Mycroft and Victorian attitudes to weight

[mightymads]

I came across an article by Mimi Matthews called Victorian Fat Shaming, where it is shown how views on being corpulent changed throughout the 19th century:

During the early and mid-Victorian era, a great many health and beauty books echoed the popular 19th century sentiment that plumpness equaled good health. It was leanness, not heaviness, to which beauty experts directed the majority of their criticism. [...] ...by the end of the century a new trend was on the rise. No longer was roundness or plumpness seen as being wholly synonymous with health and beauty. Instead, many Victorians began to view excess weight as a sign that a woman was inconsiderate, stupid, lazy, and—in some cases—even promiscuous or insane.

While these standards were applied to female beauty, men must have faced similar challenges because sports became highly fashionable, and being fit was in favour. E.g. here are excerpts from ACD’s letters:

On Saturdays I play football on the quiet and so get a little exercise for I am growing quite stout (15 stone eight was my last weight). (ca. 1884)

Gibbs has also put me on a severe diet which is certainly doing me good. I have been on it a week & I am very fit and have not had a real bad night so you can think that we are pleased. (ca. 1901)

It seems that at that time there also appeared the stereotype that corpulence affected mental faculties which can be noticed even in the present day mass media. In many films today main characters are usually lean while corpulent characters are often comic reliefs (Nigel Bruce’s Watson was one too).

The Victorian idea that obesity was incompatible with intelligence and mental acuity was a common one. As a 1900 edition of the Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette reports:

“Obesity always carries with it physical and often mental weakness…”

This stereotype was frequently enforced by overweight characters in popular plays and novels who were portrayed as dimwitted and lazy.

And then there’s Mycroft Holmes, whose analytic powers are stronger than those of his thin brother. I think that it’s rather cool that ACD introduced such a character against the stereotype. I wonder what Mycroft thought of the fat shaming trend. It would be great to see it in fic. If you have any recs, please share! :)

Comments

[senmut]

It is so interesting to see this.

[mightymads]

Thank you for your support!

[mightymads]

My pleasure! Yes, it’s an interesting trend which still has an impact on our society today.

[rachelindeed]

I must admit I have mixed feelings about how ACD handled Mycroft's fatness (and how it has been handled in subsequent adaptations). I think ACD intended it to be a signifier of Mycroft's laziness and lack of ambition, his status as an armchair analyst rather than an adventurous crime fighter. Consider:

If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solution, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.

That plays into the stereotypes your post describes above and even extends Mycroft's physical laziness into a complementary indolence of character (though, importantly, not intellect). It's not that he's unintelligent, it's that he can't be bothered to go to the effort of proving things or doing anything that requires practical effort or mobility. He lives behind a desk.

Mycroft lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. From year's end to year's end he takes no other exercise...

Of course Doyle changes his presentation of Mycroft somewhat in "Bruce Partington Plans" and, rather than painting the portrait of a genius who is underutilizing his extraordinary gifts, shows that Mycroft is very busy behind the scenes, indeed indispensable, in matters of politics. But Doyle/Watson again reiterates that Mycroft "has no ambitions of any kind," revisits his sedentary lifestyle -- "Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them" -- and makes it explicit in Watson's narration that Mycroft is meant to represent the ultimate in 'mind over matter' with a brain so extraordinary that it is capable of eclipsing even his grotesque body so that in his company it's as if his physicality conveniently disappears:

Heavily built and massive, there was a suggestion of uncouth physical inertia in the figure, but above this unwieldy frame there was perched a head so masterful in its brow, so alert in its steel-gray, deep-set eyes, so firm in its lips, and so subtle in its play of expression, that after the first glance one forgot the gross body and remembered only the dominant mind.

All this is problematic, though of course it could have been much worse. I do give Doyle credit for not treating Mycroft as comic relief and for stressing not only his incredible intelligence but also his success in finding a profession that (in Doyle and Watson's eyes, certainly) actually used his talents to the full and for the sake of the public good.

I love Mycroft as a character and I've been a bit disappointed in his portrayal in various adaptations over the years. There's a tendency to either make him into a comic relief character (as the Ritchie films did), to slim him down (as BBC and TPLoSH did). I haven't yet found a rendition of him that I love on film, but I'm always interested in seeing how new actors and adaptations approach him.

[mightymads]

Thank you for such a thoughtful comment! You showed me how the stereotype did affect Mycroft’s image, although I’ve always considered Watson’s words on “lack of ambition/energy” to be just a cover up for who Mycroft really is. Mycroft turns out to be an indispensable government official—quite an illustrious career, and as for lack of energy, there’s a contradiction to that in the stories themselves, when Mycroft arrives to Baker Street or when he acts as Watson’s coachman. His rails on which he runs—well, Sherlock is also a man of habit and values his rituals.

I enjoyed Mycroft in A Study in Terror (1965). He does have a comic element about him there, but also gravitas of the elder brother nagging the younger one. And of course Charles Gray in Granada is great :)