The Sign of Four: Analyzing the Symbolism and Imperial Themes
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle delves into the intriguing world of Sherlock Holmes as he solves mysteries and grapples with personal struggles. The narrative draws parallels between Holmes' drug use and the political landscape of England, reflecting imperial anxieties of the time. Through rich descriptions and complex characters, Doyle weaves a story that explores the delicate balance between detection, addiction, and empire.
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The Sign of Four (1890) Arthur Conan Doyle
1. The Punctured Body Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantlepiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat Morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction. (The Sign of Four)
1. The Punctured Body Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world (The Sign of Four). Detection is, or ought to be an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism . Some facts should be suppressed, or, at least, a just sense of proportion should be observed in treating them. The only point in the case that deserved mention was the curious analytical reasoning from effects to causes, by which I succeeded in unraveling it. (The Sign of Four)
1. The Punctured Body The text traces an implicit homology between the punctured body of the great English detective and the body politic of England itself. Just as the nation struggles with a foreign conspiracy that has been belatedly released into its blood stream by the events of 1857, so too Holmes is represented as dangerously occupied by a drug with orientalist overtones, one which threatens his physical health as surely as the Mutiny threatened the health of empire. (Christopher Keep and Don Randall, Addiction, Empire and Narrative in Arthur Conan Doyle s The Sign of Four , 1999) The Holmes stories reflect a contemporary rhetorical trend that lumped drugs, organic tox-ins, and infectious agents together as foreign-born biocontaminants returning from the colonies to afflict the English. (Susan Cannon Harris, Pathological Possibilities: Contagion and Empire in Doyle s Sherlock Holmes Stories , 2003)
2. Imperial Intimacies We were all astonished by the appearance of the apartment into which he invited us. In that sorry house it looked as out of place as a diamond of the first water in a setting of brass. The richest and glossiest of curtains and tapestries draped the walls, looped back here and there to expose some richly mounted painting or oriental vase. (The Sign of Four)
By the end of the century a stream of imperial bric-a-brac had invaded Victorian homes. Colonial heroes and colonial scenes were emblazoned on a host of domestic commodities, from milk cartons to sauce bottles, tobacco tins to whiskey bottles, assorted biscuits to toothpaste, toffee-boxes to baking powder. (Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather 1995) 2. Imperial Intimacies The commercial traffic with India in the nineteenth century brought many such commodities into the homes of the English middle class. Some of these items, and particularly textiles, led a double life, functioning at once as exotic foreign artifacts and as markers of proper Englishness. (Suzanne Daly, Kashmir Shawls in Mid-Victorian Novels , 2002).
We opened it, and the light of the lantern gleamed upon a collection of gems such as I have read of and thought about when I was a little lad at Pershore. It was blinding to look upon them [ .] There were one hundred and forty- three diamonds of the first water, including one which has been called, I believe, the Great Mogul, and it is said to be the second largest stones in existence. (The Sign of Four) 2. Imperial Intimacies The sheer excessiveness of the Agra treasure, its power to attract, to kill, and to elude capture, and, perhaps most significantly, its imminent return to the shores of Great Britain in the form of a murderous conspiracy, is symptomatic of its origin in the discursive unman- ageability of the Mutiny. (Christopher Keep and Don Randall, Addiction, Empire and Nar-rative in Arthur Conan Doyle s The Sign of Four , 1999)
2. Imperial Intimacies No wonder that it was heavy. The ironwork was two-thirds of an inch thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb of metal or jewellry lay within it. It was absolutely and completely empty [ .] Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night I had gained one. (The Sign of Four) It is my treasure, and if I can t have the loot I ll take darned good care that no one else does. I tell you that no living man has any right to it, unless it is three men who are in the Andaman convict-barracks and myself. (The Sign of Four)
3. Calculating Machine
3. Calculating Machine Rochester Row, said he. Now Vincent Square. Now we come out on the Vauxhall Bridge Road. We are making for the Surrey side apparently . Priory Road. Lark Hall Lane. Stockwell Place. Robert Street. Cold Harbour Lane. Our quest does not appear to take us to very fashionable regions.(The Sign of Four) When I first saw signs of strange weapons I was inclined to think so, but the remarkable character of the footmarks caused me to reconsider my views. Some of the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula are small men, but none could have left such marks as that. The Hin-doo proper has long and thin feet. The sandal-wearing Mohammedan has the great toe sepa-rated from the others because the thong is commonly passed between [ .] This is the first volume of a gazetteer which is now being published. It may be looked upon as the very latest authority. (The Sign of Four)
3. Calculating Machine Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of 'the truth' but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has effects, and in that sense at least, 'becomes true.' Knowledge, once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practice. Thus, 'There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations. (Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish) The logic behind such ethnic essentialism also informs Doyle s class and criminal typologies: signs of moral and intellectual nature were indelibly inscribed on the surface of the body, and particularly the face. (Rosemary Jann, Sherlock Holmes Codes the Social Body , 1990)
3. Calculating Machine The division sems rather unfair, I remarked. You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you? For me, said Sherlock Holmes, there still remains the cocaine bottle. And he stretched his long white hand up for it. (The Sign of Four)
