It is not often Sherlock Holmes gets a taste of his own analysis, but the film Enola Holmes dishes it to him. “You don’t know what it is to be without power,” a tea-room proprietor (and undercover feminist) tells the Victorian sleuth. “Politics doesn’t interest you because you have no interest in changing a world that suits you so well.” Touché. Enola Holmes is yet another revisionist spin on an over-filmed story, but unlike her elder brother, spunky young Enola (delightfully played by Millie Bobby Brown) has a vested interest in changing a world that doesn’t suit her at all.
It has become easy to label any story led by a female character as “empowering”, but Enola Holmes goes beyond mere lip service. Yes, she is an idealised, independent-minded heroine but Enola was trained to be so by her mother (Helena Bonham Carter), who turns out to be a militant suffragette activist. Like Mother, Enola doesn’t accept the gender role society has assigned her. And like Mother, she sets about changing things. The plot centres on Enola’s rescue of a foppish young lord whose life is in danger. She quite fancies him but, more importantly, his vote is key in passing the Reform Act in the House of Lords, which will pave the way for women’s suffrage.
Compare that to another recent example: Disney’s Mulan. Again, our protagonist doesn’t accept her allotted role in society and, again, she rescues a powerful man, the emperor. Except Mulan is really preserving the very system that discriminates against her. As with so many movies, Mulan’s victory is on a personal scale. Don’t change the world, just change yourself.
This has often been the case. For most Disney princesses past, simply staying alive and marrying the prince was reward enough. But the idea of a young woman possessing the power to bring down the system is becoming more pervasive. Recently we have had revolutionary protagonists such as Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games, Shailene Woodley in Divergent, and Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road. Even Disney has stepped up, from Moana (who restores her entire society) to Wreck-It Ralph (Vanellope is closer to Neo from The Matrix than Cinderella). And then there’s Eleven, the all-powerful heroine of Stranger Things, played by a certain Millie Bobby Brown.
Do children raised on these stories grow up to change the world? Let’s see. In the meantime, we do have a real-life revolutionary role model: Greta Thunberg. “Everything I’ve experienced over these last few months is like being in a dream, or a movie,” the teen activist says in new documentary I Am Greta. “But a very surreal movie because the plot would be so unlikely.” As a disempowered kid with an interest in changing a world that doesn’t suit her, she has more in common with Enola Holmes than you’d think – though perhaps minus the jiu-jitsu skills.
