Book chapter
Displacing Urban Man: Sherlock Holmes’s London
London Eyes
01 Dec 2007
Abstract
Sherlock Holmes’s association with an abstracted, instrumental and superior gaze has suggested to critics the presence of a specifically masculine intellect, one which is contrasted, in the tales, with images of feminine irrationality.¹ In Sherlock’s Men: Masculinity, Conan Doyle, and Cultural History, Joseph A. Kestner suggests that rationality was ‘strongly gendered masculine in the culture, so Holmes’s initial appearance [in a scientific laboratory] and early demonstrations of “deduction” signal not only rationality but also masculinity’.² However (and as Kestner acknowledges), Doyle’s tales often challenge the idea of rationality and consequently examine the expectations and limitations associated with dominant masculine scripts.
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Details
- Title
- Displacing Urban Man
- Creators
- Andrew Smith
- Contributors
- Gail Cunningham (Editor)Stephen Barber (Editor)
- Publication Details
- London Eyes
- Publisher
- Berghahn Books
- Edition
- 1
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- English and Philosophy
- Other Identifier
- 991021013061804721