The Progress of Sherlock Holmes by Ivy Blossom

The characters gave readers the impression that, as one of the interviewees shared, “you could go out, go anywhere, do anything and make a difference” (Hoffman, 2009). In 2009, The New York Times reported that Nancy Drew and her blue roadster represented freedom, boldness, and intelligence for many female public figures who grew up in the era before the second feminist wave. By embodying the contemporary treatment of knowledge and power as ephemerally shared commodities, the super-sleuth does not let the viewer into the game to the same degree as the girl sleuth does, providing a less empowering experience for its intended audience.

Accordingly, the super-sleuth schema is the product of media discourses of empowerment and hyper-textual practices that often forgo the integration of body, mind and context found in mystery and detective stories. However, in popular media culture, the synchronous models of empowerment are often replaced by transient models, which are characterized by hyper-transgressions, the objectification of knowledge and cognition, and the affective engagement of viewers. As a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, the Enola Holmes story transforms the central schema in the great detective script by depicting the neo-Victorian girl sleuth’s transgression into the public sphere and the attainment of the feminine ideal of girl power.

Relying on cognitive criticism, the analysis focuses on the conceptual properties of mystery and detective narratives as well as the strategies of detection employed by the girl sleuth to distinguish between the synchronous/inclusive models of empowerment found in children’s mysteries and the transient/exclusive ones in super-sleuth action-adventure adaptations.

This article compares the “girl sleuth” narrative in Nancy Springer’s The Case of the Missing Marquess (2006) and the “super-sleuth” schema in the film adaptation Enola Holmes (2020). Children’s mystery and detective fiction has often reflected cultural and societal changes, introducing the concept of “girl power” as early as the first half of the twentieth century.

The Progress of Sherlock Holmes by Ivy Blossom