“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”

The opening line foreshadows Adler’s pivotal role in both the story and in Holmes’s life. Watson’s description of Adler signals Holmes’s elevated view of the woman and emphasizes her singularity. To Holmes, there is no other woman of significance. Holmes admires Adler for more than her humbling beauty; he admires her sharp intellect.

“It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind.”

Watson’s description of the relationship between Adler and Holmes emphasizes how Holmes’s personality is incompatible with emotions such as love. Preoccupied with intellect, Holmes is unable to express emotive sentiments. Adler’s unique ability to intellectually challenge Holmes and affect his emotions makes her an adversary worthy of his admiration.

“He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position.”

Watson underscores Holmes’s emotional limitations by comparing him to a machine. Although Watson admires Holmes’s abilities to reason and observe, his admiration is grounded in a realistic view of the sleuth. Unlike the recently married Watson, Holmes is not capable of having romantic relationships because his genius supersedes his emotions. Doyle often employs metaphors to characterize Holmes and other key characters.