Scandal in Bohemia, Gender Roles

In "A Scandal in Bohemia," by Arthur Conan Doyle, society places women at an inferior level pushing them to the background therefore never allowing us, the reader, to know them, except for Irene Adler who shows the gender shift of the time period by becoming the main character in Sherlock Holmes investigation and the story. "A Scandal in Bohemia" speaks about the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his adventure in retrieving a damaging photograph for a king from his ex-mistress. In the society Watson describes, the role of women is of little to no importance except for emphasis that focused on the Kings mistress Irene Adler.
In this society, women were the nurtures and the protectors of the children …show more content…

She is the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet. “These few instances prove how much gender roles were changing in this time period along with how major the role Irene Adler played in the reveal of how much woman’s roles in society was and are changing. (Krumm)

Society placed women at an inferior level pushing them to the background therefore never allowing us, the reader, to know them, except for Irene Adler whose character exemplified the massive shifts that were occurring in gender roles during this period of time. Without Irene Adler becoming the main character and revealing all that she did, the story would never have had the in depth meaning that it provided about the gender shift of the time period. “The story’s portrayal of an infinitely unstable and chaotic world with constant fluctuations, shifts, decentering’s and reversals of the original order, is an encapsulating illustration of the fears plaguing the last decades of the nineteenth century. But, while for a brief time the world is turned upside down by a woman, the ultimate male world order is finally restored, but for only a period of time.” (Krumm)

Work Cited
Krumm, Pascale. "A Scandal In Bohemia" And Sherlock Holmes's Ultimate Mystery Solved." English Literature In Transition, 1880-1920 39.2 (1996): 193-203. Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Oct.