But if we look closely at what attracted him to her, we note some surprising things. First, though Holmes, like all the men around Irene, can’t be immune to her beauty, he is far more taken by the qualities of mind and spirit she displays during his attempt to trick her. She has managed to keep this photograph hidden so well that the king’s agents couldn’t find it when they twice searched her lodgings nor when they waylaid her while she was traveling. So in hiding it she obviously showed considerable imagination. Next, when Holmes tries to frighten her with false fire, she realizes immediately that it must be a trick and that the only person who could have pulled off such a scheme was Mr. Sherlock Holmes, about whom she had been warned. So she also has a large capacity for quick, logical reasoning. Then she disguises herself so that she may follow Holmes and be assured that the wounded parson in her apartment was indeed the dangerous detective. Her remark to him as he enters his building, “Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” is both flirtatious and challenging. None of her plans called for her to take this chance. In fact it’s against her self-interest to give him any inkling that she’s discovered his identity. Holmes might have recognized her, realized she knew of his involvement, and escalated his efforts to retrieve this photo. But sometimes a person’s need for self-expression overrides a narrowly conceived self-interest. Irene’s act announces to Holmes, once he discovers later that it was her voice, that she is just as good at disguises as he is, and just as capable of dramatic gestures.

When we put all these qualities together—imagination, logical thinking, a penchant for disguises and self-revealing dramatic gestures—who do they remind us of? Holmes himself, of course. The woman who for him becomes “the woman” is, in fact, a female version of himself. While most people are attracted by someone who has the qualities they themselves are missing, making a kind of wholeness through their union, Holmes is moved only by a reflection of his own image. This shows an egotism of no mean scope. But, after all, isn’t that larger-than-life quality what we admire in heroes in the first place?

While we’re noticing deeper self-revealing aspects of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” we might note another instance, on page 187: “All emotions, and that one [love] particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position.” Whatever one may think is the purpose of human life, to be a calculating machine, unmoved by love, is surely not it. This avowal therefore cuts two ways: While it is no doubt intended to Holmes’s credit, at the same time it reduces him. Of course, it isn’t strictly true. Holmes shows emotion in many stories. His judgment about people is tempered by a knowledge of human passions and desires that can only come from introspection. You can’t recognize how these feelings work in other people unless you have understood how they work in you. And in one of the late stories, “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs,” when Holmes fears Watson may be mortally wounded, we see an emotional outburst from him that betrays his deep affection, one might even say his love, for Watson, a contradiction of this early shallow assessment. By the end of their nearly forty-year association, Watson had humanized Holmes more than Holmes had made Watson scientific.

After the first twelve stories ran in the Strand, they were collected into a book entitled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It has been in print ever since. With this big success behind him, Conan Doyle felt confident enough as a writer to venture into other areas that interested him more than these trifling detective stories. He wanted to be known for his historical novels, on which he lavished far more preparation and writing time than he did on the Holmes stories.