Mary Morstan

Character
Name:	Miss Mary Morstan, (married name, Mrs. Mary Watson)
Occupation:	governess, housewife
Relationships:	John Watson (husband), Captain Morstan (father, deceased), Sherlock Holmes (family friend)
Fandom:	Sherlock Holmes
Other:
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Mary Morstan is a secondary character in the Sherlock Holmes books and appears in several of its adaptations. She becomes the wife of Dr John Watson.

Canon

Mary Morstan (later Mary Watson) is the wife of John Watson. She is generally presumed dead by the events of The Empty House and is sometimes viewed as being Watson's second wife.

She was possibly born in India; her mother died shortly after her birth, and her father was the senior captain of an Indian regiment. She had no other relatives in England, and was sent to boarding school in Edinburgh. When she was seventeen, her father disappeared under strange circumstances. Eleven years later, Sherlock Holmes would solve this mystery, and Watson would write about it, calling it "The Sign of Four." During the events chronicled in this story, Mary and Watson fall in love, and at the conclusion of the case, Mary accepts Watson's proposal of marriage. They get married in 1889.

Mary is blonde, with blue eyes. She is not described as being beautiful, but as having a sweet expression and sympathetic eyes, which hint at her character as a warm and supportive person. In "The Man with the Twisted Lip," Watson writes "Folks who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a lighthouse." Although generally not fond of women, Holmes is quite complimentary towards Mary, particularly her intelligence and potential aptitude for detective work.

In his final note to Watson before vanishing at Reichenbach Falls in 1891, Holmes asks Watson to "give [his] regards to Mrs. Watson." Three years later, upon his return, he expresses his condolences on Watson's recent loss; Watson writes, "In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement."

Other texts

Mary Morstan or Mary Watson appears in various pastiches and screen and other adaptations. Some notable examples include:

Russian/Soviet TV

Portrayed by Yekaterina Zinchenko.

Sherlock Holmes (Granada)

Portrayed by Jenny Seagrove.

Interestingly, although the earlier series of Granada's Sherlock Holmes are almost fanatically canon-compliant, in their version of "The Sign of Four," Watson and Mary do not get engaged at the end of the episode and Mary does not appear in the series again.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Portrayed by Kelly Reilly. Ritchie-verse Mary is still a governess, but not an orphan, as Watson mentions having plans to meet her parents. She was engaged once before, but her previous fiancé died.

Mary apparently met and became engaged to Watson without ever meeting Holmes; her first encounter with Holmes is at a restaurant for a formal dinner, not in his sitting room as a client. Watson apparently hasn't told Holmes much about Mary either, as he deduces that she is a governess.

She is much beloved in slash fandom for making the infamously slashy statement to Holmes, regarding an injured Watson: "I know that you care for him as much as I do."

As Watson's belongings are being moved out of 221b Baker Street, he refers to a trunk full of notebooks dismissively as "scribbles." Mary responds with enthusiasm that they are his adventures and she'd like to read them. This has led to movieverse fanon that Mary is the one who helps edit Watson's stories, bringing them up to a professional level, or just encouraging him to get them published.

At the end of the first movie, Mary is wearing a ridiculously massive diamond ring; she was given the ring by Watson, who was given it by Holmes, who stole it from Irene Adler. The OT3 or even OT4 implications of this chain of re-gifting have not gone unnoticed in fandom. (Watson himself calls it "the ring he's given us.")

Occasionally in post-movie fic, Irene returns to get her diamond back, and then there is femslash.

Sherlock (BBC)

Portrayed by Amanda Abbington. Introduced in the third series premiere "The Empty Hearse", taking place two years after Sherlock's faked death. Mary is a nurse who has been dating John for six months prior to Sherlock's return. Sherlock reveals himself to John just as John is about to propose to Mary. Mary takes a shine to Sherlock and encourages John to go see Sherlock despite his anger.

Sherlock and Mary have a very good relationship in the BBC-verse. She is able to tell when Sherlock is lying, calling him out on it and getting him to admit the truth. Sherlock is incredibly protective of John and Mary's relationship, scaring off her pining ex-boyfriend and doing a great deal to plan their wedding. Sherlock accidentally reveals Mary is pregnant when he makes a vow to protect Mary, John and their baby.

Mary is revealed to be a former CIA assassin with the initials A.G.R.A, taking the name Mary Morstan from a stillborn five years prior to the events of the series. She is being blackmailed by Charles Augustus Magnussen, whom Sherlock is investigating. Sherlock walks in on Mary about to assassinate Magnussen and she non-fatally shoots Sherlock in order to preserve her secret. John is horrified and disgusted by the lies of his pregnant wife, but Sherlock realizes she could have easily killed him and agrees to get Magnussen's documents back for her. John does not talk to Mary for months, but eventually forgives her, saying, "the problems of your past are your business. The problems of your future are my privilege".

