Gothic Villains in Three Sherlock Holmes Stories

Abstract

The classic detective story emerged with the publication of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes narratives in the 1890s, which coincided with the resurgence of the Gothic. By drawing comparisons between Gothic genre conventions and Doyle’s fiction, this paper argues that there are two Gothic plot devices in “The Speckled Band,” “The Creeping Man,” and “The Sussex Vampire”: the illusion of supernatural interference and the villainous father who destroys his family. The apparently unnatural events occur due to the ominous presence of animals as both instruments of wrongdoing and images of racial degeneration. Thus, these Gothic Holmes stories negotiate anxieties about degeneracy and declining paternal authority.