Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Simona Hájková

Representing Women in Robert Galbraith's Strike Series

Bachelor's Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D.

2019 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1. Gender Representation in Crime Fiction and Its Development 5

2. Female Investigators 10

2.1. Robin Ellacott from the Strike Series 12

2.2. The Cordelia Gray Mystery Novels 20

2.3. The Hard-boiled V. I. Warshawski 27

2.4. Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium Trilogy 31

3. The Female Criminal 39

3.1. The Ruthless Murderess 41

4. The Female Victim 47

4.1. Lula Landry 47

4.2. Female Victims as Sexual Objects 52

Conclusion 57

Bibliography 63

Summary 65

Resume 67 Introduction

Our private eye Cormoran Strike is back. He's a tough guy, burly

ex-soldier with half a leg missing, but he also went to Oxford, so

he can translate a Latin phrase before he dislocates your jaw with

his fist (...) There are so many problems with The Silkworm, least

of all the complete lack of pace or intrigue (...) if Rowling was

actually a man called Robert Galbraith, she probably wouldn't

get away with describing so many women as "curvaceous" and

adorning them with "clinging " dresses. (Hamilton 46)

The quotation comes from a rather ironic review of the second instalment of Robert

Galbraith's detective series, The Silkworm, by Ben Hamilton, published in The

Spectator. The text touches upon a delicate topic, since, by the time of the review's publication, it was widely known that Robert Galbraith is, in fact, a pen name of

J. K. Rowling, who decided to publish her detective stories under a male name. It might be observed that the author of the Harry Potter fantasy is well-known for her feminist and philanthropic statements and comments, which she very often shares via her social media pages, interviews, and more importantly, by her writing:

Now, I consider myself to be a feminist, and I'd always wanted to show that just

because a woman has made a choice, a free choice to say, "Well, I'm going to

raise my family and that's going to be my choice. I may go back to a career, I

may have a career part time, but that's my choice." (Weiss)

The present author, therefore, decided further to explore the issue of gender representation by this prominent female author, focusing on the way in which gender, or

1 more precisely, female characters are depicted in Rowling's detective series. All of the essential characters of all crime fiction narratives, that is, the criminal, the victim, and the investigator, and how these are delineated and employed by Rowling will be analysed in this thesis. For each of the analytical chapters, a historical context summarising the conventions and typical tropes of the genre will be provided.

In the centre of Rowling's detective series are characters of the private detective

Cormoran Strike and his co-worker Robin Ellacott. Strike is an ex-army member, who is incapacitated because of the loss of his calf he suffered when serving in Afghanistan.

In the first novel, The Cuckoo's Calling, Strike is desperately trying to keep his business running despite his debts. Robin Ellacott is a university drop-out, who moves to London to live with her fiance there, and she eventually helps Strike to keep and build up his private investigative agency. As the series proceeds and their relationship evolves,

Strike and Ellacott as private investigators solve several cases, which involve various characters from a victim who suffers from BHD (Body Integrity Identity Disorder) to a young schizophrenic man and a transgender woman. Rowling's detective series have also been adapted into the television mini-series Strike. The adaptations of the three novels, that is, of The Cuckoo's Calling, The Silkworm, and Career of Evil, have been broadcasted on BBC One, staring Tom Burke as Cormoran Strike and Holliday

Grainger as Robin Ellacott.

In the first instalment of the series, The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), Strike and

Ellacott investigate the assumed suicide of a mixed-race model named Lula Landry. In the second instalment, The Silkworm (2014), Strike's agency is to investigate a brutal murder of a writer named Owen Quine, whose murderess is, in fact, his old friend and colleague Elizabeth Tassel. The third instalment, Career of Evil (2015), introduces a character of the serial killer named Donald Laining and a number of his victims, 2 including Robin Ellacott, who, fortunately, manages to overpower him. In the latest novel of the series, Lethal White (2018), Strike and Ellacott are hired to investigate the murder of the minister of culture. Over the course of the series, Robin's role evolves from a temporary secretary to a capable investigator and best friend to Strike; the nature of Robin's and Cormoran's relationship changes, too, as they eventually fall in love with each other.

The present thesis is divided into four main chapters. In the first one, the general concept of the traditional way in which women have been depicted in crime fiction narratives is provided. This chapter addresses the historical contexts of the narratives written in several distinct eras of the past, that is, the Victorian era, the Golden Age era, and the era of the feminist movements. As we will see, the social context of each of these periods influenced its literature. In the Victorian era, for instance, women were dictated their roles and proper behaviour in both personal and public spheres, resulting in typical female characters of either victims or catalysts for men's crimes.

The second chapter introduces an analysis of the leading female character of the

Strike series, Robin Ellacott. Analyses of other significant female investigators of recent past follow, providing a comparison of Ellacott to the way in which the characters of

Cordelia Gray by P. D. James, V. I. Warshawski by Sara Paretsky, and the character of

Lisbeth Salander by Stieg Larsson, were pictured in their detective series. In each of these sub-chapters, the issues and areas where those characters, as women, struggled are analysed, along with the topic of violence against women, which is addressed vastly by

Rowling in the third instalment of her series, Career of Evil. With respect to the topic of violence against women, the sexual aspect of it is involved in the analysis as well, especially regarding the cases of Robin and Lisbeth.

3 The third chapter provides an analysis of Rowling's female criminal Elizabeth

Tassel. This chapter introduces the traditional picture of a female criminal, along with the ones by P. D. James and Stieg Larsson. The analysis of Elizabeth Tassel is confronted with the criminals of James's and Larsson's, which provide a comparison between the ruthless murderess Tassel and women, whose criminal behaviour is, more likely, a result of a certain deprivation which they experienced in the past.

The last chapter is dedicated to the depiction of Rowling's female victims. The first analysis is aimed at a murdered mix-raced model named Lula Landry, the other to a number of victims of the serial killer Donald Laining, who targets his victims because of their gender. In this chapter, Rowling's special emphasis on the sexual aspect of

Laining's violence against women is addressed, along with the way in which Larsson deals with the same issue in his Millennium Trilogy.

4 1. Gender Representation in Crime Fiction and Its

Development

In her study Key Concepts in Crime Fiction, Heather Worthington claims that during the 19th and 20th centuries, certain social conventions existed which dictated proper masculine and feminine proper behaviour - something that was naturally reflected in literature including crime fiction. For centuries, women were considered the weaker sex which relied on emotions rather than logic and which was supposed to be submissive in both the private and public social spheres. Contrary to that, men were perceived as the strong sex, employing rationality and science. Those conventions determined men as active in the social sphere and dominant over women in private life (Worthington 41).

In the crime fiction written during the 19th and early 20th centuries, a specific concept of male and female characters and their roles in the plot was established. This concept was shaped by strict gender norms, which clearly defined roles for both men and women, and society's answer to any deviation from these norms could be very severe, especially in case of women not adhering to behaviour expected of them. In crime fiction, men were thus usually the perpetrators or the ones to solve the crime.

Detectives were of male sex because of their believed nature of a rational human being with the ability to employ science. As Heather Worthington claims, "professional and the satisfactory resolution and closure of crime narratives are also strongly gendered as masculine" (Worthington 41).

Secondly, according to Worthington, gender expectations in crime fiction also entailed the nature or character of crime, which was different for women and men. It was usually men who trespassed laws, committing murders, violence, theft, etc.

5 Women, on the other hand, were usually depicted as "the passive victims or the catalyst of crime" (Worthington 41). Crime in crime fiction was, therefore, usually a male domain. When criminal behaviour of females occurred, it mostly involved their sexuality and transgression of gender norms, which was a rare case for men (with the exception of homosexuality). Women's criminal behaviour was an act of violence against conventions determining proper female roles and sexual behaviour, a number of crimes committed by females being linked to improper employment of women's sexuality, such as prostitution and use of their sexuality to deceive men

(Worthington 42-43). As Worthington notes, if a murder committed by a woman occurred in crime fiction, it was always as a reaction to bad treatment by a man; a woman still persists to be a victim and her crime was committed "under strong provocation" (Worthington 44).

