Q: It was that simple?
A: It was that complex. I felt that any deeper psychological exploration of this character still had to adhere to Doyle’s story, both literally and in regard to the author’s own feeling toward the character. That’s how I ended up having to explain that operatic impossibility, a contralto prima donna. It’s been great fun justifying Doyle’s error by finding operatic roles Irene could conceivably sing. My Irene Adler is as intelligent, self-sufficient, and serious about her professional and personal integrity as Sherlock Holmes, and far too independent to be anyone s mistress but her own. She also moonlights as an inquiry agent while building her performing career. In many ways they are flip sides of the same coin: her profession, music, is his hobby. His profession, detection, is her secondary career. Her adventures intertwine with Holmes’s, but she is definitely her own woman in these novels.
Q: How did Doyle feel toward the character of Irene Adler?
A: I believe that Holmes and Watson expressed two sides of Dr. Doyle: Watson the medical and scientific man, also the staunch upholder of British convention; Holmes the creative and bohemian writer, fascinated by the criminal and the bizarre. Doyle wrote classic stories of horror and science fiction as well as hefty historical novels set in the age of chivalry. His mixed feelings of attraction and fear toward a liberated, artistic woman like Irene Adler led him “kill” her as soon as he created her. Watson states she is dead at the beginning of the story that introduces her. Irene was literally too hot for Doyle as well as Holmes to handle. She also debuted (and exited) in the first Holmes/Watson story Doyle ever wrote. Perhaps Doyle wanted to establish an unattainable woman to excuse Holmes remaining a bachelor and aloof from matters of the heart. What he did was to create a fascinatingly unrealized character for generations of readers.
Q: Do your protagonists represent a split personality as well?
A: Yes, one even more sociologically interesting than the Holmes/Watson split because it embodies the evolving roles of women in the late nineteenth century. As a larger-than-life heroine, Irene is “up to anything.” Her biographer, Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh, however, is the very model of traditional Victorian womanhood. Together they provide a seriocomic point-counterpoint on women’s restricted roles then and now. Narrator Nell is the character who “grows” most during the series as the unconventional Irene forces her to see herself and her times in a broader perspective. This is something women writers have been doing in the past two decades: revisiting classic literary terrains and bringing the sketchy women characters into full-bodied prominence.
Q: What of “the husband,” Godfrey Norton?
A: In my novels, Irene’s husband, Godfrey Norton, is more than the “tall, dark, and dashing barrister” Doyle gave her. I made him the son of a woman wronged by England’s then female-punitive divorce law, so he is a “supporting” character in every sense of the word. These novels are that rare bird in literature: female “buddy” books. Godfrey fulfills the useful, decorative, and faithful role so often played by women and wives in fiction and real fife. Sherlockians anxious to unite Adler and Holmes have tried to oust Godfrey. William S. Baring-Gould even depicted him as a wife-beater in order to promote a later assignation with Holmes that produced Nero Wolfe! That is such an unbelievable violation of a strong female character’s psychology. That scenario would make Irene Adler a two-time loser in her choice of men and a masochist to boot. My protagonist is a world away from that notion and a wonderful vehicle for subtle but sharp feminist comment.
Q: Did you give her any attributes not found in the Doyle story?
A: I gave her one of Holmes’ bad habits. She smokes “little cigars.” Smoking was an act of rebellion for women then, and because Doyle shows her sometimes donning male dress to go unhampered into public places. I also gave her “a wicked little revolver” to carry. When Doyle put her in male disguise at the end of his story, I doubt he was thinking of the modem psychosexual ramifications of cross-dressing.
Q: Essentially, you have changed Irene Adler from an ornamental woman to a working woman.
A: My Irene is more a rival than a romantic interest for Holmes, yes. She is not a logical detective in the same mold as he, but is as gifted in her intuitive way. Nor is her opera singing a convenient profession for a beauty of the day, but a passionate vocation that was taken from her by the King of Bohemia’s autocratic attitude toward women, forcing her to occupy herself with detection. Although Doyle’s Irene is beautiful, well dressed, and clever, my Irene demands that she be taken seriously despite these feminine attributes.
I like to write “against” conventions that are no longer true, or were never true. This is the thread that runs through all my fiction: my dissatisfaction with the portrayal of women in literary and popular fiction then and even now. This begins with Amberleigh—my postfeminist mainstream version of the Gothic revival popular novels of the 1960s and 1970s—and continues with Irene Adler today. I’m interested in women as survivors. Men also interest me of necessity, men strong enough to escape cultural blinders to become equal partners to strong women.
Q: How do you research these books?
