Queens of Crime: American and British female detective novels over the course of time

Female crime writers were not always given the same recognition as today. Edgar Allan Poe’s detective story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue', written in 1841, is regarded as the beginning of the detective genre. In the following years, the genre was typically dominated by male authors. Since then considerable progress has been made, and female authors have created a very individual way of writing detective novels. However, experts still disagree on a clear definition of the female crime novel. The present study hopes to gain further insight into female detective novels coming from the USA and Great Britain. After giving basic information on the history of female detective novels and the ideal crime scheme, the study analyses the characteristics of female detective novels as opposed to male detective novels and the appeal of detective novels for women writers. Although female detective novels are not a separate sub-genre but rather a separate field within the genre of detective novels, women have given the genre new impulses.



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Chapter 5.,Typical elements of female detective novels:

Female crime novels are not as opposed to the wide-spread cliché mainly written for women. Crime novels are in general a genre which attracts equally men and women. However, women can happily fantasise about being men, or being the girlfriend of a superman; they can identify with heroes, and admire them, while few men will ever imagine themselves in the place of a young and pretty female, let alone an aunt-figure. This could explain why many woman writers opted for male detectives. Yet it is wrong to assume that these detectives do not have ,clearly identifiable facets of ‘feminization’ ‘ (Munt, 8). Sally Munt concluded in her essay that Hercule Poirot is a feminine hero (Munt, 8). As an explanation for her thesis, she pointed out that the detective Hercule Poirot embodies most clearly the ,feminine’. He is a parody of the male myth; his name implies his satirical status: he is a shortened Hercules, and a poirot- a clown. He is narcissistic, emotive, feline, apparently irrational, eccentric, quixotic, obsessed with the domestic, and socially ,other’ in that he is Belgian. (Munt, 8). According to Munt, these feminized heroes appeal to women writers and readers (Munt, 8). In retrospect, detectives gradually became humanized and sometimes feminized as a reaction against the pre-War Superman detective [sic!] […], prompted by distrust of all Supermen, […] ( Munt, 14). Munt alludes to superman detectives like Sherlock Holmes who was described as […] anything but a very ordinary mortal (Mann, 30). His upper-middle-class Victorian masculinity based on cool rationality and intellect (Munt, 2) was no longer in accordance with the zeitgeist. Feminization of detectives was, however, just one impetus which women writers gave the genre. The following chapter analyses particular characteristics of detective novels by women writers in the following order: Lady detectives and female roles, Motives and topics and Adaption to male behaviour.

5.1, The lady detectives and female roles:

