Values Dissonance/Literature: Difference between revisions
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** ''The Three Gables'' opens with a black man in an ugly salmon-colored suit coming in to threaten Holmes. Both Holmes himself and Watson's narration insult him repeatedly, in a manner that would certainly be considered racist today; Holmes repeatedly refers to Steve Dixie's smell and even comments about his 'woolly head'. And it has a Jewish villainness. Way to go, Sir Arthur!
*** In justice to Holmes, the black man in question is a criminal who Holmes wishes to insult. His behavior towards a respectable black person would probably be quite different.
**** Holmes' behavior towards even a less-than-respectable black person who hadn't ''broken into Holmes' house with intent to assault him'' would probably be quite different. The fact that Steve Dixie left
*** Some Holmes scholars suspect that the story (published in 1926, near the end of Doyle's life) was--like several other stories of the period--ghost written.
*** And then, the villainess of this short story delivers this line about a good young Englishman who traveled to Italy:
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