Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess: 1 (Enola Holmes Mystery)

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Dressed as a widow, she runs across Inspector Lestrade, who is working on a case with Sherlock about the disappearance of a young Viscount, Lord Tewkesbury. We are well into the book before she understands the friction between her mother and Mycroft over the question of who would control the estate and the money which came from it. Likewise, Enola’s encounter with Lord Tewksbury at the beginning of her adventure does not constitute a mystery to be solved. Sherlock Holmes’ method is based on the power of seeing, and especially observing (“my eyes tell me”; Doyle, 2016/1892, pp. By altering her appearance and changing the function of the Victorian corset to the point of ridicule, Enola demonstrates the mind’s capacity for conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002; Stephens and Geerts, 2014) or combining different input spaces to produce new structures.

Turning, I took the lead again, and in a few moments, at last we scrambled to firmer footing of cobbles, brick, and mortar. Letting go of his hand and also of my remaining shreds of modesty, I ripped open the buttons of my upper bodice.

The conceptual modelling presented throughout the narrative imparts on the reader the mental and narrative model of the great detective’s sister, who would have done “very well on her own” (Springer, 2020/2006, p. Enola works with Sherlock to uncover the truth behind the death of Flossie Rudcliff, Countess of Dunhench ( née Glover). The process of detection is thus driven by the missing knowledge, or the idea of “not having” (Raskin 2004, p. While the character of Enola in the movie is faithful to the book, showing her as naïve but resourceful, brave and quick-thinking, her relationship with her mother is very different.

While the girl sleuth has been extensively discussed (Billman, 1986; Mason, 1995/1975; Dyer and Romalov, 1995; Zani, 2009; Oppermann, 2018), adaptations and new media have introduced the figure of the girl “super-sleuth,” which requires a new framework for approaching sleuthing and empowerment. In that awful moment I learned that gentlemen, or at least a certain ungentle man, wore unmentionables made of blood-red flannel from wrist to ankle. Nancy Springer’s popular Enola Holmes Mystery Series (2006–2010), a neo-Victorian retelling of the classic Sherlock Holmes mysteries for young readers, showcases containment and transgression of boundaries across historical, ideological, artistic and familial spaces.As a Victorian girl, Enola belongs in the private sphere, which is what helps her decipher the clues. For Montz, the corset is one of the main pieces of clothing for Victorian era stories, as "it is both public and private, masculine and feminine, utilitarian and ornamental, necessary and reviled. cognitive criticism “deals with the means with which various kinds of human knowledge, from factual knowledge to ideology, can be expressed through artistic language. As a result, Enola is encouraged to fight her way through rather than seize the opportunity to create novel structures based on experience and cognitive ingenuity as she did in the exploration of private spaces in the book.

The Sherlock of the book appears more conventional, noting to Mycroft that they need to explain things to Enola in simple terms that she is able to understand, given the limited cranial capacity of her small head. Thus, in the super-sleuth narrative, empowerment is asserted without tangible proof or rational reasoning, otherwise considered to be the essential elements of mystery and detective stories. Enola finds some strange paintings that make her doubt that notion, and goes to find their daughter.The movie as a work of cinematography has gained favourable reviews, whereas the viewership was left divided between the mystery fans who had read the pretexts and those who had not. He doesn't make too many appearances in the book, and it is only near the end that you start to get an idea that his thoughts on his sister’s intelligence and capacity for looking after herself are changing, but it’s not explicit. However, the adaptation of the girl super-sleuth narrative to fit the action-adventure genre raises issues because it changes the models of empowerment.

The film’s wittiness and entertainment quality, stellar cast and competent directing have reached the target audience through the conventions of the action-adventure genre: by objectifying knowledge and filling in cognitive gaps, appealing to emotions rather than intellect, and using contemporary discourses of empowerment as a public, rather than a private endeavour. Having only read the first book, I could be wrong in this assessment – later books in the series may further develop the mother’s story, and thereby incidentally fit more successfully with the expectations created by the opening chapter of this book. For Fritz, this subversion of female fashion as disguises or as secret communication offers "simultaneously a representation of the Victorian period and a contemporary model of girl power". The mystery and detective genre has often covertly addressed radical issues under the guise of popular and light reading, reflecting developments in (children’s) culture by moving beyond the marginalised categories of society and ideology. But how does empowerment manifest itself in light of the transformation of the girl sleuth schema and the narrative conventions of the mystery and detective genre?Here Enola produces a drawing “without conscious memory, without thought, the pencil strokes coming swiftly to hand from some source deep within [her] mind” (p. She is Sherlock Holmes’s considerably younger sister, who is in her estranged brother’s eyes “a girl of minimal cranial capacity” (Springer, 2020/2006, p. The mystery and detective genre has over the past centuries reflected societal, cultural and ideological changes in children’s culture and beyond.