Literature: The Sign of Four (Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Sign of Four, published in 1890, is the second Sherlock Holmes novel, studied at GCSE English Literature as a Victorian detective story in which Holmes investigates the Agra treasure and the pact of four men behind it, uncovering an uncomfortable imperial plot rooted in the 1857 uprising in India. Conan Doyle's methods include the first-person narration of Watson, the contrast between Holmes's reason and his cocaine use, and the atmospheric use of London's fog, river and slums, alongside the openly racist depiction of Tonga that a modern answer must name rather than repeat approvingly.
Before you start
Make sure you're comfortable with these topics first:
Method
- Work out which strand the question wants: Holmes as a character, the presentation of Victorian London, the empire and its consequences, the role of women, or the genre conventions of detective fiction.
- Use Watson's narration as a method, not just a fact. Because he narrates, Holmes is always described from outside, which preserves the mystery of the detective as well as of the crime.
- Track structure. The novel opens with the drug, moves through the puzzle, breaks into Small's long confession, and returns to the drug in the final line. Anything you argue about Holmes must account for that frame.
- Analyse setting as meaning. The fog, the tide, Pondicherry Lodge and the Thames chase give a geography of concealment, and the treasure ends at the bottom of the river, which is an argument the plot makes without stating it.
- Handle the racism directly. Quote where necessary, name the stereotype, explain how the language works, and note what it does for the plot, which is to make the imperial theft disappear behind a monstrous figure.
- Compare characters to make a point: Holmes against Athelney Jones for professional competence, Holmes against Watson for reason and feeling, Small against Sholto for who is treated as a criminal.
- Bring context in as consequence: the 1857 uprising, the Agra treasure's origin and the Andaman penal colony are the reason the crime exists, so context is plot here rather than background.
Worked example
Plan a response to: how does Conan Doyle present Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four?
- Set the thesis: Conan Doyle presents Holmes as a mind constructed for work and unfit for anything else, and the novel's frame makes the brilliance and the addiction two halves of one design rather than a talent with a flaw attached.
- Paragraph one, the opening. The novel begins with the needle and the seven per cent solution, and with Watson's objection. Placing this before any crime tells the reader that the case exists to occupy the mind, not the other way round.
- Paragraph two, method as performance. Holmes deduces Watson's brother's history from a watch, and the sequence is staged: the claim, the doubt, then the explanation. The structure flatters the reader with the possibility of following, then withholds until the reveal, which is the pleasure the genre runs on.
- Paragraph three, Watson as the lens. Because Watson narrates, we see Holmes's results and not his reasoning until he chooses to share it, and we also get Watson's irritation and awe. The admiration is what keeps Holmes likeable while the coldness accumulates.
- Paragraph four, the coldness. Holmes says a client is a mere unit, a factor in a problem, and that emotion is opposed to true cold reason. Watson falls in love with Mary in the same chapters, so the novel places the two responses side by side and lets the reader judge.
- Paragraph five, the official police. Athelney Jones is confident, wrong and arrests the wrong man, so Holmes's superiority is established institutionally as well as personally. Yet Jones takes the credit at the end, which is the novel's small joke about who benefits from genius.
- Paragraph six, the ending. Jones gets the credit, Watson gets Mary, and Holmes reaches for the cocaine bottle. Nothing has been resolved for him, so the frame closes exactly where it opened.
- Conclude: Holmes is presented as admirable and diminished at once, and the closing line makes that judgement without a word of comment.
Practice questions
Try each question, then tap to reveal the answer.
Q1Summarise the case Mary Morstan brings to Holmes.Show answer
Answer: Her father, an Indian Army officer, disappeared in London ten years earlier. Since then she has received one large pearl a year from an anonymous sender, and now she has had a letter asking her to meet the writer, who claims she is a wronged woman.
Q2What is the Agra treasure, and how was it obtained?Show answer
Answer: A merchant's fortune in jewels, seized during the 1857 uprising in India by Jonathan Small and three Sikh conspirators after they killed the man carrying it. It is stolen property from the start, which complicates every later claim to it.
Q3Explain the significance of the treasure being lost in the Thames.Show answer
Answer: Small scatters it into the river during the chase, so nobody profits. It removes the object every character has pursued, frees Mary from a fortune that would have made her unreachable for Watson, and leaves the imperial theft with no beneficiary at all.
Q4How does Conan Doyle use setting to create atmosphere?Show answer
Answer: Fog, gaslight, rain and the tidal river blur what can be seen, so London becomes a place where things are hidden in plain sight. Pondicherry Lodge is a house dug up and ruined by treasure hunting, and the journey through the streets to it is listed as a sequence of unfamiliar names, which disorients the reader as it does Watson and Mary.
Q5Why is Athelney Jones included in the novel?Show answer
Answer: He represents official policing: quick to arrest, confident in the obvious suspect, and wrong. He makes Holmes's method look like a discipline rather than a personal gift, and his acceptance of the credit at the end shows the professional world absorbing work it did not do.
Q6How should a student write about the presentation of Tonga?Show answer
Answer: By naming it as racist caricature, showing how the language works (animal comparisons, denial of speech and reason), and analysing its function: it converts the human consequences of imperial theft into a monstrous figure who can be shot, which lets the novel avoid the political question its own plot raises.
Q7What role does Mary Morstan play beyond providing the case?Show answer
Answer: She is the emotional counterweight to Holmes. Watson's growing attachment gives the novel a second plot with feeling in it, and her poverty at the end is what makes their marriage possible, which quietly ties romance to money.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a English exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Starting with the opening chapter, in which Holmes injects cocaine and Watson protests, explore how Conan Doyle presents Holmes's character in The Sign of Four. Write about this extract and the novel as a whole.
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How does Conan Doyle present the effects of the British Empire in The Sign of Four?
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