Another fact about women is given through mysteriousness. Mysteriousness grabbed the readers attention very much therefore, what Arthur Conan Doyle did to add mystery to the helpless women in the Victorian ages, was to show them up with veils, covering their faces, this also implies a fact of strangeness however this might be shown as elegance as well as prestige. If we look deeper in the stories we realize that women do not become angry in the stories, they only become upset, for when Kate Whitney's husband was very much worried about him, and Helen stoner tried to cover up the fact that her step father tried to kill her. One important aspect of the story is that women were victims of crimes in the story; they were in "need" of "help" and "aid" due to the fact that they were so "helpless". In the stories Helen Stoner was in need of help from Sherlock Holmes, Kate Whitney came to Dr Watson "in need of help" as well as Mary Morstan asked Holmes to solve her mystery of her father because she was "helpless" as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle expresses it in his writings. Although women were known as very "timid" and "week" but on the other hand women were written to be very nice people for example Helen stoner in "Speckled band" has very much affection and love to her sister, as well as she respects her step father although he is brutal to her. We also see in the "Engineer's Thumb" that the lady who was apparently the villains wife tries to help the engineer out by telling him to go out of the house before her husband comes, she also tries to stop her husband from killing the engineer. And we also see that in "the man with the twisted lip" the lady is very worried about her husband, and yet accepts and serves her guests very well and she is more than willing to "help". This proves that women were written different to men, women did not tend to hurt or to kill, they are mothers, women always tried serving and helping only to their capacities.
If we come out of the women's aspect and look at it in another way, we realize that in the Victorian times "Scandal" was very important to people at that time, due to the fact that people had to be very respected and keep a low profile in the society. We also see that in a title of a story, "Scandal in Bohemia" this very much interested the reader because the Victorian readers always wanted to know the latest scandal, something to talk about. In the stories such as the "Man with the twisted lips" scandal is prevented by keeping the news down and not allowing anyone to know who the "real beggar" is, whilst in the "speckled Band" Sherlock Holmes does not allow info on the case to be spread for he denies any scandal to the women, this is also very gentlemanly behaviour of Sherlock Holmes. Yet also in "Scandal in Bohemia" a king of a country pays Sherlock Holmes to prevent public outbreak of his picture with another lady which would be a scandal to him, this also shows how the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought the British were at a higher state than others, because it fascinates people to see a king of a nation to pay an ordinary English man to do a deed for him. Another thing which would be important to people's respect is "keeping their word". In the Victorian times we see through the stories of "Engineer's Thumb" and "The man with the twisted lip" that there were no written agreements on deals, and all they did was to promise the opposition "to give his/her word". In the Engineers' thumb, the engineer give his word to the villain about keeping information secret and in the "man with the twisted lip" he promises not to beg again and he's let gone out of the jail.
Another important fact about the Victorians Times that we can deduct is that at those times England was the "workshop of the world" technology wise England was most advanced in the world. At the end of 1800s and early 1900s England had twenty one thousand miles of railroad whilst the world only had seventeen thousand miles but on the other hand America had fifty one thousand but still American technology was under British control due to the fact that the British had a big influence in American industry. The British industry is also introduced in the stories such as "The Engineers' thumb", when hydraulics were used and machines very vast, such as the one in the "closed room" where the hydraulic machine with vast iron board was closing on the engineer and same story also introduced the fact about railroads and railroad schedules and how common the use was. A lot of facts linked to one fact which makes the British think they are different to others and they are in higher state, facts such as the British Empire taking control of most countries in the world, the empire was so big that "the sun never set". Facts such as gentlemanly behaviour also helped, such as the "Hard top lip" which showed that English men showed themselves very prestigiously and the rest of the world was no where near them. This is shown in the stories very clearly, the fact of xenophobia and exoticism. In "The speckled band" Dr Grimesby is very strange because he is from India and he has strange pets with him such as "cheetahs" and "baboons" and kept gypsies in his yard which fascinated the Victorian reader, he also wore Turkish sandals which showed the exotic flavour to his character, whilst we see he is the evil person in the story. On the other hand in "the sign of four" the whole problem is based upon strange Indians, and the person who tried to kill the man was not the Englishman, but the islander therefore English men were ought to be gentle and not to kill and disrespect their shame.
The Victorians were very interested into crime for it was recently introduced and it provokes many scandals. Subjects such as Jack the ripper who murdered at least 5 prostitutes between august and November 1888 in London but the police failed to catch him. Therefore the public was very aware of murders and it interested them very much reading about it. Victorians would be very familiar with crime as well because at that time there were no TV's or cinemas therefore magazines books and stories were the main source of entertainment, and the cheaper the magazine the easier it is sold, therefore there was the "Penny Dreadfulls" which cost only a penny, it was sold to the public and it told stories about crimes and murders, serialization was then introduced so that people would pay more in long term.
