A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle — Reread Review

Cover: bookshop.org

There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes was the third fictional detective I was introduced to, after Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. My mum used to have the books on tape, and I remember that the first time I listen to A Study in Scarlet, I was absolutely riveted. Not so much by the relationship between Dr Watson and Sherlock Holmes, that came later, but by the story of Jefferson Hope. As a teen, I accepted it without question or critical thought. And, though I remember it less clearly, that must have been how I’ve engaged with it every time since.

This time, however, the story that used to enthral me has absolutely enraged me. Which isn’t to say that A Study in Scarlet is any less interesting or less well written since I first experienced it all those years ago. It’s just that I’ve become a more discerning reader, and that’s actually pretty cool.

If you haven’t read A Study in Scarlet and you care about spoilers, come back to this review later, because what so angered me is pretty crucial to the murderer’s motive.

Jefferson Hope claims to love Lucy Ferrier so much that he devotes his whole life to revenge on the men who forced her into marriage. Alright, that’s a little old-fashioned, perhaps, but A Study in Scarlet is set in 1880, so that’s not my problem. My problem is that after Lucy gets married, Jefferson Hope walks away and leaves her to die. He is right there on the spot, he’s already attempted to rescue her once, but as soon as he hears that the marriage has already taken place, he turns around and walks off! He makes no attempt to rescue her from a situation that he’s told is so bad she will probably die of grief. And she does, she dies, all while Jefferson Hope is plotting to avenge her death!

I think when I was younger, I just accepted that, of course, marriage is forever, there’s no way Lucy could be saved from it. And, to an extent, that might be true. Lucy, it is implied, is a religious woman in 1880. She might not have been in favour of divorce, even were it legally possible. But nobody asks her. Jefferson Hope doesn’t ask whether she’d rather run away with him and live in sin than endure life married to a man who killed her father. It’s not even stated in the text that he presumes to know what her preference would be.

He’s just told that she’s married and he walks away. It’s presented absolutely without comment or question. And it’s made me angrier than anything I’ve read in a long time!

While I wouldn’t say that this detracted from the merits of A Study in Scarlet, it certainly has distracted me from the rest of the story. This review probably isn’t a very useful one if you want to know whether you should read the book: but that’s not really what this blog is about. This blog is about recording my experience of the books I read and, this time, my experience of A Study in Scarlet has been profoundly shaped by my distaste for a character I formerly sympathised with.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

^{Next in the series: The Sign of Four.}