20 - Sherlock Holmes: What Is Hounding Us...

I read The Hound of the Baskervilles because Umberto Eco in his mystery novel The Name of the Rose, uses the last name of Baskervilles to the monk who will solve the murders in the medieval abbey. In that novel the menace is religious fundamentalism. A monk who wants to keep forbidden books from his brothers causes their death.

 In The Hound of the Baskervilles the menace is apparently the illogical belief in the supernatural: a hound from Hell is bent on making the noblemen Baskervilles pay for the crimes of their ancestor. Holmes, with his scientific, logical mind, proves the legend to be untrue. The hound, like his master, is real, and both can be killed. Science and the logical mind win.

But is this the message of the story? Holmes tells Watson that "this is the most complex case I have ever faced." Why? He does not believe for a moment that the hound is a devilish apparition. Early in the story Lord Baskerville finds that one of his boots is stolen from his hotel. It is obviously needed to set a real hound on Baskerville's scent. Holmes comes to the scene only at the very end of the story and he explains how his research uncovered the store where the hound was bought, and the real identity of Stapleton, the mastermind who ideated the murder of the Baskervilles. Some readers on Amazon complained that, compared to modern stories, this is not much of a mystery, and that perhaps it is outdated. 

To me, this became the "mystery" of the Hound of the Baskervilles mystery.This story, written in 1902 is not a clumsy first novel, or a tired last one. Then why  the mystery is not a mystery at all, and why the reader is not with Holmes, following his investigation as the novel unfolds?

The reason is that the real menace Conan Doyle is warning us about is not superstition but the worship of science without a heart. Anne Perry, in her afterword to the novel, tells us that The Hound of the Baskervilles postdate "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." It should be noted also that it postdates "The Monster of Frankestein." The latter is about the abuse of science.

"Baskervilles"  was written at the time of Darwin's discoveries and of the industrial revolution.