Abstract
The traditional pattern of representing women in fiction as objects and men as subjects has in general posed great difficulties for those (presumably female) writers who have wished to create strong and positive women protagonists. Because of the specific demands of the genre, this is even more true of detective fiction. Thus, in spite of the great number of women writers in this genre, it is a fact that the overwhelming majority of detectives in fiction have until quite recently been men. Women in detective stories have been victims, or they have been perpetrators, but they have not, on the whole, been detectives — that is, they have not been given the most important part to play. In novels written by men, women detectives are very few indeed (although they do exist) but even in books written by women, male detectives dominate. Thus we have, for instance, such notable fictional detectives as Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, Roderick Alleyn, Adam Dalgliesh and Reginald Wexford — all of them created by women.
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Notes
Maureen T. Reddy, Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel (New York: Continuum, 1988), p. 6.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun, ‘What was Penelope Unweaving?’, in Hamlet’s Mother and Other Women (London: The Women’s Press, 1990), pp. 103–11, here p. 108.
Joanna Russ, ‘What can a Heroine do? or Why Women can’t Write’, in Susan Koppelman Cornillon (ed.), Images of Women in Fiction (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1973), pp. 3–20.
Marty Roth, Foul and Fair Play: Reading Genre in Classic Detective Fiction (Athens, Georgia and London: University of Georgia Press, 1995), p. 120.
Patricia Moyes, ‘The Lot of the Policeman’s Wife’, in Dilys Winn (ed.), Murderess Ink (New York: Bell, 1981), pp. 139–41, here p. 139.
Barbara Reynolds, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (London, Sydney and Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p. 255.
Gwen Raverat, Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1988), p. 129.
Michele Slung (ed.), Crime on her Mind: Fifteen Stories of Female Sleuths from the Victorian Era to the Forties (New York: Random House, 1975), p. xx.
Quoted in Janet Morgan, Agatha Christie: A Biography (London: Collins, 1984), p. 196.
In fact, lesbian crime fiction is by now a recognised sub-genre, important enough to be given a separate chapter in Sally Munt’s overview Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 1994).
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© 2000 Birgitta Berglund
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Berglund, B. (2000). Desires and Devices: On Women Detectives in Fiction. In: Chernaik, W., Swales, M., Vilain, R. (eds) The Art of Detective Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62768-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62768-4_11
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