The Scariest Feminine Archetype: Sherlock Holmes and his East Wind

Eurus caught my eye. Eurus seemed familiar. Eurus scared me shitless.

She is the east wind in ancient Greek and the most frightening villain Sherlock has encountered, not because she will punch you in the face but because she will get inside your head and ruin your fucking life.

Eurus is the lost sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, squirreled away in a high security asylum/ prison for housing the most despicable individuals and high-octane threats to British civilisation.  And as far as I can tell, it really is the social fabric that these inmates threaten because the only other crime named as worthy of imprisonment is the cannibals whom Moriarty sniffs out on the floor above. So, in this prison of social taboos we have man-eaters and a young woman whose supernatural seeming intelligence is directed wholly towards her jealous obsession with a man, her own brother Sherlock.

I have never found a Sherlock villain so viscerally distressing as this intelligently insane mass manipulator whose possession of knowledge is preposterously supernatural. Sherlock and Mycroft are also intelligent, highly and unbelievably so, but their intelligence makes them the saviours and our society’s last hope. Their intelligence is integral to their humanity, while Eurus’ is the destruction of hers. What I want to write here is not a revue of the episode, which I loved, but of the construct that informed it and which it now helps to propagate.

Let’s start with the name.  Yes, scary things do blow in from the east, out past the bounds of civilisation (within the ancient Greek Cannon). Not the physical space of poke you in the eye, slit your throat and bathe in your blood barbarism embodied by the west. Instead the intelligent, overly cultured, soft and feminine of the east. This aligns Eurus with some of my favourite chthonic female role models Kirke, Medea, the Erinyes, Skylla and Kharybdis. They all rest in the tangled midst of an innately female pollution- their eyes glint, they lust for revenge, they fight with words and manipulation as much as fingernails, they possess dangerous knowledge and they come from the east. Eurus in this way is the perfect name for a demented sister whose inheritance of the family trait of intelligence was destined to make her a witch not a hero. Her alignment with these semi-divine female monsters is exacerbated by the magical quality of her knowledge, the omnipresent wisdom that has no logical root. It is also fitting that this character would come not from Conan-Doyle but the 21^st century. Because this construction of female intelligence as transgressive demonstrates that without consciously knowing it the modern West still sees madness when thought is paired with breasts.

In ancient Greece, this female form of intelligence was known as metis, it was a particularly feminine cunning intelligence which was starkly contrasted with ‘masculine’ rationality and logic. However, men could use metis (http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanisMetis.html for some more information on the story) Zeus literally consumed the anthropomorphised goddess who embodied this concept of schemes, cunning and wisdom. However, when set loose outside of the control of men metis is cast as almost always resulting in disaster for the whole of society, think: Lady Macbeth, Medea, Kirke, Mrs Rochester, Emma Watson at the UN. This idea that smart women are dangerous and that their very existence will undermine the structures of our society do not however belong to the distant past. The reaction to Hilary Clinton and the orange baboon people preferred to her is evidence of this. The treatment of other prominent females like Julia Gillard, or even the rejection of the feminist title by Theresa May, Julie Bishop or any other intelligent woman in the public space is evidence that fear of female intelligence is as viscerally ingrained in our social anxiety as it was in the 5^th century BCE.    

There is something about giving in to a construction of female intelligence that is driven by such ancient anxieties which is completely compelling to watch and disheartening when you realise what you’re watching. Sometimes I forget when living my life about the other who lives in our homes, is central to our ongoing existence but, divergent from the dominant lens our society has always gazed through. I especially forget that I am part of that group. But in the Trump era where “Nasty” women are arguably the alternative we need, Sherlock’s Eurus is retrogressively tone deaf. She reinforces anxieties and stereotypes which in the light of day any socially progressive millennial who loves a bit of Sherlock, would claim were dead, dying or the province of rustbelt baby boomers. And the worst bit is she scared me, because she is familiar, because she is the other which is myself, and that is always the worst-best form of horror.