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 the house in the same physical condition he entered it bespeaks to Holmes' relative self-restraint during this cene.
*** 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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