Lurking in Respectability: Professor Moriarty

It's hard to talk about Moriarty or “The Final Problem” without mentioning that Doyle really wanted to retire Sherlock Holmes. Doyle had grown tired of the character: it was all he was associated with. A popular magazine at the time, Punch, actually printed a picture of Doyle fettered to Holmes (pictured below). But Doyle knew merely retiring Holmes wouldn't be enough: he needed to kill Holmes by pitting him against a villain so nefarious, that Holmes would give own life to beat him. The result is both men, locked in mortal combat, plummet to their deaths.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fettered to Sherlock Holmes, from Punch.

From this, you'd expect there to be a wealth of possibilities for study and interpretation, but the stories are a little sparse. Professor Moriarty isn't all that interesting. He plays a role in three stories: “The Final Problem”, “The Empty House”, and The Valley of Fear (he is mentioned in “The Illustrious Client” and “His Last Bow”, but has no bearing on these stories), but in each, his appearances are minimal. In The Valley of Fear, the fourth Holmes Novel, Moriarty is a topic of discussion in the opening chapters and is mentioned at the end, but never appears in the main narrative even though Holmes claims Moriarty was behind the crimes he investigates. In “The Empty House”, which is Holmes' return, Moriarty's dead and the story is about capturing Moriarty's lieutenant, Sebastian Moran. Moran actually has more influence on the narrative than Moriarty did in House, Valley, and even his own story, “The Final Problem”, where Moriarty is, at most, spotted from a distance or unrecognized. Moriarty's primary characteristic is not his resemblance to Holmes, but rather his absence.

By being absent, Moriarty represents what we don't see or understand, and while Moriarty's appearances may be brief, this idea of unseen evil is common in Holmes stories.

In “The Bruce Partington Plans”, Holmes mentions “the thief or the murderer could roam London on such a day as the tiger does the jungle, unseen until he pounces, ” and in “A Case of Identity”, he states,

If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outr ́e results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

And, of course, it's Holmes' job to seek out these chains of events and bring the crimes and evils of his society to light as he preserves Victorian respectability. Or as he says in “Copper Beeches” after Watson remarks on the beauty of country homes,

You [Watson] look at these scattered houses and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there...It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.

And it's here Moriarty becomes interesting. He doesn’t threaten our property or our bodies, but our very sense of having a secure society, like the picturesque houses that by their beauty hide the evils lurking within. He’s an educated and deeply intelligent man who turned to crime while still maintaining a positive image. Moriarty doesn't correlate with a specific kind of social anxiety, but all social anxieties and crime. Rather than outright committing crimes, he facilitates whatever crime is necessary or requested of him. He represents the idea that crime and evil could be anywhere, especially where it is least expected.