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]

People definitely hate on Watson (possibly because Holmes actually likes him, canonically? IDK). You can see it in the steadily declining portrayal of him in media. I haven't been able to read the Mary Russel Holmes books because of the author's raging hatred of Watson, in point of fact.

[lilacsigil]

I *could* believe Watson taking those viewpoints (after all, they're still sadly popular viewpoints and were even more so then) but the author would have to work for it, and have reasons other than "Because Watson is a bit of a thickie."