The Taming of 'Color and Life': The Figuration of the City and Outlying Regions in Conan Doyle's Detective Fiction

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the ideological conditions of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes fiction. My overall view is that Conan Doyle's detective fiction is an extension of his literary goal to restore ‘the golden myth of England’, an imaginary ground for social unity and totality that stands opposed to the conflicting, non-unifying realities of late Victorian society. The important task of this essay is then to show how this ideological purpose directly informs the making of the detective narrative. However, this ideological formation of the genre proceeds not without some difficulties; it is often the case that troubling signs of social realitysay, the 'unknowableness' of the urban masses including those who can be seen as the national Other (immigrants, ethnic minority, etc.)seeps into the writer's escapist social vision, causing what can be seen as structural or generic instability in the narrative. This phenomenon of textual disturbance can be first sensed most suggestively in the waning of representational certainty in dealing with the urban everyday in his earlier stories. In their later counterparts, this representational crisis leads to the narrative's gradual shift of its dominant setting from the city of London to outlying suburban regions and the countryside. My view is that this locational shift lends itself to effective narrative strategies in coping with such conflicting social elements. Attention is also given to the way this narrative management implicitly addresses issues concerning British identity such as race and public health.