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The Criminal Femme Fatale in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction

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The Criminal Femme Fatale in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction Sirens in Command: The Criminal Femme Fatale in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2011 Maysaa Jaber School of Arts, Histories and Cultures Table of Contents Abstract 4 Declaration 5 Copyright Statement 6 Acknowledgments 7 Introduction 8 1 The “Mad-Bad” Woman: Medico-legal Discourses on Women’s 37 Criminality 1.1 Introduction 37 1.2 Legal Discourses on Women’s Criminality 41 1.2.1 The image of the nonaggressive woman: Gender gap in crime 41 1.2.2 Victim or agent: Who is the female criminal and what are her 46 motives? 1.2.3 Do we need to gender criminology? Discourses gender and crime 52 1.2.4 Theories of women’s criminality 58 1.3 Medical Discourses on Women’s Criminality 71 1.3.1 A means for control or agency? The medicalization of the woman’s 72 body 1.3.2 Medical and legal discourses, interrelated: The construction of the 75 “disordered” criminal woman 1.3.3 Psychopathy of women: Discourses of madness and badness 79 2 Narratives of the Underworld: Violence and Dangerous Femininity in 83 Dashiell Hammett’s Labyrinthine World 83 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Red Harvest: A Snapshot of Hardboiled America 86 2.3 The Dain Curse: A Victimised “Heroine” and an Absent/Present Femme 100 Fatale 2 2.4 The Maltese Falcon : A Hardboiled Criminal Femme Fatale 111 2.5 Conclusion: The Female Detective in The Thin Man 126 3 Narratives of Detection: Femme Fatality and the Detective “Hero” in 129 Raymond Chandler’s Fiction 3.1 Introduction 129 3.2 The “small blondes”: (In)visible Female Agency in Raymond Chandler’s 134 The Lady in the Lake 3.3 “Both pretty and both wild”: Accessory Agency in The Big Sleep 148 3.4 Conclusion: “Seen close up she was almost paralyzing”: The Long 162 Goodbye 4 Narratives of Seduction: The Criminal Femme Fatale and the “forbidden 171 box” in James M. Cain 4.1 Introduction 171 4.2 The Postman Always Rings Twice: The Criminal Femme Fatale as 178 Seductress, Instigator, and Accomplice 4.3 Mildred Pierce : A Battle over Agency 193 4.4 Conclusion: The Cinematic Murderess: Mildred Pierce in Hollywood 211 Conclusion 219 Bibliography 234 Word count: 82,514 3 Abstract Of THESIS submitted by Maysaa Jaber to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and entitled “Sirens in Command: The Criminal Femme Fatale in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction”. August2011 This thesis challenges the traditional view of the “femme fatale” as merely a dangerous and ravenous sexual predator who leads men into ruination. Critical, especially feminist, scholarship mostly regards the femme fatale as a sexist construction of a male fantasy and treats her as an expression of misogyny that ultimately serves to reaffirm male authority. But this thesis proposes alternative ways of viewing the femme fatale by showing how she can also serve as a figure for imagining female agency. As such, I focus on a particular character type that is distinct from the general archetype of the femme fatale because of the greater degree of agency she demonstrates. This “criminal femme fatale” uses her sexual appeal and irresistible wiles both to manipulate men and to commit criminal acts, usually murder, in order to advance her goals with deliberate intent and full culpability. This thesis reveals and explains the agency of the criminal femme fatales in American Hardboiled crime fiction between the late 1920s and the end of World War II in the works of three authors: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. The criminal femme fatales in the narratives of these authors show a subversive power and an ability to act – even though, or perhaps only if, this action is a criminal one. I show that these criminal femme fatales exhibit agency through their efforts to challenge not only the “masculine” genre and the criminal space that this genre represents, but also to undercut the male protagonist’s role and prove his failure in asserting control and dominance. Hammett’s narratives provide good examples of how the criminal femme fatales function on a par with male gangsters in an underworld of crime and corruption. Chandler’s work demonstrates a different case of absent/present criminal women who are set against the detective and ultimately question his power and mastery. Cain’s narratives show the agency of the criminal femme fatales in the convergence between their ambition for social mobility and their sexual power over the male characters. To explain how these female characters exhibit agency, I situate this body of literature alongside contemporaneous legal and medical discourses on female criminality. I argue that the literary female criminal is a fundamentally different portrayal because she breaks the “mad-bad” woman dichotomy that dominates both legal and medical discourses on female criminality. I show that the criminal femme fatales’ negotiations of female agency within hardboiled crime fiction fluctuate and shift between the two poles of the criminalized and the medicalized women. These criminal femme fatales exhibit culpability in their actions that bring them into an encounter with the criminal justice system and resist being pathologized as women who suffer from a psychological ailment that affect their control. The thesis concludes that the ways in which the criminal femme fatales trouble normative socio-cultural conceptions relating to docile femininity and passive sexuality, not only destabilize the totality and fixity of the stereotype of the femme fatale in hardboiled crime fiction, but also open up broader debates about the representation of women in popular culture and the intersections between genre and gender. 4 Declaration that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. 5 Copyright Statement The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trade marks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=487 ), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.manchester.ac.uk/library/aboutus/regulations ) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses. 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Iraq for the scholarship they granted me and their financial support without which it would have not been possible to undertake this PhD project. I also would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Michael Bibler and Anastasia Valassopoulos. Their rigorous feedback, perceptive comments, and remarkable support have been crucial to this study every step of the way. They have been generous with their time and knowledge and I certainly could not have produced this work without their encouragement and sound advice. I also would like to thank Laura Doan, Naomi Baker, and Anke Bernau for their valuable feedback that they generously provided during my research panels. My thanks extend to the staff at English and American Studies in the University of Manchester. I learned a lot from the talks and seminars held here. I have been privileged to have wonderful supportive friends, who not only read my work and corrected my grammar on various occasions, but made Manchester feel like a second home. Their friendships I cherish and I will be always grateful for. Special thanks go to Lucia Nigri, Matt Helmers, and Irene Huhulea whose loving care and support during the last stages of finishing this project have been beyond any expectations. They helped me through the hard times and certainly helped me keep sane. Thanks also to my friends, Iain Baily, Rebecca Pohl, Michael Durrant, Veronica Barnsley, Nichi McCawley, Liam Haydon, Naya Tsentourou, Muzna Rahman, James Smith, Tasneem Perry, Carina Spaulding, Tammy Krause, Lorraine Pannett, and Carolyn Yoder. I also would like to thank Brian Schneider for his friendship and all his kind help throughout the years I have been in Manchester. He always treated me like one of his daughters and it has been a blessing to know him and his beautiful family. I am also indebted to him for proofreading the entire thesis. I am also thankful to Jennie Chapman for being a good friend and for reading my work and giving me useful comments that I very much benefited from.
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