Feminism Is Criminal

Abstract

A writer need not call herself a feminist nor be female for her writing to be concerned with ‘feminist’ questions of power, gender and the social roles of women. Although of these six novelists, only the later writers would accept the label ‘feminist’,² all six authors, as professional women in a century of rapid social change, are inevitably fascinated by tensions over female participation in society. Unsurprisingly, given the focus on the domestic as the location of crime, the nature of marriage, mothering and single women proves significant sources of passion, conflict and familial drama. Feminist critics traditionally employ a three-pronged approach to imaginary works: they examine the representation of women and the feminine in literature; with women writers they explore factors such as gender, writing and genre; and they increasingly probe and question structures of gender themselves. Many of the foregoing chapters have considered the latter two aspects, gender and genre (see Chapter 2), and the construction of gender itself in such contexts as the Gothic, psychoanalysis, the metaphysical, Englishness and social hierarchies.

Surely if a woman committed a crime like murder, she’d be sufficiently cold blooded to enjoy the fruits of it without any weak-minded sentimentality such as repentance.

(Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd¹)