The events of Sherlock Holmes has become one of the most popular and beloved characters in literature and has been adapted to all types of media for over 100 years. However, there have also been artists who have borrowed the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and given them a new life, either by expanding their backstories or giving them new adventures.
Among those is Nancy Springer, the author of the book series The Enola Holmes Mysteries, which made a big change to Sherlock Holmes’ family backstory by giving him (and Mycroft, of course) a younger sister. Enola is 20 years younger than Sherlock and stopped seeing her brothers when she was four-years-old, yet she re them fondly (with Sherlock being her favorite). Enola made the jump to film in the movie simply titled Enola Holmes, based on the first book of the series, The Case of the Missing Marquess. In it, Enola and her brothers reunite after their mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter) disappears on Enola’s 16th birthday (14th in the book). Tired of seeing her brothers do nothing to find her, and wanting to escape from Mycroft and his plans of sending her to a school for young ladies, Enola leaves her home to investigate her mother’s disappearance.
Enola Holmes made many changes to the book, the biggest one being Eudoria’s motivations to leave and her appearance at the end of the movie. In the book, Eudoria leaves to the Romani and live a free wandering life, and she doesn’t reunite with Enola. The movie decided to change this and made Eudoria a very dangerous woman, who was part of a secret society and was working on a bombing plan which, ultimately, was never fully explained. Throughout the whole movie, Enola tried to communicate with her mother through coded messages and the “language of flowers”, but Eudoria tracked her down and briefly reunited with her. After everything that happened, Eudoria’s return seems quite cold and careless, as she left her daughter again and without a proper explanation – however, there’s one small but important detail in this scene that completely changes her.
As mentioned above, flowers play an important role in Enola and Eudoria’s dynamic, and it’s through the language of flowers that Enola knows what to do after her mother disappears. This continues to be very important during Eudoria’s final scene, where she’s wearing a bodice with embroidered flowers. These are pansies, which symbolize love, iration, consideration, and free-thinking. Pansies can also show sympathy for someone’s pain and distress, which definitely fits the scene between Eudoria and Enola. Eudoria presenting herself to Enola with this particular design is her way of showing her sympathy for what she has caused to her, as well as her love for her daughter, while also being a symbol of her free-thinking nature. This gives a whole new meaning to her sudden (and brief) return at the end of Enola Holmes, while also making her less cold than she looks.
Given that Enola Holmes didn’t fully explain Enola Holmes is quite weak, the movie left some details for the audience to piece them together and help them to better understand the characters, such as the flowers in Eudoria’s clothes.
