YMMV / The Sign of the Four

• Harsher in Hindsight: The arrest of Thaddeus probably seemed a bit comical when it was published, given the incongruity of his timid hypochondriac nature and the brutality of murder. Recent Real Life controversy over people with chronic health conditions who've died in police custody because their pleas for medicine went unheeded make the humor fall a bit flat, even if the young man's ailments are exaggerated or delusional.
• Values Dissonance:
  • As a product of Victorian Britain, its portrayal of foreign-born villains is inevitably unflattering. For instance, when Holmes turns to a reference book to identify Tonga's race:
    "They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they, that all the efforts of the British officials have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast. Nice, amiable people, Watson! If this fellow had been left to his own unaided devices, this affair might have taken an even more ghastly turn. I fancy that, even as it is, Jonathan Small would give a good deal not to have employed him."
  • Furthermore, neither Mary Morstan or Dr. Watson seem to appreciate that the treasure involved in this affair that she appears ready to gain are stolen goods and the original owner was murdered for it. Some adaptations do have that thought in mind with Mary shrugging off its eventual loss as probably a good thing since it would have bothered her conscience to accept it given its origins.
  • Additionally, the book refers to Muslims as 'Mohammedans' under the old European misconception that Muslims worship Muhammad the same way Christians do Jesus. Muslims would take great offense at the implication and today most non-Muslims are generally aware that Muhammad, though revered, is not worshipped in the Islamic faith.

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