Mary is an incredibly polarizing figure in the BBC Sherlock fandom, especially following the revelation of her past and her shooting of Sherlock. Some fans strongly dislike Mary for having come between John and Sherlock, while others believe that her character would have been better without the convoluted backstory, and that she could simply have been a supportive partner to John who liked his "crazy" friend Sherlock. Mary has been cited as a typical example of a "Moffat woman", a reference to Steven Moffat's tendency to make the female protagonists who enter into romantic relationships with his male characters "sexy assassin ninja women".

Sherlock & Co.

Mary Morstan was a character in this podcast's 10 part The Sign of Four story, being involved in both the mystery/adventure storyline and in a subplot about her and Watson developing romantic feelings for each other. However Mary was stabbed by the antagonist in the concluding part of the story and was revealed at the end to have died as a result of complications from her injuries. In this adaptation she is also a nurse and was from New Zealand. She had formerly been a nurse in the army including in Afghanistan. She had also previously been mentioned in the pilot episode when Watson was due to meet her but she stood him up, probably due to her having to deal with a medical emergency. She was played by Acushla-Tara Kupe.

Notably also the podcast's 'Mrs Hudson' character Mariana Ametxazurra also seems to have some traits of Mary, including her name (which is sometimes shortened to 'Mari' in the podcast), and her closeness to Watson.

Pastiches

Mary Watson appears as a main character in two novels by Michelle Birkby, The House at Baker Street (2016) and The Women of Baker Street (2017) in which she investigates mysteries along with Mrs Hudson. She also appeared in a similar role in the short story The Dollmaker of Marigold Walk by Barbara Hambly in the 2003 anthology My Sherlock Holmes (edited by Michael Kurland).

Fandom

The treatment of Mary within the fandom tends to be somewhat divided, as well as varying significantly depending on the specific verse involved. There are many fans who like her as a character and incorporate her in their works at least as a minor character or even sometimes as a major character but there are other fans who tend to view Mary more as 'getting in the way', often of Holmes/Watson. Often in pastiches and fanworks Mary is only referred to as having died and if any real reference to her is made it is largely in relation to her death and Watson's grief over this. Or sometimes Mary is effectively written out completely and it is suggested sometimes even that Watson may have simply made her up to cover up his (illegal in the Victorian era) romantic relationship with Holmes, as in the famous Holmes/Watson fanfic Birds to a Lighthouse for example. Mary will however sometimes appear in a three-way relationship with Watson and Holmes, or sometimes she may be shown as in a lavender marriage with Watson, as in the Watson's Sketchbook series for instance. She may sometimes be shipped with other characters, including some from the canon.

In some fanworks fans will take the canonical reference to Watson's "bereavement" and explain it as referring to something other than Mary's death, such as the death of a baby or child or as a less literal death such as the 'death' of the Watsons' marriage, especially since Mary was never actually canonically truly confirmed to have died and much is open to interpretation. Where it is assumed that Mary did canonically die, since no actual cause of death was given, fanon generally assumes that she died in childbirth, along with her child, although sometimes it is tuberculosis or some other wasting disease. There are some indications in canon that Watson may have married again, but no specific woman is ever mentioned. Another fanon idea is the attempt to explain why Mary seems to refer to her husband not by his actual name, John, but as James in The Man With the Twisted Lip, explaining it sometimes as a pet name for him for example.

Treatments of and reactions to particular pastiche or adaptation incarnations of Mary are also mixed (see BBC Sherlock above for one of the most polarising takes on the character). Reactions to Mary were often positive for Sherlock & Co for instance, with some saying even that this Mary was the best portrayal they had ever seen and many while they were sad about her death still accepting it as a good storyline and portrayal of her. However other fans including some existing fans of the character were deeply disappointed about choices made both about how she was characterised and the decision to kill her off within the same (and sole) story in which she appeared in the podcast and some remarked how killing Mary off reminded them of a common tactic in fanfic to get rid of the canon romance. Sometimes as a direct response to this recurring tendency to kill Mary off in pastiches, adaptations and other fanworks, some fans have gone out of their way to create works where Mary doesn't die, hence the existence of fanfiction with tags such as Mary Morstan Lives on AO3.

Example Fanworks

Fanfiction

• Leaving by Telanu
• Here I am, leaving you clues by Shermanic
• The Progress of Sherlock Holmes by ivyblossom contains an unflattering, but not unsympathetic, portrayal of Mary
• "Oh, hello my dear." John/Sherlock/Mary OT3 meta (friendslocked) by recessional
• Arrangements by radial_symmetry: Holmes and Mary Morstan have a little chat, and reach an agreement.
• Marriage á Trois by Sorrel - Holmes/Mary/Watson OT3, which is also a great character study of Mary.

Example Art Gallery

• 

  Costume Design: Mary Morstan by jack-of-none (2005), inspired by the books

• 

  Mary Morstan Watson by dreamerskeepwriting (2014), this piece inspired by the BBC Sherlock series

External Links and Resources

• Entries tagged Mary Morstan on the sherlockbbc-fic kink meme at pinboard
• Works tagged Mary Watson nee Morstan at The Sherlock Holmes Kink Meme Archive
• Entries tagged character: Mary Morstan on furtherinterest, a community devoted to the female characters of BBC Sherlock
• Works tagged Mary Morstan on AO3