Sherlock’s Terrible Sense of Self Worth and How Mary [Maybe] Exploits It

 (Sherlock Meta by archipelagoarchaea)

Before we get started: I’m not a fan of Mary-the-person, though I’m sincerely hoping for Mary-the-villain in Series 4 and would greatly enjoy her character in that role (assuming it’s well-written). If you think Mary genuinely ‘performed surgery’ and loves John and Sherlock in a meaningful way, well… move along. You won’t like this. And for the record: I don’t think there’s enough evidence in Series 3 to either prove or disprove the Mary-is-a-psychopath theory, but it’s the one I’m leaning toward, so I’m going to write a bit of meta based on that.



Premise 1: Sherlock’s sense of self-worth revolves entirely around his intellect and [later] his utility as a source of adventure for John.

Premise 2: Mary exploits this lack of self-worth for her own gain in Series 3.

To start with, I’d like to point out that I have above-average intelligence and moderate-to-severe social anxiety. I’m very awkward, and there have been times in my life when I was depressed and lonely. As a result of this, and the fact that it was far more difficult to dismiss my intelligence than any other qualities, there were a number of years when my self-worth did, indeed, revolve almost entirely around my intelligence. Therefore, I have first hand knowledge of what people do when they feel this way. To whit:

Most importantly, a certain degree of arrogance and defensiveness in terms of your knowledge and intelligence is entirely necessary as an act of self-preservation. For example, you must always avoid the words ‘I don’t know.’ If you have a deficiency of knowledge in some area, you must avoid talking about that area at all costs. If this fails and you are exposed as ignorant, you must devalue that knowledge area. So, if you lack knowledge of, say, literary analysis, then literary analysis must be dismissed as ‘pretentious naval-gazing’. If you lack knowledge of higher mathematics, they must be dismissed as ‘irrelevant and impractical’, etc. If a subject you are well-versed in comes up, you must make sure everyone is aware of your intimate knowledge. People may call this ‘showing off’, but it’s incredibly important for the maintenance of your self-image.(1) In the areas you have chosen to be proficient, it is necessary to inform yourself well beyond what you would normally be expected to know. Anything less than an expert in the field should not know something you do not. If they do, you must show that you know more than them in some other sub-field, thus deflecting pseudo-expert status back to yourself.

This all sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? From the very start of the show, Sherlock is a consummate exhibitionist. He deduces just to hear people be surprised — or impressed — at what he can come up with. He avoids settings where he might be expected to express knowledge he lacks (such as social settings). He refuses to tell John twice when he admits he’s seeking advice from an ‘expert’. He never says ‘I don’t know’ seriously until The Empty Hearse, and when John blogs the bit about him not knowing the earth revolves around the sun(2) he’s incredibly hurt and does his best to devalue that knowledge. Finally, when Molly deduces the age of the skeleton, he’s quick to show that he knew too, and that he deduced more than that.

When John enters the equation, Sherlock gets a new tidbit to base his self-worth on: John loves the adventure. He loves the adrenaline rush of chasing Sherlock around London saving cases. Finally, Sherlock has two things to base his self-worth on. Which is good, because the first is something he’ll never be quite happy with. His brother, after all, is far more intelligent than he is.

We never get any indication that Sherlock’s self-worth ever expands beyond these two things, which becomes a problem. When John calls him his best friend, he’s shocked. He has no idea where this affection comes from, and John doesn’t tell him. People don’t like spending time with him, so he must not be fun. His interests don’t cross over with those of normal people, so he’s generally boring.(3) He knows he’s been very selfish in the past, and that his behavior comes across as borderline sociopathic. Perhaps he even believes that line about ‘high-functioning sociopath’. It’s not true, but that doesn’t matter for self-image. This all becomes a serious problem when we get to His Last Vow, but we need to go through Series 3 chronologically, first.

In The Empty Hearse, Sherlock returns to London convinced John will simply take him back. He has no idea of the extent to which John grieved and assumes his value is purely as a source of deductions and adventure, so he’s surprised at the reaction he gets. Throughout their reunion, no matter how upset John gets, Sherlock never acknowledges that it might be Sherlock himself that John grieved. First he tries to impress John, then he tries to draw him back with the call of adventure. When that fails, he’s confused. ‘I said I was sorry. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?’ At the end when he begs for John’s forgiveness, he’s shocked when John calls him ‘The best and wisest man I have ever known’. Unfortunately, it’s a vague description for a man who needs specifics. ‘Best’ can mean anything, and ‘wise’ probably just refers to his intelligence.

In The Sign of Three, as mentioned previously, John calls Sherlock his best friend but doesn’t elaborate on why. Later, in the stag night scene, he gets a little bit more specific, calling Sherlock ‘clever’ and ‘important to some people’, but this doesn’t really add anything. By the time we get to His Last Vow, Sherlock still hasn’t heard anything about what he means to John. Thus, we get one of the worst scenes in show history: Sherlock telling John that of course he wanted an dangerous, clever psychopath for a wife, because isn’t that what he loves about his best friend? He never even gets to hear John say he’s angry with his wife for shooting Sherlock. All John ever explicitly mentions is her past and her lies. Ouch.

