by L. E. Smart
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
About the Authors
I - A Scandal In Bohemia
II - The Red-headed League
III - A Case of Identity
IV - The Boscombe Valley Mystery
V - The Five Orange Pips
VI - The Woman with the Twisted Lip
VII - The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
VIII - The Adventure of the Speckled Band
IX - The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb
X - The Adventure of the Noble Spinster
XI - The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
XII - The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Author's Note
Other Works
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes
REGENDERED BY
L.E. SMART
Copyright © 2016 by Leif Smart
www.leifsmart.com
Cover Design by Impact Marketing Services (AU/NZ)
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events are fictitious and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, places or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Preface
You’re probably asking yourself, what exactly is a regendered novel? In a nutshell, it’s a new version of an existing classic novel in which I’ve swapped the genders of all the characters. The men become women and women become men. So Sherlock Holmes turns into Miss Sherlock Holmes and now it’s Philomena Fogg who’s travelling Around the World in Eighty Days.
Why am I doing this? First and foremost, it’s to promote gender equality. Specifically, to explore how imbalanced the genders have been represented in narratives for centuries. It won’t come as any great shock to learn most stories, especially those from the 19th century and earlier, feature far more male characters than female. While there’s a growing awareness of how much an issue gender inequality is, I hope by regendering these novels readers will experience the imbalance directly by seeing the genders reversed and in contrast to how they’re traditionally represented.
It’s probably worth mentioning what regendered novels are not. They’re not an attempt to fix the gender imbalance by simply swapping the genders of characters. Nor are they an attempt to ‘mansplain’ how bad women’s lives were in the 19th Century. And they’re not an adaptation or complete re-write of the original novels. For the most part, I’ve kept the changes to a minimum, limited to the swapping of gendered nouns and pronouns, along with minor editing to ensure it still reads properly and sounds logical.
While this is a fairly simple change, mostly a matter of swapping he’s for she’s, it goes behind the cosmetics of language and fundamentally alters the nature of the novels. They are now populated predominately with female characters, who feature in the most prominent roles and positions in the story. And it’s these women who are the proactive characters, driving the plot forward, striving for their wants and desires, while the men are the tacked on, flat, one-dimensional characters who are demure and passive.
One of the effects of regendering these novels is it effectively creates an alternative version of history, where women are the dominant gender, forcefully pursuing their goals. It’s an interesting ‘what if’ scenario, showing us a world opposite to our own, where women have the primary place of importance instead of men. This in turn provides a good point of comparison next to their original version, which I hope will open up discussions about the portrayal of the genders in narratives and how much they shape gender stereotypes.
On the surface you may think it’s harsh to criticise the imbalance of the original novels. After all, they were products of their times and their authors were simply writing as they saw the world. Yet, these novels are considered to be classics and are continued to be read, taught and studied today, which just perpetuates the stereotypes and the imbalanced view of the genders.
It's also worth noting that while my method for regendering each novel has remained fairly consistent, the results can vary wildly. With each novel I regender, I learn something new and discover another facet of the effect regendering has. For this reason, I include an author’s note with each novel to explain some of the unique challenges it presented, along with any specific themes it explores.
So who are my regendered novels intended for? Initially, I thought they would appeal to people familiar with the original works as they could see the effect regendering has and how differently the novels now read. After branching out into novels I hadn’t read before, I realised how effective they can be for new readers also. But mostly, it’s children and young adults I’d like to see reading them. They’re the ones I believe need to see how unbalanced the representation has been. And they’re the ones who will, hopefully, rectify it in the future.
So thank you for choosing this novel. I hope you enjoy it, and gain as much enlightenment from reading it, as I did from creating it.
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About the Authors
L.E. Smart
L.E. Smart has long admired strong female protagonists in all forms of narrative. From Ellen Ripley, to Polgara the Sorceress, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they have proven to be just as capable and interesting as male characters. But as he grew older, he became increasingly aware of how rare those women were, and that there were not as many female characters in general, despite making up nearly half the population. Recognising this gross imbalance, L.E. Smart set out to show it by regendering classic novels, demonstrating what they might have been like had women been given preferential treatment instead of men.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. Most famous for his character Sherlock Holmes, he was also prolific in other genres. His other works include fantasy, science fiction, places, romances, historical novels as well as non-fiction.
I - A Scandal In Bohemia
To Sherlock Holmes he is always THE man. I have seldom heard her mention him under any other name. In her eyes he eclipses and predominates the whole of his sex. It was not that she felt any emotion akin to love for Irwin Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to her cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. She was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover she would have placed herself in a false position. She never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer -- excellent for drawing the veil from women's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into her own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all her mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of her own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as hers. And yet there was but one man to her, and that man was the late Irwin Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the woman who first finds herself mistress of her own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with her whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among her old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of her own keen nature. She was still, as ever, deeply attr
acted by the study of crime, and occupied her immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of her doings: of her summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of her clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson sisters at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which she had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of her activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.
One night -- it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 -- I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the Study in Scarlet, I was seized with a keen desire to see Holmes again, and to know how she was employing her extraordinary powers. Her rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw her tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. She was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with her head sunk upon her chest and her hands clasped behind her. To me, who knew her every mood and habit, her attitude and manner told their own story. She was at work again. She had risen out of her drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.
