(no subject)

[martasfic]

You know, just talking out loud here... Mary is an orphan, worked as a governess (so pretty tied to one location), and of fairly modest means right up until she marries Watson. Not at all suspicious or funny that she'd have such a rich circle of friends to be off visiting.

It's almost as if Doyle didn't want her underfoot.

Comments

[aearwen2.livejournal.com]

Assuming this is about the TV series and not the books...

Or, if you think about it, the culprit is Stephen Moffatt. Lord knows the Who fandom is pretty split on whether or not he's rubbish or not.

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I actually had the books in mind. I was reading the opening of "The Final Problem" earlier, and Mary is miraculously out of the way ("away on a visit"). What I know of the period, I do understand men and women had very different spheres, so it would have been odd if Mary had been more involved in the adventures. But reading it today it seems like Doyle remembers he's married Watson off and has to explain away why Watson can essentially live a bachelor's life for a few days.

This is the real tension at the heart of the TV show, or at least part of it: how do you keep from exiling Mary in a really quite misogynist way (for the 21st century), without breaking the close Holmes-Watson relationship? A point I think Moffat and Gatiss failed at remarkably, but that's another post....

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

Btw: I'm chortling at your icon.