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Female Detectives in Modern Detective Novels an Analysis Of Female Detectives in Modern Detective Novels An Analysis of Miss Marple and V. I. Warshawski Writer: Sladana Marinkovic Supervisor: Dr Michal Anne Moskow Examination assignment 10 p, English 41-60 p 10 p Essay Department of Education and Humanities 03-02-04 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Page 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………….….………………………....3 1.1 Background……………………………………………..……………………...…4 1.2 Summary of the Novels…………………………….…………………..…5 1.3 Literature Review……..…………………………………….….……………..7 1.4 Research Questions……………………………………………………….….9 1.5 Methods…………………………………….…………………………………….…9 2. LITERATURE AND CULTURE…………………………………………..10 2.1. The Women Detectives…...……….………………………..……………11 2.2. Working Conditions……………………….…………………….………....16 2.3. The Murderers and the Victims………………………………….….17 3. LANGUAGE AND CULTURE………………………...…………………...18 3.1. Gender and Language…………….……………………….……………….20 3.2. Swearing and Taboo……………………………………………..………….22 4. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………...24 5. BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………...…26 2 1. INTRODUCTION Ever since Edgar Allan Poe wrote what is today considered to be the very first detective short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”(1841), detective novels have fascinated a lot of people. At first the authors entertained their audience by writing exciting stories where male detectives and spies played the lead part (Berger, 1992, 81). But since then, the murder mystery has evolved and been modified many times. For example, the appearance of the female detectives first emerges in Victorian literature. In this essay I will discuss two fictive women detectives, Christie’s Miss Marple and Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski. These two detectives, and writers, belong to different times and cultures, but as readers, we must ask ourselves some basic questions before we start to compare them. Some of these questions I will consider later in section 1.4. but now in the beginning of this study the following two are of importance: Are there differences between female detectives in Sleeping Murder- Miss Marple’s Last Case and Indemnity Only? If there are, are they tied to the time in which the novels were written and are there other aspects that separate them? When we begin to read a detective novel or a story, we want to enter a different world and we want to be able to identify ourselves with the cunning detective. According to Todorov (in Berger, 1992, 83) every “whodunit” –or if you like- every classical detective story “contain[s]…two stories ─ the crime and the investigation.” I agree with Todorov’s theory that a good whodunit should have this mix of the past and the future, the past being the crime and the future being the investigation. In my opinion, every good detective novel should include a watertight puzzle with all clues given, clear structure, the presence of suspense and a touch of humour for me to go on reading it to the end. For this limited analysis I have studied only two works of two women best-selling writers, Agatha Christie, whose woman detective first emerges in the late Victorian period, and Sara Paretsky, whose novels are contemporary 3 novels. Although they write in different times and cultures, stylistically and linguistically both authors remain true to their own time and culture group. In this short analysis I will attempt to find not only contrasts but also recurring features and patterns that have been used by both writers. This study is divided into six chapters where, as I have already stated, I will analyse selected material from the detective novels. The choice of material is deliberately limited to two female writers, Agatha Christie, who writes the detective story of the 1940’s1 Sleeping Murder- Miss Marple’s Last Case and Sara Paretsky, Indemnity only, which is the newer material. These writers, just like their protagonists, come from different countries and different times. While A. Christie comes from a small town in the English countryside and is a child of Victorian society, which is visible in her works, S. Paretsky is her opposite. She comes from a big modern city in the USA, where she still lives and works. Although they write in different ways, they do have some similarities. I will take a look at these later on in chapters two and three. 1.1. Background Agatha Christie (1880 – 1976), also known as the Grand Dame of mysteries, was born September 15, 1880, in Torquay, England and was educated at home in an idyllic country setting similar to those of her novels. She left home to study music in Paris where she met and married Colonel Archibald Christie. She began to write a detective novel, which was to be published under the title The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, in response to a challenge from her sister. During her writing career Christie wrote 71 novels, eight dramas, more than 20 short stories, some poetry and travel literature. The two main protagonists in her books are 1 Since the novel has been published posthumously there is no indication of the exact time Agatha Christie wrote Sleeping Murder-Miss Marple’s Last Case, but according to J. B. Lethbridge we can assume it was written in the 1940’s and put in the safe until after her death. 