In the male dominated crime literature the women characters could often be categorized as passive, naïve ninnies or a femme fatales who kill men (see Dylus, 108). These images of women were very one-dimensional and stereotyped. Mann realized that, […] they were oddities, invented for effect, like the detectives who were blind, or crippled, or eccentric. A woman was expected to evoke a faint surprise (Mann, 92) and Fritz Wölken felt that they did not really have a real female touch (see Keitel, 2001, 20). Those women did not act self-determined, but simply reacted to men (see Munt, 4). Kathleen Gregory Klein criticised the implementation of shallow, excessively feminine stereotypes by many male authors. She pleaded for plausible women … portraying authentic, lived experience (Munt, 191). This criticism challenged women writers to disengage from these stereotypes. One method was to change the passive status of women characters into an active one. Moreover, this active status needed to have a positive connotation (see Dylus, 108). Most of the new female characters developed from the end of the 60s to the 80s were geared to the hard-boiled tradition. The hard-boiled detective novels were about a detective with a positive connotation and thus, such a detective suited for the writers’ intention (see Dylus, 108). However, the women writers did not simply adopt a character, so that, for example, the hard-boiled lady detective had traits like emotionality and intuition. Another method to change the stereotypes was the use of humour. The authors chose a satirical approach [and] forced a growing critical self-awareness upon male and female writers (Munt, 14). This approach ranges from parody to self-mockery and caricature. Keitel argued that the female investigators always were a parody, because the knitting Miss Marple was a parody of the armchair detectives (Plummer, 199) with their oddities just as Auguste Dupin who played the violin (see Keitel, 1998, 41). The term armchair detective alludes to those detectives who solve their murder cases mainly while sitting in their armchairs and using their ratiocination as Poe would have called it (see Keitel, 1998, 13). According to Plummer, this parody could even lead to a role reversal and to a gender masquerade (see Plummer, 199). Role reversal becomes particularly clear with those lady detectives having erotic adventures with mysterious and dangerous men. This is certainly an allusion to the hard-boiled detectives and their femme fatales (see Plummer, 199 As matter of fact, the English language offers in this context the possibility to confront the reader with his or her own expectations. English does not have a grammatical gender as a rule. The difference becomes particularly clear in contrast to other languages. In German, for example, job titles get the suffix ,-in’ in order to mark that a woman practises the profession. An English writer could write several paragraphs long about a police officer examining a crime scene without revealing the gender. Such a game with thought pattern and the expectation that some jobs are usually practised by men is not possible in German, so that the German term for a female police officer, ,die Polizeibeamtin’, automatically reveals the gender.In the first stages of the genre, most lady detectives were amateurs. In the course of time women could also be private investigators, policewomen or specialists in forensic medicine. In British female crime literature, mainly policewomen investigated. Plummer explained this by saying that the European tradition did not have the American character of a lonely hero. Therefore, the concept of a private investigator could not be borrowed without further ado (see Plummer, 199. Lady detectives can be of every age, although […], the most effective detectives are in early middle age (Mann, 104). Some of the little old ladies (Keitel, 1998, 66) are in a relationship, married or widowed (see Keitel, 1998, 66). A small group are nuns and another group stands in the tradition of Miss Marple, the so-called spinster snoop[s] (Keitel, 1998, 43). Their advantage is that they are so unremarkable that suspects would betray themselves in front of them (see Mann, 102). Mary S. Weinkauf commented that their age makes them positively invisible (see Weinkauf, 1988, 71 quoted from Keitel, 1998, 65). However, these elderly lady heroines do not attract an imaginative readership (see Mann, 104). It is often criticised that these elderly lady heroines are portrayed as particularly spinsterish. For Agatha Christie both of whose detectives Marple and Poirot were not marriageable (Mann, 109) single detectives were necessary in order to avoid writing about love interest. According to Christie, ,[…] the love interest was ‘a terrible bore in detective stories. Love, I felt, belonged to romantic stories. To force love motif into what should be a scientific process went much against the grain’’ (Mann, 109). Modern writers would probably not agree with this statement.However, it is difficult to reconcile private life and investigation, especially when it comes to marriage instead of erotic adventures. Dorothy L.Sayers actually declared that a detective married was a detective marred (Mann, 109). There was somehow the unwritten rule that lady detectives […] if married, […] are supposed to be back home with the kids, not out in the world detecting. (Mann, 104). The female hard-boiled detectives actually considered family as an obstacle (see Birkle, 149). These women regarded their independence as an ideal (Munt, 49). However, some modern detectives identify with their jobs and with their role as a mother or housewife. They are portrayed with negative and positive traits making them more authentic (see Dylus, 109). They usually have a lot of confidence and are independent and self-reliant (see Pütz, 3. Lady detectives have developed their own way of investigating over the course of time. Therefore, there is no female equivalent to the Watson- character emphasizing the detective’s cognitive superiority. Women seem to be less interested in pure logic, so that they relying instead on their feminine intuition, their knowledge of human nature and their sensibility (see Keitel, 1998, 34. Women writers nowadays tend to take women as their main characters, as the victims and more and more as the culprits (see Dylus, 110). The detective’s personality profile is the aspect which is changing the most at the moment. Readers seem indeed to like this trend. Detectives come today from all social classes, have any origin, live under different life standards and vary in their political and moral stance (see Dylus, 109). In fact, the characters have become so important within the genre that the detective story has become rather a puzzle of character […] than a puzzle of time, place, motive and opportunity (Mann, 234).