It was part of the popular opinion that, for women, it was easier to sin because of them being too emotional and less intelligent than men. It was, therefore, believed that women needed to be controlled by men to prevent both the crime and the sin - in other words, to prevent them from being "doubly-deviant" (Worthington 42, 45). On that account, the development of active and positive female protagonists was slowed down; indeed, as Worthington notes, "from a male perspective the female detective is seen to equally gender-transgressing as her criminal counterpart" (Worthington 42).

On the contrary to that statement, Pavlina Drsova, in her diploma thesis

Representation of Women in Selected Novels by Agatha Christie and P.D. James

(2004), observes that some female amateur detectives appeared in English literature as early as the middle of the 19th century. Referring to Chris Willis and his words in The

Female Sherlock: 'Lady Detectives' in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction', Drsova maintains that the creation of the new character of the female detective was jointly 6 affected by "the rise of the detective story with growing pressure for women's rights"

(13). Fairly popular female amateur detectives from the 1860s were Eleanor Vane by

Mary Elizabeth Braddon (described by Willis as "the most inept") and somewhat more efficient female detectives by Wilkie Collins. In addition, first female investigators did not appear only on the English literary scene. In America, the so-called mother of detective fiction (who was an inspiration for Agatha Christie), Anna Katherine Green introduced two novel series with the characters of female detectives, Miss Amelia

Butterworth (1878) and Violet Strange (1915) (Drsova 14). Although Drsova's thesis does not devote much space to an analysis of these particular series, from the brief picture which is given to the readers, it is obvious that the abovementioned female characters can hardly be described as detectives and investigators fully equal to their male counterparts, unlike those described later on in this chapter.

According to Worthington, one of the main reasons for the change in the gender- related tropes within the genre was World War I and its aftermath on the British and

American societies. The fact that men were, during the war, replaced in work meant that women were freed from their domestic roles and, once the war was over, they refused to re-take them. That brought a change in social conventions and only afterwards were females finally depicted as both criminals and investigators, rather than just passive victims or the reason for men's crime (Worthington 47).

For instance, this change is apparent in Agatha Christie's novels which include

Hercule Poirot, as the detective protagonist, but also contain stories where "the association of female criminality with gender transgression and deviant sexuality is less fixed" (Worthington 46). Christie also created an amateur detective named Miss

Marple, an elderly spinster, who is present in a number of novels and short stories, and who fits the newly-changed era as a female investigator. Along with novels of Dorothy 7 L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, other female authors of detective novels, Agatha Christie represents the Golden Age of detective fiction. Christie, Sayers,

Allingham and Marsh are together called the "Four Queens" of Crime (Drsova 14).

As Worthington maintains, old gender stereotypes still partly persisted in certain crime fiction stories written even after World War I, especially in hard-boiled detective fiction. Female criminals were highly sexualised and their criminal behaviour was of a sexual character, too, "as if unable to admit that women are capable of premeditated murder" (45). Very often, their crimes were considered madness and insanity, for instance Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective story The Big Sleep (1939), which features Carmen Sternwood, depicted as an overly sexualised and jilted murderess, whose criminal behaviour is excused by presumed madness (Worthington 45).

The motive of insanity was also present in earlier crime fiction, for example in

Arthur Conan Doyle's crime novels featuring the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. In

Doyle's stories, women tend to be depicted according to the conventional pattern as victims or catalysts, perhaps as "Doyle's conservative response to the rise of the 'New

Women' and the contemporary demand for female suffrage" (Worthington 44). If there is a murderess depicted, her criminal behaviour is caused by either her derangement or bad treatment by a man (Worthington 44).

As mentioned before, the aftermath of World War I on society also meant that female investigators and detectives were finally part of crime fiction stories; yet not in the same way as their male counterparts, indicating that gender norms were still prevalent in society and, consequently, reflected in literature of the period. Female investigators were usually elderly and asexual women, only helping the male detectives.

As Worthington highlights, "Detection is still only a suitable job for some women, generally those apparently beyond the age of sexual desire and no longer in need of 8 masculine protection" (47). Eventually, the social norms, which dictated expected behaviour for both women and men, begun to fade away. Female sexual and personal emancipation beginning in the 1960s followed and culminated in the feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. This has influenced society and brought a change in the genre, just as World War I, even though it was still a process and not a sudden turn.

By the beginning of the 21st century, female protagonists are no longer identified solely by their sexuality and perform all the activities which their male counterparts do

(Worthington 47-48).

In the context of the American culture scene, the character of a female detective is discussed in more detail in the Hardboiled and High-heeled: The Woman Detective in

Popular Culture (2004) by Lind Mizejewski, who mentions that "a professional woman investigator was a historical rarity until 1970s due to historical aspects of professional law enforcement since until the beginning of 1970s women comprised only one per cent of federal agents and police" (Mizejewski 15-16). According to Mizejewski, the turning point for the appearance of the "first serious professional [female] investigators" was the year 1982, when novel series with female private investigators by Sue Grafton and

Sara Paretsky were introduced. By the 1990s, American book market, "which had been primarily male in its heroes and topics", is full of heroines of crime fiction by authors such as Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Nevada Barr, and Linda Barnes. As

Mizejewski remarks, not only white and/or straight investigators of either sex are present(17).

9 2. Female Investigators

A following sub-chapter of my thesis will be dedicated to an analysis of J. K. Rowling's leading female character Robin Ellacott. Following the analysis of this character, certain characteristics of Ellacott will be analysed in comparison to several leading female characters of crime fiction by the authors of P. D. James, Sara Paretsky and Stieg

Larsson. All of these authors created independent female investigators each featuring in a different era and setting, which provide an opportunity to see the evolvement and change in the way female characters of investigators have been depicted.

P. D. James is said to create "undoubtedly one of the better known female investigators of the seventies" (Klein 153), though James preferred to focus on her more successful male character Adam Dalgleish and her mystery novel series featuring

Cordelia Gray contain merely two volumes. As Klein observes, "the different attitudes and expectations authors and readers have of professional women and men became clear in comparing female and male characters created by a single writer" (152). The male detective is described as an admirable, intelligent and successful "neither infallible nor inept" (152); contrary to him, the female investigator Gray is described as

"intelligent and having powers of observation", yet also as being "too young, too sweet and sincere, too unsure of her ability" (155). Even though the second novel was published after a ten-year gap, Klein notes that Gray is described as not confident enough to take on challenging cases; and if so, as is the main plot of the second novel, she fails and makes the same mistakes as in the first novel. In other words, Klein emphasizes James's ability to write a successful detective novel (featuring the male detective) and claims that by the way Gray is described - as "young, inexperienced and

10 tentative at the beginning and the end" - James provides "a sharp contrast between the presentation of a women detective and the male model" (158). Though, it is regarded that James's female investigator Cordelia Gray was a forerunner for more professionally successful American female private detectives of the 1980s, for instance the character by of V. I. Warshawski. James herself was described "as a 'bridge' between Golden

Age writers like Agatha Christie and later feminist writers" (Lindsay 124).

V. I. Warshawski, created by the American author Sara Paretsky in a diverted hard-boiled genre, V. I. Warshawski is said to be "fit, intelligent and self-contained female investigator" (Horsley and Rzepka 264). I have chosen this particular character because Paretsky is regarded as being highly influential in creating a strong and successful female investigator, who faces violence and is capable to perform it similarly like her male hard-boiled counterpart. Though Warshawski is regarded as a successful private detective, the presence of her vulnerability as a woman facing violence from men is often present (Horsley and Rzepka 264-65). As Kathleen Klein claims, "she

[Warshawski] is willing to force people to provide information, even though she is occasionally disgusted with her tactics; she will inflict and accept pain as a means to her ends" (214).

