51 pages • 1-hour read
The Case of the Missing Marquess
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, emotional abuse, and child abuse.
The Impact of Structural Inequality
Enola’s coming-of-age arc emphasizes her transition as she leaves her sheltered, non-traditional childhood and enters a society governed by prescribed gender norms, class expectations, and structural inequality. Enola is a smart, capable young woman who has been raised in an isolated, bucolic setting and taught by her mother to believe she should have the right to dress and act as she chooses, just as any man might. When her mother disappears, her sheltered environment shatters as her older brothers arrive, determined to impose on her the traditional gender norms of society. As Sherlock surveys the state of their mother’s private rooms, he notes that their untidiness “‘could mean that she left impulsively and in haste, or it could reflect the innate untidiness of a woman’s mind,’ interrupted Sherlock. ‘Of what use is reason when it comes to the dealings of a woman?’” (43). The entrenched misogyny in Mycroft and Sherlock’s views of women forces Enola to confront the disconnect between the way she’s been raised and the restrictive expectations placed on her gender by society, which robs women of agency to reify the power of men.
The circumstances that necessitate Eudoria’s carefully planned disappearance foreground the gender inequality embedded in Victorian law. When Eudoria’s husband dies, her home, her wealth, and her estate pass into her eldest son’s control rather than her own. This gender-based structural inequity creates a rift between her and her sons that leaves them estranged for over a decade. Although hurt by her mother’s decision to leave, Enola’s own confrontation with her brother’s discriminatory views reframes her understanding of her childhood and her mother. She notes that—unlike Mycroft and Sherlock—her purpose in trying to find Eudoria is not “in order to take away her freedom” (204), demonstrating her belief that Eudoria has a right to determine the course of her own life.
While Springer’s novel centers on upper-class characters, their privilege casts the structural inequality of Victorian society that disenfranchises the marginalized into sharp relief. When Enola does get to London, she confronts a form of structural inequality that, in the more bucolic context of Ferndell, she had allowed to pass unnoticed. East London, where the city’s poor live, is filthy, crowded, and plagued with rats. Enola finds the streets full of disreputable men, hungry children, and unhoused women trying to earn a few coins to stave off starvation. These conditions horrify Enola, bringing her face-to-face with her privilege for the first time. While she faces gender-based discrimination, she has the means (money left for her by her mother) and the status as an upper-class white woman to remake her life on her own terms. Enola reflects that “Two days in London [have] made [her] aware […] of much that [she] did not know before” (191). Enola responds to the suffering and inequity that she sees around her with empathy and resolves to make a difference in the lives of impoverished East Enders. In the novel’s epilogue, she puts this resolution into action, spending her nights distributing aid to the people oppressed by the prevailing economic system from which she herself benefits.
The Tension Between Independence and Obligation
Over and over, characters in the story find their personal desires and ambitions in conflict with their obligations to family. Eudoria, Sherlock, Mycroft, Tewksbury, and Enola are all torn between fulfilling their duties to family and their own visions for their lives. The novel does not argue that either family or personal ambition must always come first—only that obligations to self and family are often in conflict and that a choice in favor of one comes at the expense of the other.
Sherlock and Mycroft spend 10 years distancing themselves from their family obligations. Uncomfortable with the tension between their vision of family and Eudoria’s, they elect to simply stay away in London, neglecting their duty to their mother and much-younger sister while they pursue their personal ambitions as a detective and a government official. This choice costs both of them their relationship with their mother and estranges them from their young sister, whom Eudoria raises with values that conflict with her sons’ understanding of the world and their place in it. The challenges both Mycroft and Sherlock experience when they attempt to reestablish a relationship with Enola after their mother’s disappearance threaten the reputations they’ve built for themselves professionally, reinforcing the tension between their obligation to care for Enola and the independent lives to which they believe they are entitled. Their attempts to assert their authority and autonomy over Enola prompt her to flee their control, setting the plot in motion.
The young Viscount Tewksbury ultimately decides that loyalty to family must trump personal independence. He initially chooses to flee his home when his family legacy and his mother’s expectations conflict with his dreams for a life of his own. He cuts off his long curls and shreds his fancy, childish clothing, symbolically ridding himself of the identity his family has chosen for him. Once he has succeeded in getting himself away to London, however, he realizes what his independent dream of becoming a sailor will cost him: His family offers comfort and security not to be found in the rough-and-tumble world of the London docks, and his continued absence from home exposes his family to exploitation. His love for his family and the comforts they can offer him win out, and he returns home to Basilwether, leaving his dreams of the sea behind.
