In “A Scandal in Bohemia,” what profession does Irene Adler have?

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Irene Adler is an opera singer.

The story was first published in 1891 and introduces Adler as a celebrated American opera singer living in London. She possesses a compromising photograph of herself with the King of Bohemia, who wants Holmes to recover it before his planned marriage. Holmes disguises himself and stages an elaborate search, but Adler recognizes the trick and escapes with the photograph.

Doyle calls Adler “the woman” because Holmes regards her as the person who outwitted him, not because she is his romantic partner. The original story ends with Adler leaving England and marrying the lawyer Godfrey Norton. She does not appear again in Doyle’s Holmes stories.

Modern films and television series often portray Adler as a professional criminal, spy, or recurring love interest. Those interpretations are adaptations. In the original story, her defining public occupation is opera singer, and her victory comes from intelligence and quick observation rather than physical force.