The last character which will be used as a part of this analysis is the hacker

Lisbeth Salander by Stieg Larsson. Despite being set in Sweden, the Millennium

Trilogy featuring this female investigator is familiar to English and American readers.

Since the novels were a major hit all over the world with 60 million copies sold by 2011 in more than 50 countries, they were also adapted into major American films (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2011, dir. David Fincher, and The Girl in the Spider's Web,

2018, dir. Fede Alvarez).

11 2.1. Robin Ellacott from the Strike Series

The female character which is depicted in most detail in the Strike series is the detective's partner Robin Ellacott, who starts as a temporary secretary but evolves into a capable investigator and Strike's working partner. Even though she is officially employed as a secretary, it only takes a little while for Strike to understand her professional personality traits which prove to be very useful in the investigative field.

At the beginning of the series, readers get to know Robin Ellacott as a Yorkshire psychology drop-out, who decides to move to the capital to live with her partner

Matthew. Throughout the four novels, published so far, Ellacott as the leading female character and investigator faces many personal and working challenges, through which

Ellacott fully evolves into an independent investigator who is equally a professional partner to Strike and an independent woman who can stand on her own two feet.

In the first novel, The Cuckoo's Calling (2013), Ellacott as a character has only a supporting role as she is officially employed merely as a temporary secretary and decides to stay permanently at the end of the novel. Readers get only a limited insight into Ellacott's perspective of struggling between a job that fascinates her and the fact that her partner and fiance does not approve of her poorly paid employment, which was supposed to be only temporary. As Ellacott admits, the tasks she is supposed to do as an assistant "had given her a sense of importance she had rarely experienced during her working life" (The Cuckoo's Calling 62). Strikes appreciate her initiative and observation skills, admitting that she helped him a lot with the case which saved his agency: "I couldn't have done it without you (...) You've been incredible, your new place is lucky to have you" (546-47).

12 Ellacott's struggle between keeping her relationship happy and doing the job which is fulfilling for her is present throughout the entire Strike series. The fact that

Ellacott refuses to give up on the job and, by extension, on Strike as a friend and companion is gradually cracking her relationship, which seemed to stable until the moment she started to work for the detective agency permanently. This is what keeps

Ellacott's private life in constant tension. Initially, Robin tries to befriend her partner and boss in an attempt to suppress the tension between the two spheres of her life represented by each men - Matthew representing the personal one and Strike her devotion for the job: "She wanted to tug the working life that she had never enjoyed so much closer to the personal life that currently refused to meld with it"

(The Silkworm 82).

With the arising issues between Ellacott and her partner, she prefers to devote all her time to the job, gradually starting to see the side of Matthew she had not known before: "Never before had she known Matthew quite like that; or at least, never before had she seen him like that ... Strike had somehow made her see Matthew through his eyes" (The Silkworm 98). Ellacott is struggling to fight this feeling until the last novel,

Lethal White, when she is fully aware of the fact that she no longer can live with

Matthew, whom she started to see as "pompous and self-involved man, who reminded her of a handsome boy she had once loved" (204). At this point, Ellacott feels rather repulsed by him and his obsessive manners to seize control over their relationship and

Ellacott as well but stands her ground:

She heard the fabric around the zip tear and when she began to protest, he

clamped his mouth on hers again (...) She knew that he was waiting for her to

stop him, that she was being tested in an ugly, underhand way (...) But she had

13 fought too long and too hard to regain her possession of her own body to barter

it in this way {Lethal White 279).

One thing worth mentioning is also the difference between the way Ellacott is seen and treated by her working partner Strike and her life partner Matthew. In general, Robin is in many moments described as very pretty and attractive woman, capturing attention of many men ("Male heads turned to look at her as she walked to the bar" [Silkworm 270]) and even Strike's: "Robin was standing there in her trench coat, her face pink, long red- gold hair loose, tousled and gilded in the early sunlight streaming through the window.

Just then, Strike found her beautiful" {The Silkworm 179).

It is also Strike who notices her personal qualities from the very beginning following recognition of her working qualities. Ellacott is described by Strike at various times as very competent and capable of initiative which impresses him. Strike is very well aware of the fact that Robin is his working partner, who helps him a lot, especially when dealing with people ("Her charm and ease of manners had allayed suspicion, opened doors, smoothed Strike's path a hundred times" [Career of Evil 77]).

Furthermore, she is also described as very tactful and discreet, which is one of the main reasons Strike thinks highly of Ellacott and enjoys her company ("She had more tact than any women he had ever met" [The Cuckoo's Calling 201]), realising that Robin is

"the only female in Strike's life who seemed to have no desire to improve or correct him" {The Silkworm 55). On the other hand, even though Strike respects Ellacott and holds her dear, there are still certain moments when he underestimates her. To set an example, this specific one is based on his bias towards women in general: "he had a secret but deep-rooted aversion to women drivers" {Lethal White 338-39).

In contrast, Matthew does not seem to appreciate his fiancee the way Strike does. At the beginning, Matthew seems to be irritated by, and jealous of, Strike, 14 claiming that being a private detective was not a proper job, especially with the low salary which goes with it. In Robin's words, "the fact was that Matthew had very little imagination" (The Silkworm 337) and could not accept the fact that Ellacott, his life- partner, is finally doing something she likes and is acknowledged for doing it right:

"Robin felt as though her own worth had been impugned. Strike had seemed interested in the things she had found online. Strike expressed gratitude for her efficiency and initiative" (The Cuckoo's Calling 87).

Even though the real reason for Ellacott's dropping out of university has not been revealed to readers at this moment, she describes that Matthew's irritation with her current work is "the thick miasma of jealousy through which he heard everything connected to Strike" rather than caring about Ellacott's safety (The Silkworm 338). As readers get to know in the third novel, Robin was a victim of rape while studying at university, and despite of it, Matthew's "antipathy for her job owed nothing to protectiveness" (The Silkworm 338).

In the Career of Evil, when the serial killer sends Robin a women's leg, it is

Strike who is extremely worried about Robin's safety, realizing her vulnerability as a woman and a possible target of the murderer, admitting that: "If his employee had been male, he would not currently feel so worried" (76). In contrast, Matthew does not fully understand the danger Robin is in, not taking her job seriously enough:

Matthew had been appalled at her news, but even so, she had heard a faint trace

of satisfaction in his voice, felt his unexpressed conviction that now, at last, she

must see what a ridiculous choice it had been to throw in her lot with a rackety

private detective" (27-28).

Furthermore, in Lethal White, during their last argument, Matthew, on the verge of the collapse of their marriage, uses verbal assaults against Ellacott when calling her a 15 "bitch" and using the rape against her as to accuse her of "bailing out on" things including their marriage in his hysteric effusion of jealousy against Strike:

You bailed out on uni. Now you're bailing on us. You even bailed on your

therapist. You're a fucking flake. The only thing you haven't run out on is this

stupid job that's half-killed you, and you got sacked from that. He only took you

back because he wants to get into your pants. And he probably can't get anyone

else so cheap. (487)

Strike and Matthew do not like each before nor after they meet for the first time.

Matthew is jealous not only because of Robin, but also because of Strike's achievements: "his [Strike's] silence on these subjects had been almost more irritating.

Strike's heroism, his action-packed life, his experiences of travel and danger had somehow hovered, spectrally, over the conversation" (The Silkworm 98).

Strike, on the other hand, is at first glad for Matthew's existence in Robin's life:

"Matthew sounded like a dickhead (Robin little imagined how accurately Strike remembered each of her casual asides about her fiance), but he imposed a useful barrier between Strike and a girl who might otherwise disturb his equilibrium"

(The Silkworm 34). The way Matthew treats Robin is fully showed when Strike meets

Ellacott's fiance for the first time and the contrast between these two men's behaviour towards Robin is so clear:

"That long?" said Strike, surprised. "What, were you at university together?"

"School," said Robin, smiling. "Sixth form."

