The Red-Headed League | Sherlock Holmes' Victorian Archetype
In the following essay, Iseminger explains how the character of Sherlock Holmes epitomizes the British Victorian man in terms of attitude, behavior, and beliefs.
The typical nineteenth-century Englishman of the upper or middle classes considered himself a citizen of the greatest nation in the world. The foremost beneficiary of the industrial revolution, he shared with Lord Macaulay an unshakable belief in progress and took material prosperity in stride. He took it for granted that enterprise and invention would produce more and more convenience and abundance. He was a Thomas Gradgrind, a man of realities, a man of facts and calculations. He may have been aware of his rights under the constitution, but he emphasized more the duty of which Charles...
[The entire page is 2139 words long]
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