those involved make it feel unfinished.
ReplyDeleteAlyssa, I think that persistent cloud of "ignorance" might be the source of my dissatisfaction. I found myself wondering what exactly the young couple think happened to the dead man. Do they imagine a random stranger attacking him for no reason? Or that he was involved in something nefarious, but unconnected to the actual murderer?
DeleteI also find myself similarly uneasy about the less serious endings of "The Man with the Twisted Lip" and "A Case of Identity" because they allow for the same ignorance to persist within the family. Granted, it is not exactly a crime to impersonate a beggar or court one's step-daughter in disguise, but these women (and it tends to be women) are left with their illusions, and kept away from Holmes' circle of illumination. I guess I am comfortable with "the family" being protected as a unit from the prosecution of the state, but only when all members are granted the same level of knowledge.
So I think what it comes down to for both of us, then, is that we are willing to accept Holmes's judgement and intervention as a mediator between the family and the state, but not what amounts to intervention within the family itself.
DeleteThis is a comment that gestures towards Janie's post: as readers, are you more or less willing to give Holmes authority to make such unilateral decisions in domestic situations (when he is ostensibly sparing family further shame, etc.)?
ReplyDelete