poor Watson

[kindkit]

I've been reading some professionally published Holmes pastiche short fiction, and it seems to me that Watson is rather frequently made a scapegoat for Victorian values. Has anyone else noticed this?

Watson is more conventional than Holmes in some ways (not in all--it's Holmes, not Watson, who's been known to scoff at the idea of intelligent women), but he's not a prig. Certainly I find it very unlikely that he would fulminate against birth control and insist that if the poor can't afford more children they must learn to practice abstinence, which is what he does in the story I'm currently reading.

Comments

[starlady]

I actually never finished the first book, but I remember very clearly that what I did read made me convinced that King hated him (I may possibly have read the ending, though). Mostly because the portrayal of him seemed to be that he was pretty thick. Which is definitely not canonical Watson.

[kindkit]

I think I may have read the first King book before I had read much of the actual Holmes canon, though I was aware enough of it (I think I'd seen a little of the Granada series) to want Holmes and Watson to be a couple. So at the time I was more disappointed by lack of gay than by the characterization of Watson, because I didn't have much basis for comparison.