When Sherlock looks at Irene through his index finger, it reveals where she comes from; his work; his residence; and his year of birth. The index reveals no marriages before Godfrey, so she lived her life as a single woman. A spinster does not fit the Victorian ideal of a woman. Instead of immediately marrying someone, Irene decides to live her life. She traveled to England and, thanks to the king's confession, "a long visit to Warsaw" also to Germany (Doyle, 6). “…she in her own house,” suggests that Irene has her own house. In Victorian society, a woman would have to give up her property, otherwise it would still belong to her father. Women were not allowed to own property. The letter Irene left for Sherlock mentioned earlier revealed that she herself had trained as an actress (Doyle, aged 12). In Victorian society, women who worked as actresses had a bad reputation. If a woman pursued acting as a profession, Victorian society considered it unmarriageable. An actress's husband can't tell the difference if she really loves him or not. She could have faked her love the whole time. To contradict this stereotype, actresses had to live their lives as ordinarily as others. Deborah Pye of the University of Texas states that Victorian actresses saw themselves as ordinary, respectable women who were just as concerned that their profession had skills just like other professions (Pye, 73).