Added in Adaptation: The Empire Plays again in the BBC Sherlock Holmes “The Devil’s Foot”

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초록

Understanding Sterndale in Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot” as a foreign threat to the British Empire, critics, especially Susan Cannon Harris and Lauren Raheja, believe that Holmes exiles Sterndale to Africa to prevent the spread of contagion caused by the devil’s foot into the heart of the British Empire. However, going against this view, this paper argues that Sterndale should be viewed as a typical British imperialist; he has been doing his colonial work in Africa as a great lion-hunter and explorer. In addition, Sterndale supports the British Empire by killing Tregennis, who in fact is contaminated and becomes a foreign threat.
While this may be slightly difficult to imagine in the fictional representation of the story, the screenplay stresses Sterndale’s imperialism. The BBC adaptation of “The Devil’s Foot,” depicts Sterndale as a British imperialist and Tregennis as the foreign and contaminated threat to the British Empire. In the episode, Sterndale’s cottage is full of exotic African objects, and his collection is reminiscent of the British Museum, a display of Britain’s imperial power. Sterndale is clearly depicted as a typical British imperialist. If this is so, then it is Tregennis, who breaks into Sterndale’s British Museum and kills white British people, who is the foreign threat. Thus, “The Devil’s Foot” screenplay implies that Holmes’s reason for the release of the criminal is to support British imperialism rather an individual’s love story.

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