By contrast, both Eudoria and Enola confront the tension between their own desires and their family obligations and decide that, whatever the cost, they must pursue their independence. Both feel confined by familial expectations and decide to strike out on their own, severing ties to family. Despite their decisiveness and courage, both continue to feel the pull of their affection for and obligations to their family throughout the series, suggesting that such tension is difficult to resolve. Eudoria’s attempts to retain contact with Enola despite the ways it could endanger both of their hard-won independence reinforces the pain she feels at being separated from her daughter. The cipher she leaves Enola that allows them to communicate acts as a symbol of their connection. Despite her hurt and confusion, Enola views the handmade cipher as proof of her mother’s love: “Obviously she had been at work on this gift for some time. She did not lack thought for me, I told myself. Firmly. Several times throughout the evening” (7). Eudoria’s response to Enola’s coded messages in the women’s periodicals at the end of the story validates Enola’s faith in her mother and strengthens her determination to follow her example.
Even though both Mycroft and Sherlock have treated her poorly, Enola continues to hope for a relationship with her brothers, dreaming that someday she can manage to have both her independence and her family. Even as she begins to build an independent life for herself in London, Enola reflects: “I also very much regretted not having been able to spend more time with my brother Sherlock […] to look at him, listen to him, admire him. I actually missed him, with yearning in my heart” (204). Although later stories in the series begin to resolve these tensions and repair relationships between the members of the Holmes family, The Case of the Missing Marquess ends with this dream unfulfilled, its characters still torn between family expectations and personal agency.
The Underestimated Strengths of Women
An important part of Enola’s coming of age is her recognition that she has been seriously underestimated because of her gender. Early in the story, she reflects on all that her brothers have achieved in their lives, counting up her own “accomplishments,” and finding the list “dismal” (30). She feels that she is capable of little beyond basic reading, math, and poking around in the countryside looking for bird nests. Sherlock and Mycroft’s arrival initially reinforces this view of herself. The two brothers express over and over the prevailing Victorian ideas that women are weak, irrational, and have an “innate untidiness” of mind (43). The story suggests, however, that the outer appearance of passivity, naivete, and weakness Victorian society encourages in women is simply a performance that masks the intelligence and willpower these women possess.
Enola’s successful flight from their control, her solution to the mystery of what has happened to Viscount Tewksbury, her rescue of both herself and Tewksbury from Cutter, and her eventual construction of an independent life in London work together to demonstrate the ways her brothers and society at large have underestimated her. Springer highlights that Enola alone intuits where the young Viscount is while London detectives remain at a loss. Enola asserts, “I knew where Lord Tewksbury might be. I just knew, although I did not know how to prove it” (114). As the novel progresses, Enola continues to prove more capable than most of the novel’s male characters and has much to offer the world around her, endorsing the idea that she should be free to do so, according to whatever plan she devises for her own life.
Springer uses the motif of codes and the symbolism of clothing to emphasize the sharp intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity of the women in the novel. Unable to speak their thoughts freely and confined by rigid expectations of their behavior, Victorian women use coded languages to communicate with one another and to express their inner truths. Enola claims that there is “an entire world of communications belonging to women, secret codes of hat brims and rebellion, handkerchiefs and subterfuge, feather fans and covert defiance […]” (208). She herself employs the language of flowers book left to her by her mother to understand Eudoria’s hidden messages, and Eudoria’s ciphers play a pivotal role in aiding Enola’s escape from Ferndell.
The novel explores the ways that Enola learns to utilize the restrictive devices of her society, transforming them into tools of resistance that facilitate her freedom and agency. Enola initially finds women’s clothing confining and pointless, but later in the story, she begins to see how the performance of stereotypical femininity can be a useful disguise for her hidden strengths. Her widow’s weeds allow her to travel unnoticed when the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, is looking for her. Her corset allows her to carry hidden money and other necessities and to keep them safe from the predatory Cutter. Her performance of the conservative femininity expected by Victorian society allows Enola to hide herself and her resources in plain sight—her outer conformity makes her strengths invisible to the world around her.
Enola’s character arc centers the idea that women have hidden reserves of strength and intelligence unappreciated by the men around them. As Enola tests her own abilities and achieves success, she begins to identify the ways she’s been underestimated. She enjoys the idea that she will be clever enough to hide in London, “beneath [her] brothers’ noses,” and that they will not be able to catch her—a triumph that will “revise their opinion of [her] cranial capacity” (134). In the novel’s conclusion, Enola realizes that, far from being inferior because of her gender, being a woman actually gives her hidden strengths that even the famous Sherlock Holmes lacks. As a woman, she “[can] go places and accomplish things Sherlock Holmes could never imagine, much less do” (209). Sherlock repeatedly discounts evidence from the world of women—Eudoria’s clothing on the day of her disappearance, for instance—that Enola understands implicitly, allowing her to best him in her investigations.
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