Doyle’s fictionalized version of the Mormons’ leader, Brigham Young, further emphasizes this misogyny by describing women and girls as a supply of “heifers” to be distributed among the men. However, while men were expected to have multiple wives, the women were not allowed to have multiple husbands. For example, Doyle presents polygamy as an essential part of following the Mormon faith. Most strikingly misogynistic, however, is the novel’s presentation of Mormon marriage practices and of the men’s attitudes toward women. Yet contrary to Holmes’ and Watson’s apparently ingrained beliefs about women, none of the novel’s few female characters seem particularly weak or vain about their appearance, least of all Lucy Ferrier, who is described as both unaware of her beauty and strong enough to manage horses “with all the ease and grace of a true child of the West.” It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor.” Though the old woman in disguise was actually a man, Holmes does not seem to consider the possibility that a woman could have been strong or clever enough to escape him. ” Watson, recounting to the reader Sherlock’s vanity, notes, “I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty.” After Holmes realizes that the old woman he was following had escaped him, he exclaims, “We were the old women to be so taken in. They are as jealous as a pair of professional beauties. For example, when Holmes recounts to Watson the competition between Gregson and Lestrade, he remarks, “They have their knives into one another, too. Holmes and Watson, the story’s protagonist and narrator, both casually insult women as being vain and weak, despite lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary from the story’s female characters.
Though the novel itself may not be misogynistic, it reveals sexist attitudes and practices toward women in both England and America at the time that Doyle was writing.
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