Department of English and American Studies Concepts of Justice in The

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools Mgr. Zuzana Reviľaková Concepts of Justice in the Selected Works by Christie, Allingham, P. D. James and Fyfield Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt. 2011 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt., for her kind help and guidance. 3 Table of contents Table of contents ........................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 5 1. The emergence of detective fiction ........................................................................... 8 2. “What is justice?” ...................................................................................................... 16 3. Moral justice in detective stories and crime novels ................................................... 25 3.1 Moral justice in Nemesis, Curtain: Poirot’s Last case and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman .................................................................................................................. 29 3.1.1 Nemesis …………………………………………………………………. 29 3.1.2 Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case …………………………………………….. 31 3.1.3 An Unsuitable Job for a Woman ……………………………………....... 33 3.2 Moral justice in Murder on the Orient Express, Flowers for the Judge and A Clear Conscience ………………………………………………………………… 36 3.2.1 Murder on the Orient Express …………………………………………. 36 3.2.2 Flowers for the Judge ………………………………………………….. 39 3.1.3 A Clear Conscience ……………………………………………………. 41 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………… 46 Works cited and consulted …………………………………………………………… 53 Resumé [English] …………………………………………………………………….. 57 Resumé [Czech] ............................................................................................................ 59 4 Introduction In this thesis I want to explore the theme of justice as presented in some works by Christie, Allingham, P. D. James and Fyfield. In order to be able to do so, I selected six works; Agatha Christie‟s Nemesis (1971), Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (1975) and Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Margery Allingham‟s Flowers for the Judge (1936), P. D. James‟s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and Frances Fyfield‟s A Clear Conscience (1994). In the genre of the detective story, in particular between the wars (the "First Wave") and also later from the 1960s (in the so-called "Second Wave of the English Queens of Crime"), women writers emerged in significant numbers and brought many domestic issues into crime fiction. This is also the reason for my exploration of the women writers in this area, as I want to relate these writers to more fundamental subject matters, such as justice, law and order, and prove that the writers examined addressed these areas very seriously, perhaps to the detriment of domesticity. All these works proved to be a very interesting reading regarding the theme of justice. Based on the selected examples, I came to a conclusion that there is not only a theme of justice in general, but that these writers use different concepts of justice in their works. I argue that there are at least two of them; that in the aforementioned works selected, justice can be further divided into moral and legal. It is not necessary that both of these concepts of justice should be found in each of the above novels. To prove that there is moral justice present in these works, I have decided to explore such works where legal justice is either missing, or playing just an unimportant role. To give evidence that moral justice is widely used in the works of different authors of the genre, I chose a variety of novels written by four different authors from both, the first and the second wave of the English Queens of Crime. 5 The topic of justice has always interested me, as justice and also its counterpart, injustice, seem to be eternal topics explored not only in crime fiction. People live in societies that have their rules – not only legal rules, but moral rules as well. Sometimes it happens that what seems to be legally just, appears to be morally unjust and vice versa. This is where people most often realize that there is not only justice in general, but that there is more to it; it must be possible to divide it in two, maybe more; otherwise it would not be possible to have this discrepancy between the legal and the moral justice. Reading Christie‟s Nemesis and Fyfield‟s A Clear Conscience not only confirmed my theory, but made me also think about the concept of moral justice and its relation to the issue of revenge; I therefore decided to explore this area and possibly also to give evidence to prove that in English detective fiction there are different concepts of justice present. I divide my thesis into three main chapters. In the first chapter I provide some information on the genre, as well as the authors whose works I decided to analyse. I examine the four sanctified English Queens of Crime, discuss the two waves and place the authors selected accordingly. Regarding the two waves, I explain the differences between a detective story and a crime novel. To make this chapter complete, I provide some basic biographical data regarding the authors selected. The second chapter, “What is justice?”, provides the reader with essential ideas on the theme of justice. I discuss definitions as well as theories elaborated by different scholars and philosophers, in order to prove that they also debate on justice which can be further subdivided into the legal and the moral concepts. In order to be able to prove this, I explain what the term jurisprudence means and adopt the ideas and theories of such well known and accepted scholars and philosophers in this field such as Hans 6 Kelsen, Thomas Aquinas, Gustav Radbruch, or Jacques Derrida. I demonstrate how these important scholars understood justice and explained what it was. The fundamental part of this thesis lies in the third chapter. This chapter is further subdivided into two parts, each of which consists of three sections. The chapter first briefly comments on why legal justice is sometimes not present in real life and subsequently also in the texts selected and on the changes responsible for the fact that in quite a substantial number of detective stories and crime novels their authors recourse to moral justice instead of the legal one. This coincides with the changes in the field of human rights and the field of punishment, as well as with the influence of psychiatry. The individual texts are then analysed and the two concepts of justice discussed, supported by a substantial amount of evidence. In the conclusion, I provide the important findings and give some specific examples which either help prove, or disprove the argument. 7 1. The emergence of detective fiction In order to be able to explore the concepts of justice in the abovementioned works, it is necessary to provide at least some basic information on the emergence of the genre, explain the differences between the detective story and the crime novel, as well as to provide at least some basic information on the authors selected and the era they lived and wrote in. The reason for the emergence of the detective story not earlier than in the nineteenth century, is simple. There cannot be a detective story without a detective. And there are no detectives without the police in the modern sense of the word. According to Holquist, It is a curious fact that the institution of the modern metropolitan police force as we now know it, did not exist before the 19th century. It was the early decades of that century which saw the almost simultaneous foundation of the Suretè in Paris and the precursors of Scotland Yard, the Bow Street Runners, in London. But the foundation of these forces was not enough in itself to inspire the creation of the fictional detective. For one thing they did not immediately inspire confidence in their methods or their morals. (139) But even after the police forces had gained people‟s confidence and after the role of a detective had been established, there still was not a proper detective story, as “the emphasis was still on crime; the forces of law had not yet become glamorous” (Holquist 140). The change came after Edgar Allan Poe‟s The Murders in the Rue Morgue had been published. Symons claims that “The father of detective fiction, in any serious sense, was undoubtedly Edgar Allan Poe” (1969, 10). This is because it was Poe, who created the first detective: “The father of them all, is, rather, Edgar Allan Poe's Chevalier Dupin” (Holquist 140). But as Symons further argues, Poe did not write a detective novel in the right sense of the word, as his were just short stories. In Symon‟s 8 opinion then, in order to find the author of the first detective novel, it is necessary to look elsewhere (10-11). The first detective novel ever written, The Moonstone, was written in 1868 by a close friend of Charles Dickens named Wilkie Collins. According to T. S. Eliot, The Moonstone is so interesting because it is “the first and best detective story, and certainly it is an original and fascinating book, notable because of its wonderfully

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