Netflix’s ‘Enola Holmes’

Who is Enola Holmes? Did she exist in real life?

Since the premiere of Enola Holmes on Netflix, almost a week ago, people have not stopped talking and asking questions about this character, her biography and her relationship with Sherlock Holmes.

And no wonder, in less than 7 days, Enola Holmes has become the most viewed Netflix film in 78 countries and has been acclaimed for the performance of Millie Bobby Brown.

(Not to mention that Bobby Brown also participated as a producer)

And some have even compared her to the powerful protagonist of Anne With an E.

But what is really behind the character of Enola and the story told by Netflix? We will tell you in this text.

Who is Enola Holmes?

In the movie (and in the books) Enola Holmes is the youngest of the Holmes family, and the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft.

Her father died when she was very young and her two brothers left home as soon as they came of age.

This caused Enola to grow up only with the company of her mother, Lady Eudoria Vernet Holmes, who raised her to be an independent and free woman.

Enola’s story begins on the morning of her 16th birthday, when her mother disappears without a trace and the young woman has to try to find her using her intelligence.

Enola Holmes: did she exist in real life?

The idea of ​​a younger sister (or brother) to Sherlock Holmes is almost as old as the famous detective.

And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle knew how to wrap his brilliant protagonist very well in an aura of mystery that means that, although it seems that we know him, in reality we know very little about him.

(In fact, just over 40 percent of English people believe that Sherlock Holmes existed in real life.)

Thus, in his novels the existence of Sherlock’s other siblings besides Mycroft is never confirmed (or denied), which has led to several adaptations giving him a brother or sister.

Such was the case of the series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which in its fourth season introduces Eurus, the detective’s unknown sister.

Eurus is as (or even more) brilliant than Sherlock himself, but unlike him, he uses his intelligence for evil, as a henchman of the evil Jim Moriarty.

However, Enola Holmes (like Eurus) are products of the minds of their respective authors.

In this case Nancy Springer, creator of the book saga “The Adventures of Enola Holmes” who was based on the works of Conan Doyle to create her character.

However, following the publication of the books, Sherlock fans, with complete joy, have incorporated Enola into the character’s fictional universe.

So much so that letters allegedly written by the detective addressed to his beloved younger sister are already on display in the Sherlock Holmes museum in London.

But just because Enola isn’t real doesn’t mean NOTHING in her story is. Quite the contrary, the plot is set in one of the most important moments in the fight for women’s rights.

The Suffragette Movement: The True Story of Enola Holmes

Although in the background, the story of Enola Holmes develops at the same time as the beginnings of the suffrage movement, which sought to guarantee the right to vote for all women.

The first allusion to the movement occurs just after the disappearance of his mother, Eudoria Holmes.

When Mycroft insists on sending Enola to school to be educated, she tells him that her mother took care of it, and made her read every single book in the house.

And among those books is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)one of the precursors of the so-called first wave of feminism.

In this work Wollstonecraft explained that women were not “naturally inferior to men”, as was believed. She only seemed that way because their access to education was limited.

It proposed that women and men be treated equally before the law rather than being treated as property of their husbands. Her ideas would be key to the suffrage movement of which Eudoria Holmes is a part in the film.

All those meetings we saw, the secret self-defense classes, the ammunition and gunpowder hidden in Limehouse Lane were part of the plan to pressure women to vote.

However, it ends up being Enola Holmes and Tewksbury who change the course of history by arriving on time (and alive) to the vote on the Third Reform Act, also known as the Representation of the People Act.

This initiative proposed extending the right to vote to a larger population, so that all the British people could feel represented in the election of their rulers.

This reform, approved in 1884 (and not in 1886, when the story takes place) set a precedent for the subsequent fight for the right to vote for women that was achieved until 1918 in the United Kingdom.

So there you have it, although presented in a very discreet way, Enola Holmes hides a true story of struggle, freedom, hope and the enormous power that women have when we unite.