Sherlock doesn’t see the truth, and John’s too psychologically traumatized (and imperceptive) to point it out to him. John loves the danger of being with Sherlock, yes, but it’s very different from the danger he gets from Mary. Mary offers… what? Free-floating fear that some of her victims may reappear and wipe out their family in an act of retribution? John’s protective, but there’s not much he can do in this sort of situation. It certainly isn’t exciting. Is Mary going to take up contract work again, with John sitting at home with the baby? Are they going to open their own ‘consulting detective’ business? Not likely. Neither has the skill. Mary’s ‘keep[ing him] in trouble’, but it’s not good for him. Sherlock’s danger is very different. He offers John a chance to play the role of the white knight (perfect for an ex-army-doctor): protecting Sherlock in a very meaningful way (but not constantly), and aiding in his quest to help Sherlock’s clients. It’s an intensely moral thing he does with Sherlock, even if the methods are occasionally dubious and Sherlock’s own motivations are muddled and not entirely noble. No doubt some of Mary’s victims truly deserved what they received — and neither John nor Sherlock, with their vigilante sense of ethics, would have been very upset by that — but even official CIA work is often morally dubious. Both Mary and Magnussen’s descriptions of her freelance work imply that she went well beyond morally dubious with at least some of her hits. Sherlock’s work is always about justice, legal or otherwise.

Sherlock’s and Mary’s cleverness are also very different in quality. Mary uses her cleverness to manipulate and exploit, only revealing her perceptions when it serves her purposes. They’re nothing like Sherlock’s deductions, wherein he elucidates a breathtaking series of clues and conclusions as if he doesn’t know how not to. Sherlock is a spectacle. He’s fun and he’s awe-inspiring and he lends a certain exceptionality just by association. Mary is, well, clever. So John gets to say his wife is clever. Yay?

In both these respects, Mary comes across as a pale imitation of Sherlock. So why does he think John should keep her? Because from Sherlock’s perspective, that’s all he has to offer. He doesn’t understand that he’s funny and sometimes charming or even cute. He doesn’t see that his work is noble or that, no matter how hard he tries to hide it, his motivations are often noble.(4) He doesn’t understand that yes, it is sweet in an odd way to tell people their significant others are using them or when their friends hate them (he’s only trying to save them from wasting time on people who don’t care). He doesn’t see the value in his willingness to risk his life and run himself into the ground for the sake of his clients’ cases. He doesn’t see the value of all the effort he puts in to educate people about what he does (after all, no one cares). He doesn’t see how humanizing his ignorance is, or how valuable it can be for someone to not care about arbitrary social rules. He doesn’t even consider how his violin playing (or dancing) might change the way he’s perceived. In short, Sherlock’s self-worth revolves around his intelligence and John’s adrenaline and he simply doesn’t realize he has value outside of it. So when John calls him his best friend, well, that must be all John cares about.

I was going to write about how Mary’s apparent kindness in Series 3 is very manipulative, but this does it better than I could, so go read it. In short, Mary uses her perceptiveness and Sherlock’s lack of self-worth to lure him away from discovering the truth about her. She then spends the next several months inserting herself as intermediary between John and Sherlock and subtly encouraging Sherlock’s self-loathing and his belief that Mary has effectively replaced him in every way. Finally, at the wedding, she encourages Sherlock to cut ties with John himself (her ‘What about you?’ is a blatant reminder that Sherlock has no place in their new family). Now that her rival has removed himself, Mary no longer has to push John and Sherlock together to look like a good wife. A month after the wedding she’s treating John’s attachment to Sherlock as unreasonable and inserting herself into Sherlock-like situations that ‘Mary’ never would have cared about before (i.e. the drugs den).

This all turns out better than she could have dreamed when she shoots Sherlock, but he forgives her because he thinks she’s what John needs. Mary pounces on this one final gift, telling John that of course he magically saw that his cute nurse was secretly a dangerous psychopath. Didn’t he just hear Sherlock? It’s sickening, it’s manipulative, and it’s tragic for both John and Sherlock. I can only hope that Series 4 makes them both realize what’s happened.

(1) My experience with this makes me a bit more forgiving of ‘show-offs’ than a lot of people.

(2) Classy, by the way, John. Just put humiliating stories about your flatmate’s weaknesses up on your public blog. I’m sure Moriarty didn’t see it and choose the Vermeer case just to exploit that weakness. And when your flatmate rightly (if childishly) calls you out on it, make sure to complete dismiss his concerns! You’re the adult, after all.

(3) ‘Nobody reads your blog, Sherlock.’

(4) Remember how angry he was about the stepfather breaking his stepdaughter’s heart with the internet boyfriend thing? It’s not the first or the last time that he’s genuinely cared about a client.