A: From a lifetime of reading English literature and a theatrical background that educated me on the clothing, culture, customs, and speech of various historical periods. I was reading Oscar Wilde plays when I was eight years old. My mother’s book club meant that I cut my teeth on Eliot, Balzac, Kipling, Poe, poetry, Greek mythology, Hawthorne, the Brontës, Dumas, and Dickens. Then I went to school and met a thousand other authors.
In doing research, I have a fortunate facility of using every nugget I find, or of finding that every little fascinating nugget works itself into the story. Perhaps that’s because journalists must be ingenious in using every fact available to make a story as complete and accurate as possible under deadline conditions. Often the smallest mustard seed of research swells into an entire tree of plot. The corpse on the dining-room table of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, was too macabre to resist and spurred the entire plot of the second Adler novel, The Adventuress (formerly Good Morning, Irene). Stoker rescued a drowning man from the Thames and carried him home for revival efforts, but it was too late.
Besides using my own extensive library on this period, I’ve borrowed from my local library all sorts of arcane books they don’t even know they have because no one ever checks them out. The Internet aids greatly with the specific fact. I’ve also visited London and Paris to research the books, a great hardship, but worth it. I also must visit Las Vegas periodically for my contemporary-set Midnight Louie mystery series. No sacrifice is too great.
Q: You’ve written fantasy and science fiction novels, why did you turn to mystery?
A. All novels are fantasy and all novels are mystery in the largest sense. Although mystery was often an element in my early novels, when I evolved the Irene Adler idea, I considered it simply a novel. Good Night, Mr. Holmes was almost on the shelves before I realized it would be “categorized” as a mystery. So Irene is utterly a product of my mind and times, not of the marketplace, though I always believed that the concept was timely and necessary.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bunson, Matthew E. Encyclopedia Sherlockiana. New York, NY; MacMillan, 1994.
Coleman, Elizabeth Ann. The Opulent Era. New York, NY: The Brooklyn Museum, 1989.
Gold, Arthur and Fizdale, Robert. The Divine Sarah. New York, NY: Knopf, 1991.
Hibbert, Christopher. The Royal Victorians. New York, NY: Lippincott, 1976.
National Gallery of Australia. Paris in the Late 19th Century. Publications Department, National Gallery of Australia: Canberra, Australia, 1996.
Russell, John. Paris. New York, NY: Abradale Press/ Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1983
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
www.carolenelsondouglas.com
Carole Nelson Douglas is the award-winning author of 60 novels in the mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy and romance/women’s fiction genres. She currently wri
tes the long-running Midnight Louie, feline PI, cozy-noir mystery series (Catnap, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday etc.) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasy series (Dancing with Werewolves) set in imaginative variations of Las Vegas: contemporary and paranormally post-apocalyptic.
Carole was the first author to make a Sherlockian female character, Irene Adler, a series protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. She has won Lifetime Achievement Awards from RT Book Reviews for Mystery, Suspense and Versatility and was named a Pioneer of Publishing. She’s also won several Cat Writers’ Association first-place Muse Medallions. Carole has e-published (www.wishlist.com) shorter fiction.
A daily newspaper reporter, feature writer and editor in St. Paul, she moved to Fort Worth to write fiction fulltime and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
ALSO BY CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS
“Her fine Sherlockian novels and her Midnight Louie books have turned her into a genuine mystery star. Pick one up and you'll see why.”—Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene magazine
The New York Times Notable IRENE ADLER Series
Good Night, Mr. Holmes... The Adventuress... A Soul of Steel... Another Scandal in Bohemia... Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge (Jack the Ripper duology)... Femme Fatale...Spider Dance
The MIDNIGHT LOUIE Feline PI series
Catnap... Pussyfoot... Cat on a Blue Monday... Cat in a Crimson Haze... Cat in a Diamond Dazzle... Cat with an Emerald Eye... Cat in a Flamingo Fedora... Cat in a Golden Garland... Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt... Cat in an Indigo Mood... Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit... Cat in a Kiwi Con... Cat in a Leopard Spot... Cat in a Midnight Choir... Cat in a Neon Nightmare... Cat in an Orange Twist... Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit... Cat in a Quicksilver Caper... Cat in a Red Hot Rage... Cat in a Topaz Tango... Cat in a Sapphire Slipper... Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme... Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta... Cat in a White Tie and Tails... Cat in an Alien X-Ray
The DELILAH STREET, Paranormal Investigator series
Dancing with Werewolves... Brimstone Kiss... Vampire Sunrise... Silver Zombie... Virtual Virgin
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CAST OF CONTINUING CHARACTERS
PRELUDE
CODA
READERS GUIDE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 46