"Wasn't a big school," said Matthew. "She was the only girl with any brains

who was fanciable. No choice."

Tosser, thought Strike. (The Silkworm 97)

16 There is a clear parallel between Strike's and Ellacott's private and working lives. They meet each other at the moment when Strike is facing both working and personal crisis - his sixteen year relationship has ended in a disaster and his agency seems to meet the same fate. Ellacott, on the other hand, seems to be in the happiest phase of her life - she has just got engaged and is looking for a permanent job. At this moment those two leading characters are naturally different from each other: Strike is a private detective who is very capable and experienced in the investigative field despite the fact that his agency is struggling to keep up and his private life is yet very unhappy; Ellacott is not trained in investigating but capable of it just like Strike, and her personal relationship does not seem to have any flaws. However, the more time Ellacott spends to improve in her job, the more issues in her relationship with Matthew arises. When the reader gets a brief opportunity to share Matthew's perspective in The Silkworm, he, Matthew expresses a concern about Ellacott's behaviour, which is different from what he was used to:

He had noticed lately something that he knew he ought not to complain about

(...) Before she had worked for Strike, Robin had always been first to back

down in a row; first to apologise, but her conciliatory nature seemed to have

been warped by the stupid bloody job (176).

In a sense, while Strike and Ellacott are starting to be equally capable in the job they both love and share, the personal spheres of their life are getting equally tensed and unhappy. Both of them seemed to focus on their job to forget, even for a while, about their personal struggles, as Strikes does after finding out his ex-fiancee's engagement:

"Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice"

(The Silkworm 466). Both Strike and Ellacott chose to end their long-term relationships which turned out to be highly dysfunctional. Strike refuses to get back together with the 17 woman he loved for sixteen years after being emotionally wrenched by her lies and infidelity. Despite the fact that Matthew was "the axis of her life, the fixed centre"

(The Silkworm 300) for Ellacott, she, too, leaves him after realizing that their relationship cannot be fixed.

Lind Mizejewski, in her Hardboiled and High-heeled: The Woman Detective in Popular Culture, claims that the woman detective story brings a new element of female detectives challenging the system which dictates that a romance and marriage is the only possible story for women. As Mizejewski notes, "When romance occur in the popular series by Janet Evanovich, Cornwell, and Grafton, it's bound to be a problem, not a solution, in this way remarkably akin to real life" (11). There is a strong parallel to this assumption in the Strike series not only in case of Ellacott, but also in case of the leading (male) character Strike, whose sixteen-year on and off relationship was full of his partner's emotional blackmailing, infidelity and insecurity. Ellacott's long-term relationship ends in a divorce after a long time of mutual tension and resentment between Ellacott and Matthew caused by many reasons, one of them being the fact she did not give up on a job her partner Matthew hates and, of course, his repetitive infidelity.

In this context, Mizejewski mentions female investigators, one of them for instance V. I. Warshawski by Sara Paretsky, who "love and sleep with men" but do not actively look for a man to marry. Ellacott has been in a relationship with one man for most of her lifetime; she mentions many times that she wants to marry Matthew because she loves him. However, when the romance ends, she does not hurry to find somebody else immediately. Mizejewski notes: "Why would the detective heroine, besieged by sexist institutions and violent men, trust any man enough for a long-time commitment?"

(11). This is reflected in the last novel of the series, Lethal White, during Ellacott and 18 Matthew's last argument over their marriage and breakup. Ellacott honestly admits that if it was not for the rape, perhaps, she and Matthew would not be together and married.

In Ellacott's words, Mathew was "the safest man" to her after the rape that had naturally influenced her heavily. He is the man whom she has known for so long so he, naturally, seemed to be "the only one she could trust" (Lethal White 488).

Ironically, it is Ellacott's "safest man" Matthew that betrays her trust by cheating on her when she is at her most vulnerable, being forced to leave the university due to psychic problems following the rape. Even though Ellacott tries hard to reconcile with her husband, in the end, he, too resorts towards abusive behaviour, in fact connected to the intimate part of their relationship:

For the first time ever, Robin had sex with Matthew that night purely because

she could not face the row that would ensue if she refused. It was their

anniversary, so they had to have sex (...) Tears stung her eyes as Matthew

climaxed, and that cold, unhappy self buried deep her compliant body wondered

why he could not feel her unhappiness (Lethal White 205).

Ellacott herself is unsure and surprised by the fact that her sympathy turns to her working partner and "the only friend in London" Strike, who has treated her equally and with respect from the very beginning. Even though Ellacott's life is, just like in the case of Paretsky (see Chapter 2.3), marked by "abusive men and violence directed at women" (Mizejewski 11), she eventually learns how to fully stand for herself and her peace of mind because "she had fought too long and too hard to regain her possession of her own body to barter it in this way" (Lethal White 279).

19 2.2. The Cordelia Gray Mystery Novels

Phyllis Dorothy James, known professionally as P. D. James, was an English author of crime fiction novels featuring investigators Adam Dalgliesh and Cordelia Gray.

Detective novels containing the character of the private detective Cordelia Gray

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), will be analysed in this sub-chapter. In the earlier of the two novels, private detective Cordelia

Gray, who inherited the agency after her boss's Bernie Pryde suicide, is hired by Sir

Ronald Callender to investigate the apparent suicide of his son Mark, a Cambridge drop-out student, who supposedly hung himself. During her investigation in Cambridge,

Gray faces attempts of intimidation and even real attack when being trapped in a well.

Despite all the attempts of the victim's friends and the murderer to discourage Gray from her investigation, she finally resolves the crime, confronts Sir Ronald Callender and accuses him of murdering his son Mark.

In the latter (and last) mystery novel, The Skull Beneath the Skin, private detective Gray is hired to protect threatened actress Clarissa Lisle during her stay at

Courcy Island's castle. Unfortunately, Gray fails to do so and feels obliged to solve

Lisle's murder. At the end of the novel, exhausted Gray decides to direct her agency to finding lost pets.

There are several parallels between the stories of James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Rowling's The Cuckoo's Calling. Apart from the fact that both books are first novels of the series, essential elements of the plots are very similar. In both cases a private detective is hired to clarify death which has been closed by police as a suicide.

As Rowland describes, the suicide is a symbol for "the failure of the police to restore the symbolic order of society" (106), which is present in both of the novels.

20 During their investigation, the private detectives need to delve into manners and affairs of the victim's family, which leads the respective detective to a successful disclosure of the crime and a confrontation of the murderer. In both cases, the character who hired the private detective to investigate the apparent suicide is the murderer. In both novels, there are burdensome family secrets which are uncovered during the investigation: in the Cordelia Gray mystery, it is the fact that the victim's father's assistant, Miss Learning, is in fact the victim's biological mother; in The Cuckoo's

Calling, it is the clarification of an accident in which the murderer's stepbrother Charlie died as a result of being pushed into the quarry by Jack, the murderer, when they were children.

Apart from the shared formulae in the plots, there are further similarities between James's and Rowling's novels when talking about their respective leading female characters. Both Gray and Ellacott come to the detective agencies to work as assistants and only after some time decide to stay for good and participate in investigations. As Susan Rowland, in her study From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell,

British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction claims, female character and private detective Cordelia Gray is an "unassisted investigator but still has to share with

Dalgliesh the final intuiting of the crime" and notes that "the detecting function is more collective (while still retaining a single detective talent)" (22). Adam Dalgliesh is the

Chief Superintendent briefly mentioned and present in the Gray novels, as he is a former superior of Bernie Pryde. According to Drsova, "romantic infatuation is born" between Gray and Dalgliesh when they meet for the first time, but any further details concerning their relationship remain obscure (36).

A similar form of relationship could be seen between Ellacott and Strike. The detective agency in which Ellacott works was founded by Strike, who formally employs 21 her, even though she helped Strike to build it up. On that account, Ellacott works together with Strike on cases and "the detecting function" described by Rowland is more collective, just like in Cordelia Gray mysteries.

