The Best of Sherlock Holmes

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   gbeatty Teacher
   College - Freshman

   Well, to be honest, mostly he does not do so—because the Victorian detective story didn't really exist as a coherent genre. There were mysteries a plenty, but they were more part of the larger Gothic novel. Works like "The Castle of Otranto" or "Frankenstein" had mysteries in them. Odd things happened, and they needed to be resolved. However, the rules weren't really set. The odd things weren't always crimes that were to be resolved through legal actions, and so the genre…didn't much happen. It's there in Poe (the Dupin stories) and Collins, and traces in Dickens, but otherwise, it didn't much exist.

   
   That said…Holmes fits with the rationalized Gothic. The events are often odd, seemly impossible or supernatural, and he resolves them through reason. He often dips into the underworld and into dark passions.

   Sources:

   http://www.crimeculture.com/Contents/VictorianCrime.html

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   Posted by gbeatty on Monday September 1, 2008 at 12:04 PM
   
   

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