Sherlocks, Strengths, and Feelings

Among the many reasons I find myself fascinated by modern adaptations of Sherlock Holmes is the way they always implicitly address one of the themes that speaks to me: the relationship between expressing emotions and strength.

Most Sherlock Holmes characters swear by the Great Detective’s lived maxim that (paraphrased) emotion is but grit gumming up the logical machinery of the brain. Feelings, in their view, prevent one from seeing the truth and acting appropriately. In most Holmes’s stories, the truth is strength and power. Holmes’s unique ability to ferret out the truth is (supposedly*) what makes him a formidable foe for criminals, not his physical strength (though he does possess that).

But what Holmes (and the storytellers who shape his narrative) seems to define as emotion is strictly gendered. Holmes is allowed to display the emotions that Western culture deems appropriate for men and boys: anger, confidence, determination, ambition, humour, curiosity, boredom, discontent. These don’t seem to “count” as feelings. We don’t often see Holmes policing them the same way we see his 21st-century counterparts deliberately hold back from expressing emotions like love or sadness.

(In the interest of fairness: yes, we do sometimes see Holmes police them in others, such as telling Watson that his/her righteous anger is preventing perception of the truth. And we do sometimes see Holmes attribute his own minor errors to, for example, overconfidence–but we don’t see Holmes try to eliminate confidence as a result. He often identifies the problem as excess [“masculine” emotion] instead of pinpointing the cause to be the emotion as a whole. And when he talks about “emotions” or “feelings,” he doesn’t use these ones as examples.)

The gendered idea that expressing emotions is vulnerability and suppressing emotions is strength, is, of course, nothing new. Plenty of people of all genders suffer from the expectations of toxic masculinity, which condemns those who express the emotions typically labelled as weak, like sadness, compassion, affection, fear, and pain.

Which is why it’s all the more frustrating when a Sherlock-Holmes character’s story leans into the idea without irony. When Dr. House diagnoses and cures a patient by ignoring considerations of empathy or respect, the narrative suggests that his lack of “weaker” emotion is what makes him able to succeed where other doctors fail. When Sherlock’s affection for Watson causes him to slip up instead of spurring him to greater lengths; when his lack of displayed empathy for victims of crime** is presented as a mark of genius rather than overlooking potential evidence; or when falling in love jeopardizes his judgement rather than gifting him with clarity, the story underscores rather than resists this portrayal of emotions.

But in real life, Sherlock’s emotional repression seems to me to be more of a weakness than the emotions he’s repressing. In a physical fight, we protect the parts of us that are easiest to hurt badly; for instance, we put our hands up to guard our face and neck. Likewise, Sherlock Holmes characters–and people in general–pretend their emotions don’t exist especially when they find those emotions too difficult to cope with.

Worse, hiding those emotions minimizes any chance that we might learn how to cope with them–you can’t strategize about or address something you’re pretending isn’t there.

I was listening to the episode of Sound Exploder with artist and performer Janelle Monáe in which she talks about her song “So Afraid” from Dirty Computer. In the podcast, she discusses how the song expresses her anxieties and how she confronts them — lots of interesting stuff, and I recommend you check it out. What struck me most, though, was her discussion of emotional vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. The way she put it was vivid: vulnerability is power, and so is showing that vulnerability.

And of course, I agree. Sure, you can pull a Holmes-esque and gamble on nothing ever coming up that makes your feelings burst their dam and drown you. You can be unhappy and uncomfortable and repressed all the time, and that can communicate to those around you that you’re scared of your feelings–that they are your biggest weakness.

Or, you can show the world where it can hurt you because acknowledging and airing these emotions is the first and best step to taking their power for yourself.

And I criticize Holmeses and Holmes-wannabes with love, because lord knows I’m still working on being comfortable facing and expressing my own emotions. I’ve come a long way, but I’ve still got a long way left to go, and that’s okay.

I love watching characters on the slow journey from repression and fearing emotions as weakness to acceptance and understanding emotions as strength. I love writing about it too. So, despite the end of Elementary, I’m probably not done with Sherlock Holmes yet–not by a long shot!

* Most modern Holmeses retain the wealth and white-dudeness of the original, so, uh, yeah, some of their “power” comes from embedded social structures completely outside their control. For example, breaking the law in pursuit of the truth isn’t as devastating for them as it could be for someone who couldn’t afford a lawyer, couldn’t assume that juries would see them as a person, or couldn’t afford to pay the fine/lose their job/etc.

** More of a modern interpretation than strict canon from Doyle’s stories, interestingly enough.