4 Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple (http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC). Although her works have been published in hundreds of languages Christie, according to Sara Paretsky, “often told reporters that she regarded herself as a wife first, a writer second” (A Woman’s Eye, xi). Sara Paretsky (1947 -) was born in Ames, Iowa, but now lives in Chicago, which is also where her detective Warshawski lives and works. She started her career as a writer in 1982 publishing Indemnity Only and has since published ten novels. All of her novels focus on the same protagonist, Victoria Iphegenia (V. I.) Warshawski and contain many of the features of the traditional detective genre but she also brings feminist themes to what has traditionally been a field of male writers (http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/LitRC). 1.2. Summary of the Novels As we can see from the title of this subchapter, this is where I introduce the two novels with their detectives, brilliant Miss Marple and V. I. Warshawski, and their worlds, Victorian England and the modern USA. For this study, I have chosen to analyse two primary sources: Sleeping Murder-Miss Marple’s Last Case by Agatha Christie and Indemnity Only by Sara Paretsky. Sleeping Murder-Miss Marple’s Last Case was published posthumously in 1976. Therefore, we cannot be sure of the exact time Christie wrote it, but we can assume she wrote it in the twenties or thirties. It was the last book written about Miss Marple. Christie is here telling the story of a young Gwenda Reed, a newly married girl who has come from New Zealand to search for a home in England for herself and her husband. Upon finding a house in Dillmouth, a small South Coast town, she feels strangely connected to it. More than that, she 5 actually remembers the house. She remembers the wallpaper in detail in one of the rooms.2 After a while Gwenda goes to visit friends in London and they go to the theatre, where a line from Webster’s Duchess of Malfi brings to her a terrifying vision of a woman’s body lying in the hall. At this time Miss Jane Marple, another member of the theatre party, is brought into the picture. Gwenda confides her distress to Miss Marple and at that point Giles Reed, Gwenda’s husband and a big lover of detective stories, arrives. They all become intrigued with the mystery of this woman’s death, and with Miss Marple’s help, they try to solve the riddle. As I have mentioned in the background, Indemnity Only was Sara Paretsky’s first book and was published in 1982. The story is placed in modern times and starts with the vice-president of Chicago’s biggest bank who hires V. I. Warshawski, a woman sleuth,3 to find his son. But that is not the man’s real identity. In reality he is the head of the International Brotherhood of Knifegrinders, a known syndicate, and he wants V. I. to find his missing daughter. Her investigation, however, leads first to the corpse of her ‘client’s’ murdered son. In investigating the killing and continuing her search for the missing girl, Warshawski unravels a scheme involving a union leader, a gangster and quirky insurance agents along with the surprising discovery about the identity of her client. Everything and everyone is connected, but how they are connected is the mystery. Although facing violence and trigger-happy gunmen in her pursuit, V. I. Warshawski does not give up until the truth is revealed. 2 Correspondences between Gwenda’s wallpaper and the wallpaper in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper are too obvious to overlook. Although the meanings are opposite, to both of these women the wallpaper is almost tangible and represents a reflection of their lives. 3 The term sleuth means private investigator. 6 1.3. Literature Review Some of the secondary sources I use in this study are critical essays about the two main protagonists, who are women; others are articles about culture, background, even language. In The Dynamic Detective, Karin Molander Danielsson analyses the narrative voice and the players in detective fiction. She also mentions Freeman’s structure of the detective story, which can be applied to detective fiction. Edward Finegan (1999) talks about morphological information as a part of the word that carries meaning (41). But Arthur Asa Berger (1999) takes this further by analysing the methodology of Vladimir Propp’s studies of “sequential nature of narratives” which, Berger states, can be applied to analyse all kinds of text.
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