51 pages • 1-hour read
The Case of the Missing Marquess
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination.
Women’s Clothing
Throughout the novel, women’s clothing functions as a symbol of female status in Victorian society. It demonstrates both the artificial restrictions placed on women and the secret stratagems they use to circumvent these restrictions, revealing both The Impact of Structural Inequality and The Underestimated Strengths of Women.
Springer’s depiction of clothing for upper-class women in Victorian society emphasizes its confining and painful features. Enola dreads being forced into a corset because she’s acutely aware that sometimes women’s ribs are broken by the steel garments: “I was expected to put on the Ideal Corset […] with frontal and lateral regulators plus, of course, a Patent Dress Improver so that never again would my back be able to rest against that of any chair I sat in” (86). Eudoria, who represents the novel’s progressive feminist ideals, refuses to wear such clothing, preferring the “Rational Dress” of loose gowns and pants underneath her skirts. Eudoria chooses freedom of movement, practicality, and comfort over social approval, refusing to bow to the structures attempting to reinforce her inequality.
Over the course of the story, Enola learns to use stereotypically feminine clothing as a strategic disguise. She first capitulates to fashionable women’s clothing to please Mycroft and allay his suspicions as she plans her escape. When she does escape, she finds her corset invaluable as a place to hide her money and other necessities for her journey. She comments that the “once-despised garment [has] become [her] most precious possession” (180), recognizing how to use it for its benefits without suffering its drawbacks when she adds “so long as I did not actually tighten it!” (180). She borrows a widow’s elaborate clothing so that she can travel without being recognized, and later she dons the clothing of a lower-middle-class working woman to stay in the city undetected. In the novel’s epilogue, she disguises herself in a nun’s habit to walk the streets of East London freely. As a part of her coming-of-age journey, Enola learns how to put on and take off the signifiers of socially acceptable femininity, reaping the benefits of this status without suffering its privations—a feat she’s able to accomplish, in part, because of her economic privilege and social status as an upper-class white woman.
Ciphers and Coded Messages
In The Case of the Missing Marquess, ciphers and other coded messages form a motif that highlights The Underestimated Strengths of Women. The novel suggests that, lacking the ability to speak openly, Victorian women adopt various coded communication strategies that form “a cloak of ladylike conspiracy” (209). Everyday objects like flowers, calling cards, hats, and handkerchiefs are used to send covert messages among women without signifying anything to the men around them. Enola’s understanding of this world of silent communication among women becomes one of her most important assets in her quest to escape her brothers’ control, establish herself as a “perditorian,” and make contact with her missing mother.
The ciphers that Eudoria loves emphasize the importance of covert communication among women. Ciphers provide both Eudoria and Enola an intellectual outlet in a society that discourages women from intellectual pursuits, as well as giving them a way to pass messages without Mycroft and Sherlock’s awareness. Using ciphers, Eudoria is able to direct Enola to the hidden cash Enola will need to fund her escape. Later, Enola uses ciphers to establish that her mother is alive and well and get clues to her whereabouts—all without Sherlock’s notice. This use of ciphers is explicitly tied to Enola’s and Eudoria’s gender when they incorporate the hidden meanings of flowers and the growth patterns of ivy into their messages to one another—a strategy that Enola thinks will defeat even the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, because of his constant dismissal of the world of women.
Enola’s Bicycle
Enola’s bicycle symbolizes the independence and freedom of her childhood. Springer suggests that just as Eudoria gives Enola the bicycle and teaches her how to ride it, Eudoria’s parenting style is a gift to Enola that teaches her how to be independent and strong, and build a life on her own terms. Young women of Enola’s era were not encouraged to ride bicycles. Because it was uncommon, those who wanted to ride despite their confining clothing often had to adopt the strategy of wearing pants underneath their skirts. Enola, however, is allowed to simply wear pants. She comes and goes as she pleases on her bicycle, without a chaperone, in keeping with Eudoria’s modern, feminist approach to parenting her daughter.
Appropriately, the bicycle itself is a modern one, the latest innovation, not “some old high-wheeled boneshaker,” as Enola proudly notes (15). Enola is so proud of her mastery of this bicycle, in fact, that she explicitly lists it as one of her few real achievements in life. Because the bicycle represents the gift of independence that Eudoria’s parenting has given Enola, it is the bicycle that becomes her means of escape from Mycroft’s old-fashioned, male control. However, because it is also a symbol of her childhood, Enola must eventually leave the bicycle behind before she strikes out on the final leg of her journey to London, underscoring the coming-of-age nature of her arc. Eudoria’s gift has taken Enola as far as it can, and from here Enola must start to create her own, more adult form of independence.
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