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Watson was a woman?
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| Title: | Watson was a Woman? |
| Creator: | Rex Stout |
| Date(s): | March 1, 1941 |
| Medium: | Speech, Print |
| Fandom: | Sherlock Holmes |
| Topic: | John Watson |
| External Links: | PDF, archive link HTML, archive link |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Watson was a Woman? was a speech given by Rex Stout at a Baker Street Irregulars meeting that was later published in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol 23, No. 19 (the March 1, 1941 issue). It was a rather tongue-in-cheek piece that posits that Watson must really be a woman because of their very close relationship with Holmes.
Some Topics Discussed
- Watson speaking of Holmes like "a wife would of a husband"
- Watson fainting when Holmes returned from the dead
- Watson caring for Holmes when he is ill or in one of his black moods
- Watson trying to get Holmes off of cocaine
Excerpts
I was indescribably shocked. How had so patent a clue escaped so many millions of readers through the years? That was, that could only be, a woman speaking of a man. Read it over. The true authentic speech of a wife telling of her husband's-- but wait. I was not indulging in idle speculation, but seeking evidence to establish a fact. It was unquestionably a woman speaking of a man, yes, but whether a wife of a husband, or a mistress of a lover, . . . I admit I blushed. I blushed for Sherlock Holmes, and I closed the book. But the fire of curiosity was raging in me, and soon I opened again to the same page, and there in the second paragraph I saw:
The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, and when I confess how much this man stimulated my curiosity, and how often I endeavored to break through the reticence which he showed on all that concerned himself.
You bet she did. She would. Poor Holmes! She doesn't even bother to employ one of the stock euphemisms such as, "I wanted to understand him better," or, "I wanted to share things with him." She proclaims it with brutal directness, "I endeavored to break through the reticence." I shuddered and for the first time in my life felt that Sherlock Holmes was not a god, but human--human by his suffering. Also, from that one page I regarded the question of the Watson person's sex as settled for good. Indubitably she was female, but wife for mistress? I went on.
And we have been expected to believe that a man wrote those things! The frank and unconcerned admission that she fainted at the sight of Holmes after an absence! "I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals"--the oldest uxorial cliché in the world; Aeschylus used it; no doubt cave-men gnashed their teeth at it! And the familiarpathetic plaint, "As an institution I was like the old black pipe!" Yes, uxorial, for surely she was wife. And the old black pipe itself provides us with a clincher on that point.
For a last-ditch skeptic there is more evidence, much more. The efforts to break Holmes of the cocaine habit, mentioned in various places in the Sacred Writings, display a typical reformist wife in action, especially the final gloating over her success. A more complicated, but no less conclusive, piece of evidence is the strange, the astounding recital of Holmes's famous disappearance, in "The Final Problem," and the reasons given therefor in a later tale, "The Adventure of the Empty House." It is incredible that this monstrous deception was not long ago exposed.