Sherlock Holmes is a household name today. With adaptation after adaptation conjured around England's famous sociopathic detective, he remains one of the most celebrated and coveted characters to date.
And then (thanks to writer Jack Thorne and director Harry Bradbeer,) someone came riding a bicycle down the hill, declaring that “my mother named me Enola, which backward spells alone,” in that zestful persona that we have seen only in the Stranger Things fame, Millie Bobby Brown. The mother who named her Enola, the mother of the three charismatic characters— Mycroft, Sherlock, and Enola Holmes—is Eudoria Holmes, played by the enigmatic Helena Bonham Carter.
To begin with, the movie is star-studded with some of the greatest actors today - Henry Cavill playing Sherlock and Sam Claflin playing Mycroft. This Netflix original does what Netflix has been doing for a long time - bash stereotypes. The movie can be read deeply into feministic lines as well as the historical context.
But let's start where the movie starts - with Enola riding her bicycle down the hill. Although she and her mother have been inseparable, on her 16th birthday, she wakes up to find that her mother has abandoned her. This disappearance brings her brothers back to the house they haven’t returned to in a very long time.
Mycroft
Mycroft is a personification of the power-wielding conservative bigot. He is the oldest son and an important figure in the government. He finds it disdainful that his sister is a “wild thing”. “We need to break her and build her up,” he later says to Mrs Harrison, an educator for young girls, as though Enola is not a person. On reaching the house, he picks up a book in Eudoria’s room and scoffs at the title: The Subjection of Women. The message is clear, Mycroft Holmes is not a feminist ally. “Perhaps she was mad, or senile,” he continues about his mother. He is a conformist who wants to impose unjust conventions on his sister for personal as well as political reasons. To him, the best and only way forward for Enola is to be a bride: “Even your blessed mother was a bride,” he tells her. He also hopes that the reformation bill doesn’t get passed, “Reform. God help us. If there’s one thing this country doesn’t need, it’s more uneducated voters,” he says.
Sherlock
Sherlock, the world-renowned sociopath has no feelings and it’s no news. Mycroft accuses him of never having “shown an interest in the family.” Though Sherlock was initially indifferent to Enola, he finds himself being impressed by her intelligence. During the reformation period of the Victorian era, where does Sherlock find himself? In conversation with Edith (Susie Wokoma), an acquaintance of Eudoria, a fellow suffragette and a tea-shop owner, we get the answer. To him, his mother’s disappearance and the suffragettes’ actions are a “mischief”. Because, as Edith explains, “you don’t know what it is to be without power.” She continues to say that politics doesn’t interest him not because it is boring, but because he has no interest in changing a world that suits him so well. Sherlock Holmes is the privileged man with power, who couldn’t care less about the less-privileged.
Eudoria
Eudoria Holmes is the fearless feminist, who has been procuring funds from Mycroft to fund the suffragettes and other feminist movements. She had been demanding funds for a non-existent bathroom, a water closet, “constantly rising salaries of the footmen, the housemaids, the kitchen maids, gardeners, under gardeners, and for Enola, a music teacher, a dance instructor, a governess…” Eudoria had been preparing herself and her daughter to change the world. She had also been making and meddling in ammunition, as she later says, “you have to make some noise if you want to be heard”.
The suffragette movement of the late 19 century and the early 20th century had turned violent. The suffragettes were forced to make noise to get people to listen. ‘Deeds Not Words’ had been their slogan and they resorted to bombing, breaking, and going on hunger strikes, in an attempt to be heard.
Helena Bonham Carter had also appeared as a suffragette in the 2015 movie, Suffragette, where she played the real-life suffragette of Edith New.
Enola
Enola is the witty young girl, who hasn’t yet been exposed to the labels of society, whose mother didn’t teach her to “speak as we tell you to, act, think, be as we tell you to, and you’ll become acceptable wives and responsible mothers.” On the other hand, “I was taught to watch and listen. I was taught to fight.” Enola is the strong and fearless ‘young lady’ who can take care of herself in dingy street corners and dismal alleyways.
Her mother taught her two things, that she has since then taken to heart: “there are two paths you can take, Enola. Yours or the path others choose for you” and “our future is always up to us.” In the end, she is sufficient enough to stand on her own feet and emerges beating Sherlock at the game he knows best.
Suffrage
It is quite simple to place the setting of the period-movie. We hear Queen Victoria mentioned and talks around the reformation bill is incessant throughout the movie. England had to go through a series of reforms before the universal adult franchise - that is, before every adult was given the right to vote. Initially, votes were not a right of everyone, but a privilege only given to the high class. It was later that it became inclusive of the middle-class and then, the lower class and finally, women. While Enola steps off the wagon, London before her eyes is a stark contrast to the one in her imagination. It should be noted that the men on the streets are lined, shouting, “Vote for all men!” This gives an insight into the political context of the third reformation period in 1884.
Although historically, suffrage for women came later on, Eudoria, being the progressive woman that she is, had already begun the fight for it. Towards the end of the movie, (spoiler alert), she tells Enola, “I left for you because I couldn’t bear to have this world be your future. So, I had to fight.”
Further, when Enola discovers the godown with explosives inside it, she comes across a flyer that says: Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage. The three women listed as speakers, Amie Hicks, Gwyneth Vaughan, and Margaret McMillan are the names of real-life suffragettes. The colour purple on the ribbon on Enola’s birthday presents as well as on the lock of the godown holds a historical significance as it was the colour associated with the suffragettes.
Feminism
Her mother didn’t bring Enola up to conform. She didn’t make her daughter squish her body to fit inside “the corset: a symbol of repression to those who are forced to wear it.” When Miss Harrison (Fiona Shaw) takes her measurements to make her dresses that “will allow you to fit into society, to take part in its numerous pleasures to catch an eye, to attract”, she remarks on Enola’s physique, “Well that’s too small” (regarding her chest) and “Oh, how disappointing (regarding her hips)”. Enola retorts by saying, “Hips are simply a function of legs, aren’t they? What need do they have for amplification?”
Patriarchy was prevalent under the Victorian era, it forced women into a corset so tight that women were “imprisoned in those preposterous clothes.”
The movie is based on the first of a series of books by Nancy Springer. Tewkesbury (Louis Patridge), Enola’s acquaintance in the movie comes off as “feminine” and Enola is the brave, courageous character (gender traits typically attributed to male characters), who can (because she has been taught to,) sharp her knife on a stone, defend herself as well as engage in combat, even with men. We see the reversal of roles; we see characters emerging out of centuries of social conditioning.
The patriarchal society of England at the time also didn’t deem women fit to hold property. Women didn’t inherit properties from their fathers generally (it went to the male heir), and even if they did, it would immediately be absorbed by the husband in marriage. In the event of the husband’s demise, the property went to the eldest son. Remember Enola eavesdropping on Mycroft saying, “This is my house, not hers and has been since father died. She asked for 16 years to bring up Enola here. I gave it. And for that, I deserve to be robbed? I am not the villain here.” (Oh, well.)
The essays that Enola declares her mother has made her read include Mary Wollstonecraft’s. Mary Wollstonecraft was a prominent writer, philosopher and an advocate of women’s rights, to have lived in the 18th century.
Ending explained (major spoiler)
There is a slight perplexity in digesting how someone could kill their son and grandson because “the future of the country is at stake” from the reform bill. However, the Victorian society was convinced that England would perish if the lower class or if women were given the right to vote.
What’s ironic is that Queen Victoria, being a woman herself, had been quoted saying that if women were to “‘unsex’ themselves by claiming equality with men they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.”
