One supposes the leap from directing most of the episodes in seasons one and two of Fleabag to a narrative about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister isn’t really that far–particularly when both heroines seem so fond of speaking directly to the camera, treating the audience as a kind of co-conspirator in their escapades. Harry Bradbeer (whose time as an assistant and researcher for John Schlesinger surely must have been a film school unto itself) makes the transition nicely, directing Jack Thorne’s script with the same predilection for rendering “Fleabag’s” own distinct British irreverence with such effectiveness onscreen. Thorne himself is no stranger to adapting novels (having previously written the scripts for A Long Way Down and Wonder), likely making Nancy Springer’s The Enola Holmes Mysteries: The Case of the Missing Marquess easy enough for him to tackle.
Then, of course, there is Millie Bobby Brown herself to thank for bringing the feminist character to life. As the current youthful hybrid answer to both Emma Watson and Natalie Portman, one can tell that Brown is aware she has to prove herself if she’s going to make a lasting career after Stranger Things ends, and it’s clear that Netflix has plenty of faith in her to do so. Yet it’s not as though Brown is overly trying in this role, seeming to fit into it as naturally as she does with Eleven. It helps that many of her scenes require her to riff off Helena Bonham Carter’s inherently quirky (therefore show-stealing) acting style. As her mother, Eudoria, the two comprise a sort of Mary Shelley/Mary Wollstonecraft dynamic–with a touch of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore thrown in. Their closeness stems not only from being the sole company the other one has to choose from in Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft’s (Sam Claflin) absence, but because each of them possesses a sort of untameable free-spiritedness. An innate need to forge their own path. Of course, this need is firmly drilled into Enola’s mind by Eudoria–along with the reminder that her name spelled backwards is: Alone. As in, she can make it perfectly well without anyone.
Enola, of course, is unaware that such cryptic statements have all been ingrained within her to prepare her for the day when her mother would vanish without an explanation or trace, forcing her to call upon her brothers (despite the fact that neither one has ever seemed to show an interest in the women they left behind in the country after their father died). Mycroft is especially insufferable, looking upon her as a barbarian and ordering her to go to finishing school before it’s too late and she can’t be “saved.” Enola begs Sherlock to take her under his wing so that she doesn’t have to be subjected to the torture of such an “educational” institution, but Sherlock, as usual, is unmoved, telling her it’s out of his hands. After all, she is Mycroft’s “ward.”
Using the tricks of the deciphering trade her mother taught her (thanks to Eudoria’s love of ciphers), Enola discovers she left a mound of cash hidden behind the frame of one of her chrysanthemum paintings with the note, “Our future is up to us.” Of course, Eudoria’s message doesn’t only apply in a general sense, so much as one regarding every woman’s future in England. As a Guy Fawkes-esque suffragette, Eudoria is willing to do whatever it takes to change the world, and all for the sake of Enola, whom she doesn’t want to see grow up in such a narrow-minded, short-sighted country. Her methods are ruthless, but then, she believes, so are those of the nobility seeking to quash the upcoming Reform Bill (based on Britain’s significant Third Reform Act a.k.a. Representation of the People Act of 1884). One that would expand the breadth and scope of voters considerably (in real life, merely to what the gentry viewed as plebeian country bumpkins–in short, it was about class, not gender). That Mycroft is a Tory bastard who despises such progressive notions as the ones Enola and Eudoria harbor leads him to express something that very much encapsulates the overall sentiment of how England arrived at its present state of fuckery: “Reform. God help us, if there’s one thing this country doesn’t need, it’s more uneducated voters. England is going to pot.”
Well, that much is true, but not for the reasons Mycroft thought, so much as the ones he precisely represented. And the ones that Viscount Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) would seek to eradicate upon his entrance into the House of Lords. Not much older than Enola, the pressure Tewkesbury feels from his oppressive family is a great weight matched only by the heaviness of the loss of his father, also a more free-thinking man than those sychophants that surround them. Mycroft notes of Tewkesbury’s sudden disappearance (now inextricably linked with Enola’s): “I knew his father, obnoxious sort. Liberal, but worth a fortune.” For to be “liberal” in Britain is to be “obnoxious.” To threaten the status quo and tamper with the very “divine right” (for the royals and the rich) principles the country was founded upon.
Principles that the old guard–so often exemplified by the British nobility–have spent centuries “protecting” (unspoken asterisk: by way of subjugating the rights of others). The symbol of this hopelessly extreme and stodgy way of thinking is embodied by “The Dowager” (Frances de la Tour), Tewkesbury’s grandmother. Enola encounters her in one of her many disguises when she goes to the Estate to do a bit of investigating as to where Tewkesbury might be hiding now that she’s left him to his own devices (much to her regret).
The old bat seems harmless enough, which is perhaps why Enola lets her prattle on, “It always felt an honor to me that my family was given this part of England to protect… That is what it is to be an ancestral landowner.” And, if you’re one in Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (another British film, incidentally, that addresses a generational power struggle), it also means wielding your land for some extra cash in the form of covertly housing a massive cannabis farm. The conversation continues as they amble together through the serene grounds… so much land, all for but a few entitled people. The Dowager adds, “As the world becomes increasingly unstable, it feels important that these ideas of England are preserved for the safety and security of the future of our country.”
Enola offers, “It is lovely.” The Dowager accuses, “But you’re probably one of those new thinkers. My son was a new thinker too. Never could focus on what was, it was always about what could be. England’s true glory is what it is.” Phrased like a racist cunt willing to do whatever it takes to uphold the “status quo”: oppression. That so many in power in England have continued to do the same, including make the isolationist choices connoting a sense of superiority over others (e.g. Brexit), speaks to why the country is in its present degenerative stasis. Then again, it could simply be a dose of overdue karma for the nation’s long-standing history of “dominating” others by force and against their will.
Alas, perhaps if more women like Enola and Eudoria had existed and prevailed at the key historical turning point of the late 1800s, England might be far more ideologically evolved than it presently is. So while some might see Enola Holmes as a delightful spinoff of the original male character’s narrative, she is much more than a symbol of feminism, but also, in this particular story, one indicating England’s self-defeating mentality of a certain class of people being above others.
