28 pages • 56 minutes read
Arthur Conan DoyleA Case Of Identity
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1891A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is an incredibly complex character who undergoes several arcs throughout 56 short stories and four novels. “A Case of Identity” presents Holmes in his heyday, before his encounter with the antagonist Professor James Moriarty. Holmes is a bachelor, living alone in a Baker Street apartment, which, until recently, he shared with his friend Watson. Watson’s visit, as well as the arrival of Miss Sutherland to launch him into a new case, excites and “exceedingly” interests Holmes (228). This plot, then, is as much an amusement for Holmes as it is meant to be for the reader.
With every mystery, the most appealing aspect to Holmes is critical thinking. Holmes enjoys puzzles. Conan Doyle based the character on Joseph Bell, a surgeon under whom he studied and whose diagnostic practices began with close observation and analysis. Holmes, rather than utilizing these skills for medicine, is a crime fighter and occasional collaborator with Scotland Yard. In “A Case of Identity,” Holmes displays his analytic ability by asking questions, accumulating evidence, seeking confirmation, and simply sitting quietly in deep thought; in fact, Holmes solves the case without ever leaving his apartment. His independence from traditional law enforcement promotes individualism and intellect over cultural ideology and tradition.
As a vigilante and the first consulting detective of his kind, Holmes is a trailblazer and a nonconformist. His lifestyle is bohemian. In “A Case of Identity,” he is easily distracted—as when Watson returns to find him absorbed in a chemistry experiment—but almost charmingly so. This allows Holmes to inhabit both worlds: those of the criminal and of the general public. By operating on the fringe of society, Holmes invites the kind of cases he expounds upon to Watson at the beginning of the story—bizarre, because he is bizarre.
Dr. John Watson
Earlier in the Sherlock Holmes saga, the reader learns that Watson is a veteran returned from Afghanistan with a war wound and repressed posttraumatic unease. At this point in the canon, he has already joined Holmes on a number of cases, each time displaying eager interest both in Holmes’s inductive methods and in the sheer thrill of fighting crime. Even after marrying Mary Morstan (which, by this story’s setting, has already occurred), Watson consistently returns to Baker Street out of devotion to his friend and, it would seem, to fulfill a more personal need for action and adventure, which arose in him after the war.
Nearly all the Sherlock Holmes stories are told from Watson’s perspective; he is the narrator. A common (but not universal) quality of narrators is their relatability. Watson is like the Victorian reader; not given to much deep study, he is an honest worker, a spouse, and (for the most part) a law-abiding citizen. True enough, Holmes occasionally brings out in Watson the inner wildness and daring that would otherwise remain unexpressed. However, Watson typically remains statically simple throughout the series, functioning for readers as a kind of home base—a point of normativity contrasting against the strange Holmes.
Watson’s role in nearly every story is that of the foil, a character whose nature highlights the opposing qualities in another. In many ways, Watson is the antithesis of Holmes: polite, clean-cut, unanalytical, married (Holmes’s misogyny appears in other stories), and a respectably employed Victorian English citizen. He provides Holmes a sounding board with whom he can voice his private thoughts and speculate about the case at hand—an exchange that also clarifies the plot and heightens suspense. In “A Case of Identity,” Watson showcases Holmes’s superior powers of logic; unlike Holmes, when tested by the appearance of Miss Sutherland, Watson doesn’t discern from her clothing and manner the information that becomes key in solving the mystery.
Mary Sutherland
Holmes’s client and the central figure in the mystery, Mary Sutherland is a victim of cruel parenting and societal neglect. Nevertheless, she rises above her status to seek Holmes’s help. Her admirable traits—her loyalty to the elusive Hosmer Angel, her respectful attitude, her modesty—are meant to secure the reader’s sympathy and interest toward her, but they also work to portray Holmes himself in a positive light, since she is the type of person Holmes benevolently labors to help.
She also fills the role of the “subject” for Holmes’s observational skills. While Windibank abuses her emotions to get at her fortune, Holmes in effect uses her for the amusement of testing their analytic abilities. The reader, too, is invited to study her, attending to the details of her clothing and all the information she shares, for the purpose of joining Holmes in the act of thinking critically.
James Windibank/Hosmer Angel
It is no coincidence that the scoundrel of the story is nicknamed “Angel.” Windibank is a greedy, scheming, abusive stepfather who goes to such lengths as inventing an alter ego to retain Mary Sutherland’s inheritance. The reader is immediately clued into his dubious morals when Miss Sutherland shares that Windibank, shortly after marrying into the family, forced her and her mother to close their old business and commandeered their finances. In most of the Holmes mysteries, Conan Doyle leaves such hints for the vigilant reader to guess at the culprit before the revelation at the end.
In the end, Windibank shows his true nature when he sprints out of the apartment after being threatened (insincerely, it is implied) by Holmes; he is a coward. Unlike the criminal masterminds Holmes occasionally faces, this man is not worth the effort, and Holmes laughs him off as a simple mischief-maker. The darker force behind Windibank’s wickedness is the societal complacency that allows such behavior (abusing a fatherless woman for the sake of her money) without judicial consequence. Though Holmes scoffs at him, still he gets away.
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