SOURCE: Jann, Rosemary. “‘Cherchez la femme.’” In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Detecting Social Order, pp. 103-26. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995.

In the following essay, Jann analyzes the Victorian perception that female sexuality was dangerous and delineates Arthur Conan Doyle's treatment of women's sexuality and transgressive behavior in his novels.

In the end, it all boils down to sex and money; these, in varying mixtures, are the chief motivators of crime in the Holmes canon, as in detective fiction in general. I have chosen my chapter title, French for “seek the woman,” to focus attention on assumptions about the problematic nature of female sexuality in such texts. The fact that this phrase has long outlived its source, Alexandre Dumas's detective novel The Mohicans of Paris (1854-55), and entered into common parlance suggests the extent to which our society still assumes that women are somehow more directly responsible for...