A Case Of Identity

Because it belongs to a vast and developing saga of Sherlock Holmes’s career, “A Case of Identity” can be approached both as an episodic slice of a much bigger narrative and as a stand-alone story. Conan Doyle even wrote the characters’ dialogue in such a way that invokes the overarching storyline as Holmes and Watson discuss their past cases together; this frames the tale within the broader, intertextual Holmes context.

As a stand-alone work, however, the story follows what is at first an obvious thematic outline: At the beginning, Holmes details a philosophy about life and human psychology that, as the plot unfolds, is brought further to light.

Holmes hypothesizes in the opening paragraphs that “it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation” (226). Holmes has a complex rationality involving both an inductive and deductive approach. Deductive reasoning, which involves forming a hypothesis and then testing it through observation, appears in this quote—which is itself a kind of hypothesis. Conan Doyle gradually corroborates this claim; Holmes’s attention to detail and observance of the “unimportant matters” are precisely what solve the case.

However, while this narrative process of hypothesis corroboration mirrors the process of deductive reasoning, the hypothesis itself emphasizes inductive reasoning—a method that, conversely, begins with observation before forming conclusions. Because Holmes’s statement affirms “a field for the observation” (226), the narrative upholds the value of close analysis and inductive reasoning. In fact, while Holmes is famous for deductive reasoning, he uses inductive reasoning much more often: Instead of hypothesizing and testing, he first gathers evidence and then arrives at conclusions. (When Conan Doyle’s characters casually refer to deduction, they are often referring to what is now called induction.) This complex, meticulous outlook is a mindset in which Holmes hopes to train Watson.

In one sense, then, “A Case of Identity” champions the Enlightenment ideals of independence and reason. Holmes, a self-made crimefighter and researcher operating separately from the police force, stands for individualism and scientific progress. His understanding of typewriting especially comes in handy in this case, reflecting the fascination with technology very common in most literature from the Industrial Age. On the other hand, this story (like so many in the Holmes canon) also draws upon far less optimistic aspects of modern life.

Although Holmes scoffs at Windibank’s comically hasty exit from the apartment, a thieving and abusive parent has just reentered London society. This is no laughing matter, but Holmes is placid. Compared to some of Holmes’s other cases (international disputes and homicides), this more domestic incident may seem less weighty—but this episode proves, in a darker way, Holmes’s point about prioritizing the so-called “unimportant matters.” Unable to formally press charges, Holmes and Watson have, in one regard, ostensibly met their match this time, and the criminal gets away. Miss Sutherland’s helplessness exposes an even greater conspiracy on behalf of the justice system and of the public at large: The story is a layered and subtle rebuke of a society that has overlooked the supposedly “unimportant” detail of cruelty against women.

“A Case of Identity,” with its less romantic vision of the world, provides a matrix for understanding much of the Late Victorian sentiment contemporary to Conan Doyle. For that generation, the decline of traditional values in the wake of the new, industrialized modernity bled into literature, producing such bleak images of London as seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) and Dracula (1897). After the Whitechapel murders of 1888, Conan Doyle’s own detective fiction became noticeably graver with The Sign of Four (1890), which introduced a more sinister criminal case and a more sinister Holmes.

At the center of all the Holmes stories—and “A Case of Identity” is no exception—is the persona of Sherlock Holmes himself. A rebel and vigilante, Holmes’s character has two sides (and ambiguities in between). Watson, his admirer, consistently praises him for his intellect, yet Holmes sometimes seems uncaring if not conscienceless. He is a logician and a ruthless pragmatist, engaging in the battle against crime, by and large, for the “charm.” To Holmes, this is a game; in the end, he can laugh away the fate of Miss Sutherland and Windibank, labeling the predicament “amusing” and “elementary.”

The reader is poised to question the soul of such unfeeling scientism while contemplating what broken world would engender such dubious agents. Though a keeper of the peace, Holmes is never transparent to the reader. His moodiness troubles Watson, but it also symbolizes a greater volatility: law enforcement amid an age when traditional values seem irrevocably outdated and obscure.