“The Woman”: How Multiple Texts Failed Irene Adler Sarah Navin College

Critical responses to Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” an installment in the Sherlock Holmes series, have been dramatically varied. While some hail it as a work of feminist fiction ahead of its time, others condemn it as one of many examples of Doyle’s inability to write a rounded female character. Irene Adler, who makes her first and only appearance in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” is the subject of the controversy, regarded both as an empowered woman and a product of misogyny. The most striking aspect of Irene’s story in retrospect, however, is how thoroughly riddled it is with missed opportunities. The text itself seems to dance around the possibility of a strong female presence before solidly undermining its own potential. One would expect contemporary adaptations to seize this potential and give Irene the depth and autonomy that she was cheated out of in the original, but unfortunately this has not been the case, especially in the televised BBC series Sherlock. The same flaws that plagued “A Scandal in Bohemia” are present in the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia,” and their new iterations may be even more distressing.

In the original text, the same gesture towards progressiveness is the one that...