Regarding Ellacott's and Strike's relationship, it is more developed and present in the novels when compared to Cordelia Gray mysteries. As far as the romantic aspect of their relationship is concerned, both Strike and Ellacott try to maintain certain professional distance and boundary, naturally made by Ellacott's engagement with

Matthew: "That little sapphire ring on her third finger was like a neat full stop: this far, and no further. It suited him perfectly" (The Cuckoo's Calling 83). Even though Strike many times remarks that Robin is very attractive ("he was also reminded every day she bent over the computer monitor that she was a very sexy girl" [The Cockoo's Calling

233]), he always respects Ellacott's commitment to her partner. In addition to that, there is no mention of any Ellacott's romantic affection towards Strike until the last novel,

Lethal White. Robin even once in The Cuckoo's Calling, mentions that "the mere possibility of Strike making any kind of pass was extremely distasteful to her", which, of course, eventually changes (294).

With the slow deterioration of Ellacott's marriage and Strike's series of failed relationships, new aspect of their, formerly exclusively friendly, relationship, is starting to shape up. In the third novel, Career of Evil, both Strike and Ellacott start to think about each other in a little different way than before, and there is a slight sense of a sexual tension between them. Strike has known, from the first encounter with Robin, that if it wasn't for her fiance, Strike wouldn't see Robin only as a colleague; and once

Robin says that the wedding is off, Strike starts to think about her differently: "She was alone, he knew, in the Ealing flat, while Matthew was home in Masham (...) A vision of himself and Robin in the Tottenham had bloomed in his head, a vision of where a phone 22 call might lead." (287). In Robin's case, she starts to feel uncertain about the character of her feelings for Strike after learning about Matthew's infidelity: "She still felt strangely unsettled, knowing that she was sleeping five rooms away from Strike (...)

Her unruly imagination suddenly presented her with sound of the knock on the door,

Strike inviting himself in on some slim pretext..." (252).

In Lethal White, it is obvious that both Strike and Ellacott have deeper feelings for each other, which are revealed openly for the first time. At Ellacott's wedding,

Strike is "forced to recognise how long, and how deeply, he had hoped that Robin would not marry" because, in that case, there would be possibility for them to "find out what else they could be to each other" as he is watching the newlywed Ellacott dance with her husband {Lethal White 23).

One year later, Ellacott and Strike are in an oddly estranged relationship, filled with emotional tension on both sides as they both try to maintain a professional distance from each other: "The emotional distance between the detective partners had become a simple fact of daily existence" (Lethal White 32). Strike, despite being clearly in love with Ellacott, is in a new relationship with another woman, and cannot understand the reason why Robin chose to stay with her husband; Ellacott, being unsure about her own feelings for Strike, decides to stay with her husband, despite a persisting tension between them. As it is revealed to the reader, this state of Ellacott's and Strike's relationship is due to a misunderstanding on both sides, and their following incompetence to sort it out: "They were polite pleasant and formal witch each other, talking about their private lives in the broadest brushstrokes, and then only when necessary" (33). Their mutual resentment changes during the novel, when both Ellacott and Strike are frustrated in their relationships and manage to find a way back to each other: "There was no awkwardness between them, but the air seemed charged, 23 somehow, with things wondered and unspoken" (233). At the end of Lethal White, they are both free from their previous commitments, open for their possible relationship:

"They parted with a wave, concealing from each other the slight smile that each wore once safely walking away, pleased do know that they would meet again in a few short hours" (647).

As far as the investigative element is concerned, according to Rowland, detective Gray faces "an erosion of boundaries between professional detachment and her investigations" when she is hired to investigate supposed suicide of Mark who lost his mother during childhood (115). Cordelia Gray, who herself lost her mother when child, finds it difficult to not identify herself with the victim, in addition to the fact that she is staying in a place where Mark spent his last days and died there (Rowland 106).

In a similar way, Ellacott herself, in the Career of Evil, is a trained and more experienced investigator than she used to be; however, she cannot maintain the professional detachment and identifies herself with the female victims of the serial killer as she keeps having dreams about being one of his victims:

She felt her attacker's thick arms around her again and heard him breathing in

her ear. Sometimes the eyes she had not seen became the eyes of the rapist when

she was nineteen: pale, one pupil fixed. Behind their black balaclava and gorilla

mask, thee nightmare figures merged, mutated and grew, filling her mind day

and night. (500)

Moreover, Ellacot, who is a rape survivor, is once again unable to keep her distance from the paedophile and his victims. That moment Ellacott, is willing to risk everything, including her life, to save the children, even though it means to go against her friend and boss Strike:

24 No, she could not save everyone. It was too late for Martina, for Sadie, for

Kelsey and for Heather. Lila would spend the rest of her days with two fingers

on her left hand and a grisly scar across her psyche that Robin understood only

too well. However, there were also two young girls who faced God knows how

much more suffering if nobody acted. (Career of Evil 505)

In this sense, there is a strong parallel between Cordelia Gray in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Robin Ellacott in the Career of Evil. Even though both women have to face intimidation and even a real attack, neither Ellacott nor Gray withdraws and, eventually, they both overpower their male attackers.

Moreover, both the investigators, Gray and Ellacott, have to face doubts whether they are capable enough to do the tasks. Cordelia Gray inherits the agency while being inexperienced in crime investigation and having doubts about her own abilities to carry on with the business by herself. In addition to that, as Drsova mentions, in the second novel The Skull Beneath the Skin "she [Cordelia] feels less confident because of the result of her first investigation, which ended up rather unsuccessfully" (34). Robin

Ellacott, on the other hand, faces doubts on the part of her family and partner whether she is mentally strong enough to remain in a job which involves being in a direct contact with the danger of being attacked again. Just like Gray, Ellacott proves her mental strength and overcomes these doubts, continuing in her job.

The main difference between Gray and Ellacott lies in the way in which they come to terms with the negative feelings provoked by violent cases. Drsova describes

Gray's decision to redirect her agency from investigating crimes to finding lost pets as a result of physical exhaustion after every "close encounter with the unnecessary losses of people's lives" (31).

25 In contrast, Ellacott is going through a very rough time in the Career of Evil in terms of both her working and personal life. She faces intimidation from a serial killer by being sent a woman's leg and a breakup of her long-term relationship upon learning about her fiance's infidelity. However, "she refused to break down; all that was holding her together was her ability to keep moving forwards, to keep doing the job" (Career of

Evil 312). The intimidation Ellacott faces naturally shakes her, but she obstinately resists feelings she had once experienced:

A vast unfocused rage rose in her, against men who considered displays of

emotions a delicious open door; men who ogled your breasts under the pretence

of scanning the wine shelves; men for whom your mere physical presence

constituted a lubricious invitation (Career of Evil 352).

Even after being attacked by the serial killer in the Career of Evil, Ellacott stubbornly refuses any possibilities of withdrawal: "She could barely sleep, she did not want to eat, but furiously she dug in, denying her own needs and fears" (500). Ellacott does not want to leave London, even though it is obvious she would be safe out of the capital. In this sense, Ellacott is not leaving for the safety of her home city because it would mean a loss of liberty which she has experienced:

Robin felt as though she were fighting all over again for the identities she had

been forced to relinquish the last time a man had lunged at her out of the

darkness. He had transformed her from a straight-A student into an emaciated

agoraphobic, from an aspiring forensic psychologist into a defeated girl who

agreed with her overbearing family that police work would only exacerbate her

mental problems. (500)

26 In Lethal White, suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder after the previous attack by the serial killer, Ellacott once again refuses to get "sidelined" and "lose the only part of her life that she currently found fulfilling" (Lethal White 54).

2.3. The Hard-boiled V. I. Warshawski

In this sub-chapter, I would like to analyse the character of female private detective

Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski created by Sara Paretsky, the American author of detective stories featuring aforementioned private detective Warshawski and two other novels entitles Ghost Country (1998) and Bleeding Kansas (2008).

