Gender and Misogyny Theme Analysis

Though the novel itself may not be misogynistic, it reveals sexist attitudes and practices toward women in both England and America at the time that Doyle was writing. Holmes and Watson, the story’s protagonist and narrator, both casually insult women as being vain and weak, despite lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary from the story’s female characters. For example, when Holmes recounts to Watson the competition between Gregson and Lestrade, he remarks, “They have their knives into one another, too. They are as jealous as a pair of professional beauties [the late 19th century equivalent of socialites or models].” Watson, recounting to the reader Sherlock’s vanity, notes, “I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.” After Holmes realizes that the old woman he was following had escaped him, he exclaims, “We were the old women to be so taken in. It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor.” Though the old woman in disguise was actually a man, Holmes does not seem to consider the possibility that a woman could have been strong or clever enough to escape him. Yet contrary to Holmes’ and Watson’s apparently ingrained beliefs about women, none of the novel’s few female characters seem particularly weak or vain about their appearance, least of all Lucy Ferrier, who is described as both unaware of her beauty and strong enough to manage horses “with all the ease and grace of a true child of the West.”

Most strikingly misogynistic, however, is the novel’s presentation of Mormon marriage practices and of the men’s attitudes toward women. For example, Doyle presents polygamy as an essential part of following the Mormon faith. However, while men were expected to have multiple wives, the women were not allowed to have multiple husbands. Doyle’s fictionalized version of the Mormons’ leader, Brigham Young, further emphasizes this misogyny by describing women and girls as a supply of “heifers” to be distributed among the men. Even more troubling is the narrator’s sensationalized account of rumors of “fresh women” who were brought to “the harems of the Elders” and who “bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror” — suggesting that they were abducted, forced into marriage, and in all likelihood raped. This foreshadows Lucy’s own experience, as Drebber later abducts her and forces her to marry him. Just as the “fresh women” were treated by Mormon men as sexual and reproductive objects, Drebber also sees Lucy as no more than an economic advantage. After Lucy dies, the narrator reveals that Drebber had married her in order to gain control of her father’s property. Such marriages as Lucy’s date as far back as the Middle Ages, when men sometimes raped wealthy young women in order to force them into marriage and thus control their inheritance. Though Drebber’s primary motive is revealed to be primarily economic rather than sexual or reproductive, he still objectifies Lucy by forcing her to submit to his will.

Non-Mormons in the story also exhibit a patriarchal attitude toward women and marriage, though not to the same extremes as Doyle’s Mormons. For example, though Jefferson Hope clearly loves Lucy, he views his marriage to her as a way of “claiming” her. Even Lucy, despite her fortitude as a pioneer woman, has a sense of internalized misogyny and regards the men in her life as her principal authority. When Hope proposes their engagement, Lucy remarks, “Of course, if you and Father have arranged it all, there’s no more to be said.”