The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1892

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“A Scandal in Bohemia”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“A Scandal in Bohemia” Summary

The story opens with Dr. John Watson musing on the fact that Sherlock Holmes refers to Irene Adler as the woman, indicating his high regard for her. He then proceeds to retell the story of how Adler bested the consulting detective, earning his respect.

After Watson’s marriage, he and Holmes no longer spend much time together. One evening in March 1888, while returning home from a patient, the doctor decides to visit his friend, as they have not talked for quite some time. Holmes is happy to see Watson, and while they converse, the detective brings up his newest case. A letter received earlier in the day announced the impending visit of a client who wishes to remain incognito. Holmes has already deduced that the mysterious person is Bohemian. Watson (the narrator) says, “A man entered who could hardly have been less than six feet six inches in height, with the chest and limbs of a Hercules. His dress was rich with a richness which would, in England, be looked upon as akin to bad taste” (11).

He is wearing a mask and offers a fake name, but the detective guesses him to be the hereditary king of Bohemia. The man reveals that five years prior he had an affair with the beautiful Irene Adler, a now-retired opera singer, and she possesses a compromising photograph of the two of them and threatens to send it to the king’s fiancée, a Scandinavian princess. Holmes has a file on her, which reveals that she was born in 1858 in New Jersey and that she is currently in London. The king attempted to retrieve the photograph multiple times, but Adler is not only beautiful, but also intelligent, and she has hidden it extremely well. The king has come to Holmes as a last resort.

The consulting detective agrees to help. Disguising himself, Watson says, as a “drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes” (16), Holmes discovers that Adler has just married a lawyer. The detective is afraid the newlyweds might leave for a honeymoon. He decides to act quickly to discover the whereabouts of the photograph. Disguising himself as a minister, he acts out an altercation in front of Adler’s house just as she is about to go in. Holmes pretends to be wounded and is carried in. At that moment, Watson throws a smoking packet through the window and begins shouting “fire.” Adler is startled and her first instinct is to retrieve the photograph from a recess behind a sliding panel. Holmes then shouts that it is a false alarm and quickly leaves. He meets up with Watson on the street and confides in him that he plans on returning early the following morning with the king to retrieve the compromising document. As the two men are about to part ways, a young man wishes Holmes a good night.

By the time the men return the following morning to extract the picture, Adler is gone. In the hidden compartment, she left a picture of herself and a note explaining she was able to see through Holmes’s disguise. Dressing as a man, she eavesdropped on his conversation with Watson outside her house. However, she no longer wants to ruin the king and promises to use the photograph strictly as insurance. Sherlock is impressed with Adler’s cleverness and keeps her picture for himself.

“A Scandal in Bohemia” Analysis

This is the first story in the collection, picking up where the two earlier Sherlock Holmes works left off. As a result, the text starts in media res, assuming readers are already familiar with the detective and his friend. Watson also alludes to other cases, presumably to peak readers’ curiosity and make them look up the stories, as well as to create a sense of continuity between the various texts in the Holmes canon.

While a largely typical detective story, “A Scandal in Bohemia” subverts some of the stereotypes associated with the genre. Most prominently, while the “crime” is solved by the discovery of the hiding place, there is no resolution at the end. Also, the identity of the criminal, Irene Adler, is known from the very beginning. This story introduces the reader to Holmes’s penchant for disguises, which is the key element in solving the case. He employs similar methods in later stories, although this is the only one in which his disguise results in discovering the needed information.

One unusual element in the story is that while Watson narrates the events, adding his musings and conclusions, most of the details are revealed by Holmes to Watson after the fact. This device adds an element of emotional distance but does not impact the sense of suspense.

This story is key for later adaptations, as it features one of the few, if not the only, strong positive female character in the Holmes canon. She successfully resists the attempts of two powerful men to control her and even outsmarts Holmes. The detective’s reaction to meeting his match is positive, rather than negative, adding a sense of sportsmanship to his character. Few people can keep up with him, and finding one such individual in Adler delights Holmes, breaking up the monotony of his life—the one thing he cannot bear. It also seems that Holmes’s gender bias is the result of the societal expectations placed on women that limit their education, rather than a belief in men’s innate superiority. His later dismissal of women, such as Mary Sutherland and Mary the banker’s niece, probably stems from his assumption that they are governed by emotions over rational thought and common sense. Adler might have given up on her goals after falling in love, but she is rational enough to keep the photograph as a safeguard. This shows calculation and forethought, missing in the banker’s niece’s actions, for example.

The introduction of foreign royalty adds an element of the exotic and sensationalist. It would be difficult to publish a story containing salacious elements about the British monarchy, but the king of Bohemia was a safe character to implicate in indiscretion. He is depicted as both ostentatious and presumptuous, taking for granted his superiority over Adler just because of his social status. However, the story also demonstrates that, regardless of their station, most people are intellectually inferior to Holmes and, by extension, to Adler.