VICTORIAN DETECTIVES IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE Beyond Sherlock Holmes Edited by Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko Victorian Detectives in Contemporary Culture Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko Editor Victorian Detectives in Contemporary Culture Beyond Sherlock Holmes Editor Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko Institute of English Studies University of Warsaw Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland ISBN 978-3-319-69310-1 ISBN 978-3-319-69311-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69311-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959110 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. 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Cover illustration: Pattern adapted from an Indian cotton print produced in the 19th century Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland P reface Numerous scholars and critics have analysed the Great Detective in vari- ous contexts, and recent edited collections demonstrate his continuous cultural significance—Sam Naidu’s Sherlock Holmes in Context (2017), Nadine Farghaly’s Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes (2015), Lynette Porter’s Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century (2012), or Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse’s Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom (2012)—but aca- demics have not forgotten about the presence of other Victorian sleuths. In contrast to the main body of current Victorian detective criticism, which tends to concentrate on Conan Doyle’s creation and only uses other detectives as a backdrop, the texts gathered in this volume examine various contemporary ways of (re)presenting real and fictional detectives that originated in or are otherwise associated with that era. “Beyond Sherlock Holmes: An Introduction” provides an overview of the continued yet changing presence and appeal of the figure of the Victorian detective. Justyna Jajszczok discusses Tony Jordan’s mashup TV series (2015–2016) in the chapter entitled “Inspector Bucket: A Dickensian Detective”. Appearing in sixteen out of twenty episodes, he is a much more prominent character than Dickens’s and it is his investigation of the murder of Jacob Marley that constitutes the major story arc. Jajszczok presents Jordan’s series as fanfiction and juxtaposes the literary and screen detectives. One of the questions she asks is whether the traits exhibited by the Inspector that might be perceived as contemporary were present already in the literary original. v vi PREFACE Jacek Mydla examines “Sergeant Cuff and Spectacles of Detective Intrusion in The Moonstone and Its Adaptations”: a play by Wilkie Collins himself (1877), and a play by Robert Kauzlaric (2011); Robert Bierman’s film (1997); and the latest mini-series (2016). Like his real-life prototype in the Road Hill House murder case, Whicher, Collins’s Cuff is discussed dealing with class and gender issues, within the public and the private sphere. Dorota Babilas analyses “Edmund Reid and the Representation of the Middle Class in Ripper Street.” Presented as part of a crime-solving team at East London H Division police station, Reid is teamed with a working- class sergeant, Bennet Drake, and an American forensic surgeon, Captain Homer Jackson. Juxtaposing the historic Reid with his screen reimagining and the sidekicks, the chapter addresses the question as to what extent this character is a neo-Victorian invention and/or a depiction of the Victorian middle-class worldview. Brigitta Hudácskó discusses “The Case of the Two Gregsons: From A Study in Scarlet to Elementary,” and her chapter analyses the American TV series that brought Gregson, not Lestrade, into the spotlight and pre- sented him simply as a good cop. Captain Tommy Gregson not only com- bines the Holmesian vision and method and everyday police work, but may also be interpreted as Sherlock’s father-figure. Apart from analysing their interpersonal relationships, Hudácskó places the Captain in the con- text of police procedural and contemporary social commentary. Robert Perret, in the chapter entitled “Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist,” presents a detective who seems in need of a more detailed introduction. That is why he begins by describing the key elements of a Flaxman Low story, and then moves on to interpreting the occult detec- tive’s appeal to the Victorians and to contemporary audiences in the con- text of various supernatural TV series. He also reads Barbara Roden’s story entitled “The Things That Shall Come Upon Them” (2008) as, in his words, “a subversive Sherlockian pastiche offering Low as an avatar for the Victorian detectives lost in Holmes’s gaslit shadow.” Barbara Braid analyses three neo-Victorian crime novels in the chapter entitled “A Psychiatrist as a Detective: Laszlo Kreizler, Stratham Younger, and Max Liebermann.” She reads Caleb Carr’s The Alienist (1994), Frank Tallis’s Mortal Mischief (2005), and Jed Rubenfeld’s The Interpretation of Murder (2006) as expressions of contemporary anxieties with a certain degree of anachronism apparent in the depiction of psychiatry, but also in the characterisation of the detectives and the detective process itself. PREFAC E vii The chapters should offer consumers of modern Victoriana a critical framework that will not only heighten the pleasure they derive from read- ing and/or watching the modern tales of (neo-)Victorian characters, but also potentially broaden and deepen their interest in the period. Such a collection allows for a critical reassessment of both the detectives’ impor- tance to Victorian literature and culture and provides a better basis for understanding the reasons behind their contemporary returns, reimagin- ings and recreations, contributing to the creation of a base for further cultural and critical works dealing with reworkings of the Victorian era. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my Reader No. 1 for his patience and support. c ontents 1 Beyond Sherlock Holmes: An Introduction 1 Lucyna Krawczyk-Żywko 2 Inspector Bucket: A Dickensian Detective 13 Justyna Jajszczok 3 Sergeant Cuff and Spectacles of Detective Intrusion in The Moonstone and Its Adaptations 27 Jacek Mydla 4 Edmund Reid and the Representation of the Middle Class in Ripper Street 43 Dorota Babilas 5 The Case of the Two Gregsons: From A Study in Scarlet to Elementary 57 Brigitta Hudácskó ix x CONTENTS 6 Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist 77 Robert Perret 7 A Psychiatrist as a Detective: Laszlo Kreizler, Stratham Younger, and Max Liebermann 91 Barbara Braid Index 113 n c otes on ontributors Dorota Babilas works as Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her academic interests include Victorian, Gothic, and Film Studies. She is the author of, among others, a PhD on the literary status of The Phantom of the Opera and a mono- graphic book on the cultural afterlife of Queen Victoria (Warsaw 2012). Barbara Braid is Assistant Lecturer at the English Institute at Szczecin University, Poland. She has co-edited two volumes entitled Unity in Diversity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2013, 2014) and published a number of essays in the fields of neo-Victorian literature, Gothic fiction and gender studies. During 2010–2015 she was Conference Leader for the Femininities & Masculinities Global Project at Interdisciplinary.Net. She is currently working on a monograph on the motifs of female insanity in selected Victorian and neo-Victorian novels. Brigitta Hudácskó is Junior Lecturer at the Department of British Studies at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. Her main research inter- est concerns recent television adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories. Among her recent publications is a chapter about Hungarian translations of Agatha Christie’s work in The Ageless Agatha Christie: Essays on the Mysteries and the Legacy (ed. J. C. Bernthal, McFarland, 2016). Justyna  Jajszczok is Teaching Assistant at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Her research interests include nineteenth-century life sciences and Victorian detective fiction. She has co-edited four collections of essays on the cryptic xi