Sherlock holmes gay

In my previous post about Sherlock Holmes I mentioned how passionate I am about this topic.

The words “earnest” and “languid”, applied to Holmes, also had homosexual connotations.” Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s brother, used to spend time at the Diogenes Club. Watson has collapsed into his chair in a dead faint, therefore we have to imagine him lying with his head lolling back. If she were seventeen at the time of her father’s disappearance she must be seven-and-twenty now,–a sweet age, when youth has lost its self-consciousness and become a little sobered by experience.

Part 1 will be all about homosexuality in the Victorian era, while part 2 will be an analysis of the homoerotic subtext in the stories.

Before I begin, for the sake of clarity and to avoid common misconceptions, Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson were not old men when they first met. Apart from Oscar Wilde who was constantly called a bohemian, Watson also uses that word for Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia:

“[…] while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings at Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition.”

Another way to identify homosexual men was being clean-shaven.

Watson faints. Motion pictures took up the pursuit of Holmes’s personal life and sexual tastes in more than a few films, such as The Seven Percent Solution (1976) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) (which takes the view that Holmes might be straight, though at one point in the film he does “pretend” to be gay in order to escape from a woman who wants to bed him).

It is not until Sherlock Holmes (2009), with Robert Downey, Jr.

and Jude Law, that the idea of Holmes and Watson being gay makes it into the mainstream consciousness. He rushes over to his friend and loosens his collar (as Watson notes when he comes round), which is again common sense. I had asked him whether anything was stirring, and for answer he had shot his long, thin, nervous arm out of the sheets which enveloped him and had drawn an envelope from the inside pocket of the coat which hung beside him.”

Another thing I’ve found worth mentioning is that, according to Robb’s book, “in 1894, “queer” had already acquired its modern sense.

We know from Watson’s own accounts that he is a man of ill health following his experiences in Afghanistan. of Florida, 2004) makes an interesting circumstantial case for Doyle's Holmes as an aesthete of ambiguous sexuality, then later as a more "masculine" and unemotional character. Some examples include My Dearest Holmes, A Murmuring of Bees, and Kissing Sherlock Holmes (a list of gay pastiches is available on goodreads)

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes includes a plot in which Holmes pretends to be in a relationship with Watson to avoid a ballerina who wants to have a child with him.

Sherlock Holmes and Oscar Wilde have quite a few things in common, both in appearance and personality. I hope you enjoyed it.

*Illustrations by Sidney Paget.

This article is about Holmes/Watson the romantic ship. It’s like received wisdom: everyone sniggers and says they’re a couple, ergo they must be.

Brandy has long been used medicinally, and was noted for the speed with which it revives people who have fainted. "Victorian husbands" is also sometimes used, and applies to the ship in the Victorian era like granada, book canon, etc. Holmes was bending over my chair, his flask in his hand.

Seems innocuous, right?

He’s no cripple and he’s not on the breadline – he manages admirably once he is married, purchasing a little practice and devoting himself to it.