Från oövervinnelig till oigenkännlig : En komparativ genusstudie av hur Irene Adler porträtteras I Arthur Conan Doyles ”A Scandal in Bohemia” och BBC:s adaption ”A Scandal in Belgravia”

Sammanfattning: Abstract The great detective Sherlock Holmes casts a long shadow on the previous research on the short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where Mr. Holmes has been given the main attention. On the periphery, however, a woman named Irene Adler is recognizable. Adler makes her single entrance in the Sherlock Universe in “A Scandal in Bohemia” from 1891 when she outsmarts Mr. Holmes and makes him reconsider the entire female sex as a consequence. In the BBC adaptation Sherlock, the case is however different for the early feminist icon Adler. The portrayal of Adler in the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia” from 2012 is mainly focusing on her sexuality, nudity and seductive personality when meeting Holmes, which has resulted in this essay that aims to study the transformation of Adler from text to screen from a gender perspective. By conducting a comparative study based on gender theory and adaptation theory, the essay finds that there has been a sexualisation and diminishing of independence on behalf of Adler, which relates to common stereotypes in the portrayal of women in film. Through a successive degradation of the female character, it is possible to detect a form of reversed emancipation where the hundred year older predecessor shows greater feminist characteristics than the modern adaptation.