Another important fact about the Victorian ages is that science was just introduced to the people therefore it was very much interesting to the people. Modern science was at its early stages. Charles Darwin a Victorian scientist wrote a book on "origin of species" from his five year research on species in the Galapagos Islands (1831 to 1836). This introduces to the public the fact of evolution on breeding, this means if you are from a bad family therefore you're always bad and you stay bad. This is shown in the "speckled band" where Dr Grimesby Roylott's father lost his money through gambling and drinking, therefore he must be bad as well, but on the other hand Helen stoner is related to "General Stoner of the Bengal Artillery", and this shows that he was a good man because he died for his country, therefore Helen stoner is the good person here. Another aspect of science which was shown was that Sherlock Holmes is a very good scientist although he hasn’t sufficient certificate of medicine, we know he is a great scientist due to the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle expresses him as "I FOUND IT, I FOUND IT" when he invented the invention on test for haemoglobin, and interesting is that he says it exactly like Archimedes famous Greek scientist who shouted out "EURIKA, EURIKA" which means I found it, he said this when he found out displacement in water while he was having a bath.
Conan Doyle did not really write about children at those ages, because he looked at it as a person from the upper class, which indeed he was. In the stories such as "the sign of four" and "back street irregulars" children are shown homeless and poor and would do anything to get money, yet they were written for the readers to laugh upon, due to the fact that it would be a comedy scene, therefore when children respect and obey the character Sherlock Holmes, this builds his character even more. But authors such as Charles dickens, who were from lower classes, wrote about children's pain at work, their lifestyles and how the conditions were for the poor. His famous piece is "Oliver Twist", it is about a young boy who starts to work at very young age and life concerns and conditions are well explained in that story.
Through reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's biographies and comparing it to the stories of Sherlock Holmes we realize that the story is based on true real life characters. Such as the fact that Conan Doyle was a doctor in the army of the Afghan war and Dr Watson was in the army of the Afghan war as well. Conan Doyle always looked up to his medicine professor Dr Joseph Bell, whom he said was a "great man of science" and his "deductions are inarguable". Therefore this puts Sherlock Holmes right in place for Dr Joseph Bell, and on the other hand we have Dr Watson being the narrative of the story "I thought" "I did" "he looked" "he walked" using these quotations from the stories tells us that he was expressing himself through Dr Watson, he always refers to Sherlock Holmes as a thinking man "his head was tilted backwards thinking of upcoming events while we were on the way to the ladies' house". Holmes teaches Watson detective work and deductions just like how Bell would teach Doyle and Doyle would always look up to him.
A very important factor which the society really influenced him and he influenced the society was the publishing of his writing "study in scarlet" in 1888 December in a Christmas annual magazine. But then he carried on his stories in "lippincott's monthly magazine" in 1890 with the story of "the sign of four" as it says in the introduction of the book. Later on he officially let his writings publish in the monthly magazine of "the strand" in January 1891 with "scandal in bohemia" he earned very good money out of his writings (approximately 27 pounds a month) therefore this encouraged him to write more, and influenced him in his writings. Probably read by the most of the population or the people of the British Isles, due to many reasons such as the fact that it's published in magazines therefore many people could afford to read it. Another reason why lots of people read this was that in those ages there were basically no other entertainment other than theatres, which not all could afford that. Remember that it was the gas lamp era and no electricity, or if there was electricity it was not widely used, therefore there were no TV's or such.
So we get the point that we realize the society immensely loved and followed these stories. We can also see that by the fact that when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing in 1893 with the story of "the final problem" it made "young men and women appeared in the streets in respectively, black armbands and veils. They were in the mourning, for the collapse of a dawn of justice and reasons in a rising tide of in competition and evil". This extract was taken from the introduction of the book explaining the information held to this story. Therefore after last story "scandal in bohemia" pressure built up so much on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle until he had to re establish his character in 1901, with the story of "Empty House". This shows how the society affected him and made him write the stories again after 8 years, this later on affected writers in the same genre such as Agatha Christie who wrote about Hercule Poirot and Hastings and Colin Dexter who wrote about Inspector Mores and Sergeant Lewis which both stories were detective stories and had a lot of structures relevant to the stories of Sherlock Holmes.
Yet after 100 years past from these events we still read the books and you and I still talk about it and its consequences.
