Quote 13
"What a woman – oh, what a woman!" cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. "Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?"
"From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty," said Holmes coldly. "I am sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty's business to a more successful conclusion" (Scandal.3.31-32).
Here, Holmes is making a little play on "level": on the one hand, he could be referring to Irene Adler's social rank, which is, of course, much lower than the King of Bohemia's. But the coldness of his speech and the emphatic "indeed" in the middle of his sentence suggests that he's using "level" to mean her value as a person – which is much greater than the King of Bohemia's. So Holmes seems to be implying that social status will always take a back seat to other ways of evaluating people. But then, why is Irene Adler so much better than the King of Bohemia? Is it simply that she's smarter than he is? More daring than he is? What standards does Holmes use to judge people? What is most important to him of those different values?
Quote 14
"When you see a man with whiskers of that cut and the 'Pink 'un' protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw him by a bet," said [Holmes]. "I daresay that if I had put £100 down in front of him, that man would not have given me such complete information as was drawn from him by the idea that he was doing me on a wager" (Carbuncle.147).
Holmes may be willing to interact with you regardless of social class, but that doesn't mean he won't judge you according to your background. Here, he manages to dupe a poultry seller into giving him information by using assumptions about the man's habits based solely on his appearance. We have to admit, scenes like this shake us out of the stories a little bit because, in today's world, we're trained not to profile people based on physical signs of class, race, or gender. As a reader of Holmes, how do you deal with the cultural differences between his time and now? Do these moments stick out to you, or are they just a part of Holmes's overall, self-contained fictional world?
Quote 15
I assure you, Watson, without affectation, that the status of my client is a matter of less moment to me than the interest of his case (Bachelor.6-12).
Holmes is a man of the people! Well, insofar as he's pretty much outside of society as a whole, so he doesn't have to let things like social status get to him. When we say Holmes is outside of society, we mean that he doesn't fit wholly into any of the social categories that are so important to these stories. First, he's a man, but he doesn't want to get married. Second, he's a professional, though one who's working for pleasure rather than for money (it would appear). Also, he's totally made up his job. He's the world's first private detective, he claims. And thirdly, the guy's educated, but primarily in the things that matter to him most: soil types and rare poisons and the like. Holmes is unique, and so it makes sense that he doesn't much care about other people's placement in a social order he doesn't really belong to. At the same time, Holmes is a product of his time, and making judgments based on class, race, and gender seem pretty unproblematic to him.