The first Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only, was published in 1982. Adrienne

E. Gavin has described the genre of Paretsky's novels as "rewriting the male hard- boiled tradition into a counter-tradition as a part of a feminist response" (qtd. in Horsley and Rzepka 265). Paretsky's contribution is deemed as very influential by Kathleen

G. Klein who claims that Sara Paretsky "has perhaps the strongest voice among the new women mystery writers in the United States" (Irons 8). Paretsky described herself as being influenced by the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which was

"important in freeing her from familial expectations and allowing her to leave the domestic realm" (Horsley and Rzepka 523).

V. I. Warshawski is a former public attorney based in Chicago, described as

"single, intelligent, and in her thirties" (Horsley and Rzepka 265). In the first novel,

Indemnity Only, Warshawski has just left her employment, got divorced and decided for a career of a private investigator. As Elizbateh B. Lindsay notes in the Warshawski novels Paretsky tackles a great number of social issues, for example medical malpractice, child abuse, treatment of the homeless, religious fanaticism etc. Paretsky herself says that "the stories that matter most to her are those of people who are powerless and voiceless" (Lindsay 200). A motive of corruption and fraud is very common throughout the novels as well, and Warshawski, being an ex-public defender, often employs her knowledge of law and finance in her investigations (Lindsay 199).

J. K. Rowling touches upon certain social issues in the Strike series as well. The

(male) private detective Cormoran Strike has got history of living in squats as a child with his troubled mother. The (female) private detective Robin Ellacott was a victim of sexual assault and the topic of violence against women is the main part of the plot

Rowling's third detective novel, Career of Evil. Both detectives, Strike and Ellacott, are wounded in a way - Strike physically as a result of losing a leg in Afghanistan and

Ellacott mentally as an aftermath of the rape. They both carry a heavy burden but do not hesitate to take on cases with no prospect of financial reward for it, because the detectives seem to be the only ones to help, as in The Silkworm and Lethal White.

The presence of violence against women is typical for hard-boiled crime fiction and its feminist transformation into the sub-genre of female hard-boiled crime fiction is not different (Irons 14). As Adrienne E. Gavin notes:

Women are victims: captured, raped, murdered, butchered and in the hands of

forensic detectives dissected into evidence. In emphasizing violence against

women, feminist detective fiction makes a gendered protest. It also implies a

gendered question: if even the detective figure is violated and attacked, is justice

possible? (Horsley and Rzepka 268)

Warshawski is many times during her investigations attacked and wounded, the injuries she suffers are very often long term and memories of them are present for a long time

(Irons 14). Similarly, Ellacott's injuries and the memories of them are present in the last two novels {Career of Evil and Lethal White) as a reminder of what she had to endure. In both the series, detectives Ellacott and Warshawski solve cases and crimes involving violence acts against women and both the detectives are victims of it. Both female detectives suffer from injuries despite the fact that they manage to overcome their attackers and convince them. Ellacott and Warshawski are underestimated because of their sex but prove their attackers wrong. As Irons claims, "perhaps the woman detective offers (...) an opportunity to enjoy a woman protagonist who, though physically overcome by her male attackers at least once in the story, ends up physically and intellectually superior to them" (Irons 15).

The general setting of the Warshawski stories in Chicago has also strong significance for the detective as the city is her "geographical, moral and ethical landscape" in which she "defines her purpose as a detective" (Lindsay 200). Similarly, the setting of London in the Strike series means a similar thing for Ellacott. Her hometown of Masham represents for Ellacott the times after her dropping-out of her studies, the times connected with the aftermath of rape which resulted in agoraphobia that had imprisoned Ellacott in her room for more than a year. That is the reason why

Ellacott so stubbornly wants to stay in London, close to Strike and his agency: "She was no longer the person who had lain on her bed staring at Destiny's Child. She refused to be that girl. Nobody could understand why she was so determined to remain in London, nor was she ready to explain" (Career of Evil 501).

On the other hand, the capital city, in which the novels are set, is essentially linked up to the job which fascinates Ellacott and it is thanks to London that she works as a private investigator. On that account, London could be perceived as an object which enables Ellacott to be who she wants to be. Being a private investigator and solving cases in which injustice and violence are naturally present might be also perceived as Ellacott's attempt to regain her freedom in making decisions as she had desired to do a job connected to investigating since she was a child: "Out of exhaustion and a feeling of obligation to the family that had been so protective and loving in her time of greatest need she had let a lifelong ambition fall by the wayside, and everyone else had been satisfied to see it go" (Career of Evil, 111).

Nora Martin observes that V. I. Warshawski is very often involved in short-lived sexual relationships which usually long only during of each of the investigations. Apart from being married for two years, Warshawski happens to be in one serious relationship in the course of the novels. This relationship ends painfully with a break-up since her job was "too much strain on him [Conrad]" (Martin 58). Klein adds that Warshawski's profession and her highly appreciated independence are questioned by all her lovers:

"Warshawski's independence and her profession contribute to conflicted relationships with her lovers" and her former husband as well since he was a "man who could only admire independent women from a distance" (Klein 212-14). Similarly, Ellacott's desire for independence is stressed in Lethal White, as her long relationship is filled with tension caused by her devotion for her job: "Over and again, her thoughts returned to the wedding day (...) With her whole heart, she regretted not leaving then (...) before she could be trapped" (238).

Analogically, Ellacott had not been engaged in any other relationship but with

Matthew and it also ends with their divorce. The reasons for Ellacott's commitment to

Matthew were already mentioned since it takes an important part of the Career of Evil plot. As Robin's and Matthew's wedding is approaching, she more frequently contemplates her commitment to Matthew, "the man whom she had to - the man whom she wanted to marry" (Career of Evil 539). Probably owing to the fact that her sureness was disturbed by revelation of Matthew's infidelity, Robin is thinking over her reasons to marry Matthew, one of them being the feeling of commitment to her family, which spent a lot of money on the wedding. The first serious disagreement over her job at

Strike's agency starts a long series of rows, which eventually leads to the end of their ten-year relationship. Both investigators, Ellacott and Warshawski love their profession and are devoted to it, and even though they do not leave the relationships untouched, they do not break down.

As has been already mentioned in the first sub-chapter, Robin Ellacott faces certain bias concerning her ability to work in the investigative field. Her family's concerns are not based only on her gender but her mental ability since Ellacott is a survivor of a sexual assault. On the other hand, Warshawski's experience of bias derives exclusively from her gender. She rather chooses to use only her initials when dealing with clients and doing investigation "because patronizing her is more difficult when men don't know her first name" (Klein 212). Not only Warshawski's independence and her ability to do the job are challenged by her (sexual) partners - she also believes that even her parents would not like her profession. That is reflected by their family friend

Lt. Bobby Mallory "who criticizes her decision (...) and urges her to marry so she can bear children" (Klein 212). This pressure on women to bear children is not present in neither of Rowling's detective novel; the only time Ellacott faces a mocking comment considering her job and private life is by Matthew's friend and boss: "So much f surveillance training. You wanna pay more attention at home, Rob" (Lethal White 81).

2.4. Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium Trilogy

Karl Stig-Erland Larsson was a Swedish journalist and an expert on right-wing extremism. During his career, Larsson wrote for the British anti-fascist magazine

Searchlight and, in 1995, founded a similar one in Sweden called Expo. In his 31 Millennium series, Larsson conceived a duo of investigators - the brilliant hacker

Lisbeth Salander and the journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Manuscripts of the three novels finished by Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, were found and published shortly after his death.

As Scipova notes, the Millennium novels are "incorporated by his [Larsson's] love for his career and his passion for feminism", which could be seen in the main plot of the trilogy, the side plots, as well as the characters of Salander and Blomkvist (17).

Another two novels featuring Larsson's characters, The Girl in the Spider's Web and

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, were written by the Swedish journalist and author David Lagercrantz. The Millennium novels were adapted into films both by

Swedish and American production.

