She runs away from home. Sets off to find her mother somewhere in London. Leads the world’s most famous detective on a cat-and-mouse chase trying to find her. And all of it mostly, well, alone. One of the enjoyable aspects of growing up reading stories about a character more well known than his author is watching the spin-offs associated with him.
While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is responsible for crafting the beloved detective, Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, Sherlock’s younger sister, Enola, entered the world in the early 2000s. She landed on screen with the Netflix film Enola Holmes, starring Millie Bobby Brown.
“The first thing you need to know is that my mother named me Enola. She insisted on it, in fact!” Enola starts the first film, breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to camera. “And Enola spelled backwards reads, well, alone.”
Enola leads us through her escapades while planting false clues, running from would-be assassins, and trying to rid herself of a useless boy. But all the while she struggles with the meaning behind her name.
“I’m presently on the way to collect my brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock. Names which backwards spell out respectively, Tforcym and Kcolrehs. Perhaps one shouldn’t read too much into the ‘alone’ idea.”
This, paired with a rigorous upbringing featuring independence, impresses upon her the lesson that she must be capable of being alone and doing so effortlessly. Despite trying to brush her name off, Enola can’t seem to get away from it. Even when she encounters a boy on the run who asks to team up with her, she rids herself of him all to keep going it alone.
She puts herself in danger to solve cases and save lives, just like her brother, at once trying to differentiate herself from her family while at the same time earn her right to be accepted as a Holmes. She resists the idea of asking for help, instead striving to make a name for herself.
At one point, Enola finds herself fist to fist with a villain too big and fast for her young teenage self. She gives her best efforts, knowing that no one is coming to save her.
Minus the crime solving, these are all typical, coming-of-age thoughts and feelings.
It’s not until much later in the film franchise that her mother speaks up on the topic. “You know, sometimes I think I brought you up to be too independent. Strong, formidable, individual children, but perhaps a little lonely.”
Eudoria raised her daughter to find out who she is, and later on realized a small but important fact: We’re less than ourselves alone.
“You will do very well on your own, Enola,” she says in the second film. “But with others, you could be magnificent … You find your allies. Work with them, and you will become more of who you are. You will speak with one voice, and you will make more noise than you could ever have imagined.”
To borrow from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
And yet, so often I forget the very grace that allows me to live with a light burden and an easy yoke. To live with allies, the greatest Ally of all, right beside me. I do not have to prove that I am worthy of his name. He offered it to me. I do not need to prove I can go it alone. He knows I can’t, and that’s why he came.
Part of the beauty of the gospel is that we are told who we are, sons and daughters of God, and then we get to go on the great adventure of discovering what it looks like to live as that person.
Much of this discovery comes through the invitation to live in community, which is in itself an act of grace. We do not have to go it alone.
We are, after all, social beings who are interdependent with each other. We are offered the privilege of emulating the ultimate interdependence of the Trinity. This is the good news of the gospel. We are not called to live this wild adventure of life by ourselves, alone. We are not called to be lonely.
No matter how much others, culture, or even ourselves pressure us to go it alone, we never have to rely only on ourselves. Someone actually is coming to save us. Someone already did.
Throughout the first two films, young Enola Holmes has an unspoken mantra: No one’s coming to save you, so get up and move forward and hope for the best. She is confident and capable, if a bit lonely, and yet there is always the question, what comes next?
From the outside, it’s easy to want to tell young Enola, “You’re part of the most well-known detective family in literature. You cannot earn your name. You are a Holmes. And Sherlock will always be there when you need him. Just enjoy solving the case. Holmeses always do!”
But I know how the stories end. I can see the whole picture. And it helps put my own life in perspective.
I may not be a character in a book, but I am a small player in the unfolding story God is writing. I’ve read the ending. Someone did come to save me, and will again. I can move forward, confident in the end result.
Yes, “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent” (even author Sir Doyle), and there is someone much, much wiser than Mr. Holmes standing in my corner.
Grace made sure of that.
