ABSTRACT
The Formalist and Realist debate has almost always existed within law, during the Victorian period however, this debate gained specific expression in the law and this was reflected within the emerging genre of detective fiction. While the theories of Formalism and Realism can not be said to have been ’named’ until the 1920’s their procedural models have been in conflict, almost, since the creation of law itself. The paper will explore the differing modes of procedural detective work in fiction through an examination of the detective approaches taken by Valeria Macallen in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady and Sherlock Holmes’s procedural application of detective technique in A Study in Scarlet. It will do this through an examination of Victorian expressions of the effectiveness of Formalist and Realist legal ideologies through the detective endeavours of Valeria Macallen and Sherlock Holmes. It will posit an explanation and contextualisation of Formalism and Realism within the Victorian period, examine the presentation of effective Victorian Formalist ideologies in A Study in Scarlet and compare these to The Law and the Lady and its presentation of Realist detective fiction. In so doing, it will present the disparity between the Formalist and Realist approaches in terms of their application and procedures as well as the investigative effectiveness of the two ideologies in their application to literary detection.
Keywords: Victorian, Literature, Law, Realism, Formalism.