In his novels, Larsson addresses a number of issues occurring in the present

Swedish society, such as corruption, racism, guardianship abuse, etc. (Scipova, 18-20).

An essential element in each novel is social criticism of Swedish society, "which prides itself on women's liberation, yet, as the trilogy expresses, women are victims of different forms of violence and abuse too often", as shown many times in the leading female character Lisbeth Salander (Scipova 20).

One of the parallels between the Millennium Trilogy and the Strike novels is the central characters of the series - working partners, a male and a female investigator.

Both the characters of the Millennium and Strike series were brought together more by an accident, yet due to various circumstances, a strong bound has grown between them.

Initially, Salander and Blomkvist had merely a sexual relationship, even though, by the end of the first novel, Salander had fallen in love with Blomkvist, who is oblivious of this fact. Later in the series, when Salander is suspected to be a murderess of two 32 Blomkvist's friends and her guardian, it is Blomkvist who as the only one believes in her innocence from the very beginning. In contrast, Ellacott and Strike begin to work together by an accident, too, but their relationship is anything but sexual and they fall for each other only after a long time of being close friends (see Chapter 2.1).

Another similarity between the Millennium Trilogy and the Strike series is the presence of a serial killer, who targets his victim based on their gender. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Salander and Blomkvist investigate series of extremely brutal murders involving clear sexual element; Ellacott and Strike do the same in the Career of

Evil, when dealing with the serial killer Laining, whose murders, unlike Vanger's in the

Millennium, are not explicitly sexual: "It doesn't look like he had sex with any of them.

He get his kicks a different way" (Career of Evil 459).

Larssen's depiction of violence is regarded as very vivid, and so is the sexual aspect of the murders in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as Scipova points out:

"Larsson pushed the boundaries of violence depiction in a detective novel, as opposed to his predecessors in the genre, emphasizing the social problem" (26). The serial killer

Vanger targets "socially marginal women whom he is able to kill partly because no one realises that they are missing" (27). Some of Laining's victims are prostitutes, too, even though he tries to avoid keeping a pattern by murdering solely prostitutes: "The victims were all vulnerable - prostitutes, drunk, emotionally off balance" (459).

Regarding the leading female characters of both series, the character of Lisbeth

Salander is as different from Robin Ellacott as possible, not only physically but mentally too. Salander is depicted as lacking healthy family bonds, carrying a burden of trauma from her childhood, and having only a few friends; Ellacott, on the other hand, is described as friendly and easy-going with clients and friends, having grown up in a loving family. These characteristics are reflected in the way the two women do their 33 investigation - while Lisbeth "uses modern technology and computer hacking from distance, therefore being a 'detached investigator', not interacting with people face to face" (Scipova 26), Ellacott meets and interviews the clients face to face.

Both women love investigating, though in their own different way. Ellacott even turns down other well-paid jobs and stays at the agency for a minimum wage; she admits that "to prove, to solve, to catch, to protect: these were things worth doing; important and fascinating" (The Cuckoo's Calling 223). Salander feels about investigating the same way: "She surveils as a hobby, not just as a means of income.

She enjoys 'digging into the lives of other people and exposing the secrets they were trying to hide. She had been doing it, in one form or another, for as long as she could remember'" (Marker 160).

Even though Larsson and Rowling created investigators who are very unlike from each other, both authors wrote strong female characters, highly perceptive towards violence targeted at women. As has been mentioned earlier in this chapter, violence against women is a strong topic in the whole Millennium Trilogy, even being an everyday part of Salander's life from her early childhood. Rowling might not employ this theme in her whole series, yet her leading character is, just like Salander, influenced by the act of sexual violence to which she was exposed in past; and the problem of violence targeted at women is addressed vastly in the third novel of the Strike series

Career of Evil.

As has been mentioned, Lisbeth Salander, as the leading female character of the

Millennium series, greatly differs from Robin Ellacot. In comparison to Ellacott, it would be very difficult to describe Salander as sociable or easy-going; as Scipkova points out, some characters in the Millennium series even characterise Salander as

"lacking in empathy, ego-fixated, psychopathic and asocial behaviour, difficulty in 34 cooperating" (Scipkova 25). These assumptions are all proved wrong later in the series, yet Salander is not as good as Ellacott at dealing with people as she, indeed, has an

"extreme lack of social skills" (26).

Perhaps the most important thing about Larsson's female investigator is the way in which Salander deals with her abusers or men violent to other women. As Scipkova stresses, "Salander was the woman who hated men who hate women" (28). In a later part of the series, Salander's past is introduced along with the fact that violence, and particularly violence towards women, have been a part of her life from her early childhood. At a certain point, Salander recalls her mother and the violence she was exposed to by Salander's abusive father. In the first novel, The Girl with the Dragon

Tattoo, Salander is being taken advantage of by her legal guardian Bjurman. Upon being sexually abused and later brutally raped by Bjurman, Salander decides for an act of her own kind of justice, just like when she was a child. In the first instance, small

Salander, stabbed her father and, later, set him on fire to protect her mother; in the latter, Salander overpowers Bjurman and tattoos a warning saying he is a rapist. In both cases, Salander tries to get rid of the abusive man and succeeds; in both cases a physical act of violence is involved in her actions.

Moreover, Salander not only acts against men who are violent or abusive to her,

"she arranges the downfall of both Wennerstrom, exposing his crimes against the society, and Bjurman, revealing his crimes against her" (Scipova 27). In the first novel,

Salander helps to gain much needed information about a millionaire Wennerstrom, who used to blackmail and torture his lover; in the second instalment, Salander saves an unknown woman when her husband tries to kill her. In these two, and many other cases, it is proved that Lisbeth Salander is anything but "lacking-empathy". As Marker states,

Salander takes action "any time someone violates her moral code or injures the few 35 people to whom she is loyal" (161). In a similar way, when Ellacott, in the Career of

Evil, finds out that one of the suspects, a paedophile, lives with a mother of two small girls, his possible victims, she designs a plan to save the children, not minding Strike's orders: "Instead it rose slowly, dark and dangerous, born of the hateful enforced passivity of the past week and out of ice-cold anger at Strike's stubborn refusal to act

(...) Zahara had sounded three at most on the telephone" (505).

With respect to sexual violence, Robin Ellacott is, just like Lisbeth Salander, a rape survivor, even though they react differently to the violating incident. Robin is many times in the Career of Evil forced to go through her foul memories of rape which are coming back to her:

He would never know what it was like to feel yourself small, weak and

powerless. He would never understand what rape did to your feelings about your

own body: to find yourself reduced to a thing, an object, a piece of fuckable

meat. (505)

Lisbeth, on the other hand, does not seem to be haunted by the memories of the act; after the night Bjurman raped her, it is said that "She [Lisbeth] did not cry. Apart from the tears of pure physical pain she shed not a single tear" (239). She rather uses the rape against Bjurman, ensuring the regained possession of her body by his disfigurement and a total control on her part over his life. Ellacott regains the possession of her body by testifying at the court, providing the needed evidence to convict the rapist, which gives her at least some kind of satisfaction: "He'd attacked two other girls wearing the mask and neither of them could tell the police anything about him. My evidence got him put away" (169). Salander does so as well, yet only after she is being involved in a lawsuit for Bjurman's murder, which she did not commit; however she had her feeling of satisfaction when taking control over Bjurman in every possible way. 36 The reason why Salander chooses not to report the rape is explained later in the series, as she admits that the police had failed her many times before, when not dealing with her father so she preferred to punish Bjurman her own way. Though Ellacott could be perceived as the opposite of Salander when regarding their opinions toward the police force and their competence, Ellacott herself had to face their incompetence many times during the series, and more precisely in the Career of Evil as she is one of the targets of the serial killer. Merely the fact that men who are suspected to be the possible murderers are all criminals and still run free, could be viewed as a failure of the legal system Ellacott wanted to be a part of.

