When last we left Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown) in 2020, she had been effectively abandoned by her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter). Yet it was hard to begrudge this freedom fighter the “abandonment” of her child when it was all in the name of the feminist cause. Even if that cause required a bit of explosive violence to get the job done. For, as Eudoria declared to Enola in a letter she left behind with some cash, “Our future is up to us.” Would that the same could be said for women of the working class, which is the demographic that Jack Thorne’s script (Thorne also penned the one for Enola Holmes) focuses on the most. Indeed, it’s the match girls who work in horrific factory conditions that drive the majority of the plot.
One match girl in particular, Bessie (Serrana Su-Ling Bliss), is the force that manages to prevent Enola from hanging up her detective’s hat entirely. For that’s just what she’s about to do when Bessie timidly walks into Enola’s erstwhile office. Which she can no longer afford as there are no clients willing to hire her, either because of misogyny (“Am I addressing the secretary?”) or ageism. As to the latter, she suffers the same kind of commentary as Doogie Howser might endure, with comments like, “You’re how old?” and “Stone the crows, you’re young.” In effect, no one trusts her or takes her seriously the way they do her overburdened-with-cases brother, Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Just another bane to living in 1800s-era London. Not to mention being in the thick of the Industrial Revolution’s after-effects. This including treating the worker like shit in the name of profit. Something the match girls know all about, as we see them subject themselves to the “new fever” called typhus in service to the work. Basically what happened during the onset of COVID-19, when some people got to stay at home and others didn’t have the same luxury of “staying safe” due to their class station.
Enola, who feels it must be kismet that Bessie found a months-old ad of hers floating around on the street, agrees to assist in the search for her “sister,” Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd), a seasoned match girl that’s taken Bessie in as though she’s family at the ramshackle where she also lives with another factory employee named Mae (Abbie Hern). Upon seeing Enola in her abode, Mae snaps, “We don’t need help from people like you,” alluding to the overt signs of Enola’s class. Despite the lack of a warm reception to her presence, Enola goes even deeper into the case by infiltrating the factory as a match girl. Working next to Bessie, she creates a diversion to get into the manager’s office whereupon she discovers missing pages ripped from a ledger. Enola is also quick to notice that Lyon’s matches have only recently turned from red tips to white ones. Surely not a coincidence. And while she feels she’s close to grasping at something, like Sherlock with his own current case, the puzzle pieces simply haven’t come together.
It doesn’t help matters that Enola still finds herself preoccupied with Lord Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge), who was at the center of the caper in the first film. The two continue to awkwardly flirt and semi-court, but it’s clear Enola is the one holding things back in the relationship thanks to the echoes of and flashbacks to the “independent woman”-oriented aphorisms her mother instilled within her.
Regarding the Tewkesbury romance, although some of the movie posters make Enola Holmes 2 come across as just another Jane Austen or Bridgerton knockoff, the majority of the movie speaks to the oppression of the worker. And yes, Sarah Chapman was a real person, even if not quite so model-esque as Hannah Dodd. Much like the Reform Bill featured in Enola Holmes was based on a real bill called the Third Reform Act. Director Harry Bradbeer (who also worked on the first film) and screenwriter Thorne are sure to use revisionist history to their advantage (though not so freely as someone like Ryan Murphy) in this edition of the Enola Holmes saga as well, with Chapman being at the center of a class war made all the more complex by the fact that she has secretly been dating William Lyon (Gabriel Tierney), the son of Lyon’s owner, Henry (David Westhead). But the web of deceit will turn out to be even more convoluted when Sherlock’s adversary in a battle of wits, Moriarty, enters into the equation.
Meanwhile, in the midst of her investigation, Enola has managed to get herself caught red-handed in the very manner from which the phrase originated: with blood all over her hands. This resulting in an arrest from the extremely smarmy Superintendent Grail (David Thewlis), who has no qualms choking Enola to attempt extracting the location of Sarah. When Enola insists she doesn’t know where Sarah is, Grail threatens, “Well if I can’t find it out from you, I’ll find it out from someone else. Like her sister, little Bessie.” Taking his meaning for the threat that it is, Enola replies, “She’s just a little girl.” Grail screams, “Oh, but that’s how it starts, Enola Holmes! With little girls like her, and you, and Sarah Chapman. Asking questions. Doubting those in charge, not seeing their protection for what it is, trying to tear it down.” Enola appears as though she might cry, but maintains a stiff upper lip (what all women must do if they want to “play by the rules” in a “man’s game”) as Grail continues, “Well it only takes one little flame to start a fire and my job is to keep crushing those bloody flames out.” Spoken like a beacon of upper management. And also a demagogue/dictator in the vein of Trump or Putin.
The question is later asked by a certain woman (who shall go unnamed to prevent from unveiling the mystery), “Why shouldn’t I be rewarded for what I can do? Where is my place in this…society?” Many women are still asking that question. Particularly those who must slave away as both a mother and a “paid employee” (as though the slog of motherhood isn’t worth something far more than the type of labor capitalism values). It is this dual role that catches the match girls of Enola Holmes 2 afraid to take a stand against their abuse in the final minutes of the film. An abuse so grotesque that they should automatically walk out without needing any convincing from Sarah.
But they do. Not just because the manager, a mouthpiece for the “seduction” of regular weekly earnings, shouts, “Think of your families, don’t do it girls. It’s not worth the risk.” And “the risk” he doesn’t want them to take is marching right out of the factory when Sarah urges them to protest with her against the dire conditions she’s unearthed. Informing them, as someone who has finally seen the light about the power of the worker, “It’s time for us to use the only thing we have: ourselves. It’s time for us to refuse to work. It’s time for us to tell ‘em no… I know you’re scared. I am too, but it’s the only power we have!” So here the viewer is given the expected, uplifting Act Three visualization of how “it only takes one little flame to start a fire” (to use that aforementioned match girl pun).
These, of course, are very pleasant thoughts to console oneself with as Iran arrests and/or puts to death the female protesters who have been called to action in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s own death at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” back in September. Suffice it to say, Enola Holmes 2 won’t be much welcomed in that country. Or really, any other. For they’re all mostly patriarchies that prefer to treat women and the worker like caged animals.
