The subject of Mary Morstan came up the other night.
Mary's role in the lives of Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson has never been an ideal spot. The abuse she's taken at the hands of creators and Sherlock Holmes fans over time is quite notable, from her early place as a chronological problem to her later place as an impediment to a Holmes/Watson love story. Even in the original stories themselves, where Watson must leave her in order to have an adventure with Sherlock Holmes, and in writing that, Conan Doyle relegated her to off-stage status any way he could, so much that we're not even sure she was Watson's only wife.
But, as I thought about Mary Morstan, that other lady in the lives of Sherlock Holmes came up, Irene Adler. Her abuse by Holmes fans took an entirely different direction from Mary's, yet has been pretty immense. Early on, it was all about somehow nullifying her choice of a husband and her marriage just to get her to hook up with Sherlock somehow. Eventually, she became the epitome of Holmes's regrettable statement "Women are never to be entirely trusted," working for Moriarty and even becoming Moriarty.
Both Mary and Irene tend to be killed off more than any other character in the Sherlock Holmes milieu, outside of those who died in the original stories and have deaths that are just re-adapted. There's a fun podcast called Bonanas for Bonanza out there that comedically reviews old episodes of the TV show Bonanza, and the point they constantly make is how women just don't survive coming into the lives of the Cartwright family, and Mary and Irene seem to make a similar statement about our Baker Street boys. It is definitely a trope from an older, more male-dominated time. Romance must die in service of the non-romance story, even if it's a ship placed there by the fans as with Irene.
Both Mary and Irene have had their own novels, and they get to live as main characters if keeping a decent distance from Holmes and Watson. But getting too close . . . well, except for Kelly Reilly's Mary Morstan, who has lived through two movies and might be a bit nervous about a third . . . getting too involved with Holmes or Watson is just not healthy. Watson's probably-Mary wife at the time of "The Man with the Twisted Lip" was compared to a lighthouse that attracted the grieving like birds. Holmes calls Watson a bird, "the stormy petrel of crime," at one point, and one has to wonder if Watson was not still in grief over a previous doomed wife when he was attracted to her as well. Watson's history in fandom is full of doomed wives, of which Mary is the queen.
Irene Adler, on the other hand, is lucky that Sherlock Holmes shows no interest in women ninety-nine percent of the time. (Maud Bellamy lives!) She doesn't have to die for the Holmes/Watson detective agency to charge on at full speed. (Most of the time.) She's still "the late Irene Adler" in a later reference by Watson, almost as if her creator can't help himself but make sure she's not coming back.
Times have changed, though, and now we're going to get a TV series where Holmes is dead and Watson is going solo, so maybe Mary Morstan will fare better in that show with Sherlock out of the way. Hope springs eternal. And will that show get along for a full seven season run without Irene coming by? It would be nice if she got to have an ongoing life as well. Though if Holmes eventually comes back in CBS's Watson, as he always tends to do when he falls off a waterfall . . .
Well, I hope times really have changed.
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