Editing Sherlock Holmes (section)

===Postcolonial criticism===

The Sherlock Holmes stories have been scrutinized by a few academics for themes of empire and colonialism.

Susan Cannon Harris claims that themes of contagion and containment are common in the Holmes series, including the metaphors of Eastern foreigners as the root cause of "infection" within and around Europe.<ref name=":04">{{Cite journal|last=Harris|first=Susan Cannon|date=2003|title=Pathological Possibilities: Contagion and Empire in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Stories|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058636|journal=Victorian Literature and Culture|volume=31|issue=2|pages=447–466|doi=10.1017/S1060150303000238|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 |jstor=25058636|s2cid=162476755|issn=1060-1503|access-date=11 May 2021|archive-date=29 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210529015806/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058636|url-status=live}}</ref> Lauren Raheja, writing in the Marxist journal ''Nature, Society, and Thought'', claims that Doyle used these characteristics to paint eastern colonies in a negative light, through their continually being the source of threats. For example, in one story, Doyle makes mention of the [[Sumatra]]n cannibals (also known as [[Batak]]) who throw poisonous darts, and in "The Speckled Band", a "long residence in the tropics" was a negative influence on one antagonist's bad temper.<ref name=":13">Raheja, Lauren. "Anxieties of Empire in Doyle's Tales of Sherlock Holmes". ''Nature, Society, and Thought'', vol. 19, no. 4, 2006, p. 417, ProQuest Central.</ref> Yumna Siddiqi argues that Doyle depicted returned colonials as "marginal, physically ravaged characters that threaten the peace", while putting non-colonials in a much more positive light.<ref name=":23">{{Cite journal|last=Siddiqi|first=Yumna|date=2006|title=The Cesspool of Empire: Sherlock Holmes and the Return of the Repressed|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058745|journal=Victorian Literature and Culture|volume=34|issue=1|pages=233–247|doi=10.1017/S1060150306051138|jstor=25058745|s2cid=162557404|issn=1060-1503|access-date=11 May 2021|archive-date=19 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210419050827/https://www.jstor.org/stable/25058745|url-status=live}}</ref>