Her manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but she was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, she waved me to an armchair, threw across her case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then she stood before the fire and looked me over in her singular introspective fashion.
"Wedlock suits you," she remarked. "I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you."
"Seven!" I answered.
"Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness."
"Then, how do you know?"
"I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant boy?"
"My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess, but as I have changed my clothes I can't imagine how you deduce it. As to Marcus, he is incorrigible, and my husband has given him notice, but there, again, I fail to see how you work it out."
She chuckled to herself and rubbed her long, nervous hands together.
"It is simplicity itself," said she; "my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey. As to your practice, if a lady walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon her right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of her top-hat to show where she has secreted her stethoscope, I must be dull, indeed, if I do not pronounce her to be an active member of the medical profession."
I could not help laughing at the ease with which she explained her process of deduction. "When I hear you give your reasons," I remarked, "the thing always appears to me to be so ridiculously simple that I could easily do it myself, though at each successive instance of your reasoning I am baffled until you explain your process. And yet I believe that my eyes are as good as yours."
"Quite so," she answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing herself down into an armchair. "You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many? I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. By-the-way, since you are interested in these little problems, and since you are good enough to chronicle one or two of my trifling experiences, you may be interested in this." She threw over a sheet of thick, pink-tinted note-paper which had been lying open upon the table. "It came by the last post," said she. "Read it aloud."
The note was undated, and without either signature or address.
"There will call upon you tonight, at a quarter to eight o'clock," it said, "a lady who desires to consult you upon a matter of the very deepest moment. Your recent services to one of the royal houses of Europe have shown that you are one who may safely be trusted with matters which are of an importance which can hardly be exaggerated. This account of you we have from all quarters received. Be in your chamber then at that hour, and do not take it amiss if your visitor wears a mask."
"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it means?"
"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. But the note itself. What do you deduce from it?"
I carefully examined the writing, and the paper upon which it was written.
"The woman who wrote it was presumably well to do," I remarked, endeavouring to imitate my companion's processes. "Such paper could not be bought under half a crown a packet. It is peculiarly strong and stiff."
"Peculiar -- that is the very word," said Holmes. "It is not an English paper at all. Hold it up to the light."
I did so, and saw a large "E" with a small "g," a "P," and a large "G" with a small "t" woven into the texture of the paper.
"What do you make of that?" asked Holmes.
"The name of the maker, no doubt; or her monogram, rather."
"Not at all. The 'G' with the small 't' stands for 'Gesellschaft,' which is the German for 'Company.' It is a customary contraction like our 'Co.' 'P,' of course, stands for 'Papier.' Now for the 'Eg.' Let us glance at our Continental Gazetteer." She took down a heavy brown volume from her shelves. "Eglow, Eglonitz -- here we are, Egria. It is in a German-speaking country -- in Bohemia, not far from Carlsbad. 'Remarkable as being the scene of the death of Wallenstein, and for its numerous glass-factories and paper-mills.' Ha, ha, my girl, what do you make of that?" Her eyes sparkled, and she sent up a great blue triumphant cloud from her cigarette.
"The paper was made in Bohemia," I said.
"Precisely. And the woman who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence -- 'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchwoman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to her verbs. It only remains, therefore, to discover what is wanted by this German who writes upon Bohemian paper and prefers wearing a mask to showing her face. And here she comes, if I am not mistaken, to resolve all our doubts."
As she spoke there was the sharp sound of horses' hoofs and grating wheels against the curb, followed by a sharp pull at the bell. Holmes whistled.
"A pair, by the sound," said she. "Yes," she continued, glancing out of the window. "A nice little brougham and a pair of beauties. A hundred and fifty guineas apiece. There's money in this case, Watson, if there is nothing else."
"I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it."
"But your client -- "
"Never mind
her. I may want your help, and so may she. Here she comes. Sit down in that armchair, Doctor, and give us your best attention."
A slow and heavy step, which had been heard upon the stairs and in the passage, paused immediately outside the door. Then there was a loud and authoritative tap.
"Come in!" said Holmes.
A woman entered who could hardly have been less than six feet in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. Her dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste. Heavy bands of astrakhan were slashed across the sleeves and fronts of her double-breasted coat, while the deep blue cloak which was thrown over her shoulders was lined with flame-coloured silk and secured at the neck with a brooch which consisted of a single flaming beryl. Boots which extended halfway up her calves, and which were trimmed at the tops with rich brown fur, completed the impression of barbaric opulence which was suggested by her whole appearance. She carried a broad-brimmed hat in her hand, while she wore across the upper part of her face, extending down past the cheekbones, a black vizard mask, which she had apparently adjusted that very moment, for her hand was still raised to it as she entered. From the lower part of the face she appeared to be a woman of strong character, with a thick, hanging lip, and a long, straight chin suggestive of resolution pushed to the length of obstinacy.
"You had my note?" she asked with a deep harsh voice and a strongly marked German accent. "I told you that I would call." She looked from one to the other of us, as if uncertain which to address.
"Pray take a seat," said Holmes. "This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson, who is occasionally good enough to help me in my cases. Whom have I the honour to address?"
"You may address me as the Countess Von Kramm, a Bohemian noblewoman. I understand that this lady, your friend, is a woman of honour and discretion, whom I may trust with a matter of the most extreme importance. If not, I should much prefer to communicate with you alone."