However, this failure of the system becomes most painful to Ellacott when she has to face the fact that there is little she can do about the paedophile living with small girls under the terms of legal measures, since the man is not a registered sexual predator, and Ellacott and Strike have been ordered by the police to stay away from him. Yet Ellacott realizes that she cannot keep her distance from the potential victims and decides to act on her own, just as Salander does many times. The fact that Ellacott takes an action, plus that she does so with a criminal friend of Strike's instead of Strike himself (and against the latter wish, too) is called by Ellacott herself "one act of well- intentioned disobedience" (529), not only against Strike but also against the police for which she dreamed to work.

Without any doubt, Lisbeth Salander and Robin Ellacott greatly differ from each other in many aspects. By means of their female investigators, both Rowling and

Larsson addressed a number of similar issues, each in their own way; Larsson's depiction of violent murders is much more vivid than Rowling's; on the other hand,

Rowling addresses the psychological impact of (sexual) violence on the main female character. Both characters of Salander and Ellacott face violence from men targeted on 37 them because of their gender, they both struggle to gain their independence and possession of their own bodies, which are being usurped not only by the rapists but also, in the case of Salander, by the state (she is declared to be in need of guardianship), and in the case of Ellacott, by her partner (see Chapter 2.1). Most importantly, they both succeed in their struggle.

38 3. The Female Criminal

According to Worthington, texts featuring criminals and stories of their lives were vastly popular amongst the whole social spectrum, which led to an individual sub-genre called the "Newgate Novel" (appearing between the 1830s and 1840s), inspired by the

Oliver Twist and Moll Flanders narratives. Newgate Novels focused on glamorization of criminals who were the heroes of the stories rather than characters worth of contempt. With the introduction of the police force, the focus of the narratives changed on the character of the detective rather than the criminal, who was still present in the story, but as a rival to the detective and not the story's main protagonist. The criminal hero appeared again in crime fiction only later in the 20th century, yet infrequently (12-

13).

The criminal hero of the Newsgate Novels was always a man, as Rédouane

Abouddahab notes in Fiction, Crime, and the Feminine. Women do take part in these narratives and their fictional criminal underworld; however, when they do so, they are not glamorized as their male counterparts. Criminal women are seen as morally corrupt and their characters are not targets of glamorization: "criminal women are seen as corrupted, or even corruptive" (10). As has been mentioned in the introduction of the first chapter, criminal behaviour of women was strongly connected with their sexuality and, as Abouddahab claims, "if a woman is denied sexuality as a pleasure (and not as a reproductive function), she is at the same time denied the possibility of being a criminal" (10). Hence, not only did not women participate in the way social order dictates them, their criminal behaviour also disrupted the life cycle: "If, then, woman indulges in pleasure, she endangers the cycle of reproduction" (Abouddahab 10).

39 In a similar way, Linden Peach, in her Masquerade, Crime and Fiction:

Criminal Deceptions, observes that the female criminal of Victorian literature is understood on the basis of a socio-psychic phenomenon (86). As has already been mentioned, women were considered to be too emotional and intellectually inferior to men. A transgression of gender boundaries and derangement was thought to be characteristic of female criminal behaviour; in other words, Peach claims that

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century madness was defined in terms of

characteristics associated with women: emotionalism, irrationality, hysteria and

excess. Thus, slippage between female passion, criminality and madness was

common. (83)

According to Worthington, in the crime narratives of the Golden-age era, women's motives for criminal behaviour were no longer connected only with their sexuality. A master of the Golden-Age detective stories, Agatha Christie, is regarded to have had "a more realistic approach to the female capacity to kill" (Worthington 46). Motives for the crime, which is very often a murder, vary; usually the reason for the crime is related to sex or money (Worthington 45-46). In this period, another genre in crime fiction, later called "hard-boiled", was forming in America. As Worthington notes, in contrast to the widely popular clue-puzzle mysteries set in Britain, American hard-boiled novels presented tough men as the investigators of violent crimes, which were "often graphic and frequently sadomasochistic and misogynistic" (122). Worthington points out that even though the development of the hard-boiled crime fiction is regarded as parallel to the Golden-Age detective stories, female criminal behaviour was in this American sub- genre still connected with their improper sexuality and transgression of their supposed roles in society (45).

40 3.1. The Ruthless Murderess

The main female criminal created by J. K. Rowling in the Strike series is the character of Elizabeth Tassel, featured in the second novel, The Silkworm. Tassel is described as an elderly, unsuccessful literary agent, who in revenge kills her client in an extremely violent way. Though being described as quick-tempered, Tassel manages to plan the murder very thoroughly, possibly two years in advance; as Strike puts it, a

"work of genius" and "murderer-in-waiting" (The Silkworm 479, 350).

During their first encounter, Strike meets Elizabeth Tassel in her office, trying to get information that could help him find a missing writer, Owen Quine, whose wife has hired Strike. Tassel is described as "emanating the aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older women" (57), and even though being regarded as "a dragonish woman" who treats her staff horribly, Strike observes a certain "vulnerability in apparent dragon" and thinks Tassel to be "more sentimental, less self-assured woman than her young hirelings might think" (60).

The whole plot revolves around a book entitled Bombyx Mori, apparently written by the murdered writer Quine. The manuscript is full of ridiculous pen-portraits of almost everyone Quine knew and the novel secretly becomes a great sensation in the literary circle of the people described in it. The problem is that the leading character of the book dies exactly the same way in which its supposed author, Owen Quine, is murdered. Strike and Ellacott pursuit several leads and discover that some of the gossip and secrets, thinly disguised in the book, could not have possibly been written by Quine.

Even though Strike was originally hired by Quine's wife Leonora to find her husband, who is believed to go underground after the manuscript got to people he ridiculed,

41 Strike and Ellacott continue their investigation to prove Leonora's innocence when she is arrested and charged for the murder.

Strike, in fact, does find Owen Quine; however, murdered in an old house which

Quine co-owned with an estranged friend of his. Strike admits that, as an ex-member of the police force and a war veteran, he had witnessed horrible deaths and mutilation, but the state in which he found Quine was horrific even to Strike with his professional capacity: "Strike had seen men, women and children maimed and dismembered, but what he had seen at 179 Talgarth Road was something entirely new"

(The Silkworm 161). The writer was found having been cut open from the throat to the pelvis with his intestines gone, lying in the middle of the room with seven plates set around him and acid poured all over his dead body. The state in which Strike found

Quine's arranged body was described as "retching in a temple, witnessing to sacrificial slaughter" (159). It is certain that the killer is someone who has read Bombyx Mori, since Quine was murdered exactly like his character. Robin does not want to believe that a woman could be capable of such a crime; yet Strike tries to avoid any of these assumptions, maintaining that: "when women turn, they really turn" (183).

Strike describes the killer as "a rarer, stranger beast: the one who concealed their true nature until sufficiently disturbed" (350). Elizabeth Tassel planned the murder of her long-term client Quine, who had been blackmailing her, presumably for years in advance. By pretending to make a mistake when sending the manuscript to people who were in it and by picturing herself in the Bombyx Mori in a rather unfavourable way,

Tassel thought no one would suspect her. She plays the role of a victim, who was tricked by Owen, rather well while enjoying her revenge; at their second encounter,

Strike even observes that "she had lost weight since he had last seen her; the well-cut black suit, the scarlet lipstick and the steel-grey bob did not lend her dash today, but 42 looked like a badly chosen disguise" (281). Though the police believes Tassel's story about her helping Quine by sending him money for his daughter with learning difficulties, Strike manages to find out that Quine had been in fact blackmailing Tassel for more than twenty-six years because of an old poison review she wrote. During the final confrontation with the murderess, Strike reconstructs Tassel's plan to murder

Quine, prepared thoroughly throughout the years, to her old platonic love Michael, who was once keen on sleeping with Tassel but rejected her love. From "the very definition of a blameless spinster", as Tassel described herself, she suddenly becomes quite the opposite and Strike observes the change in Tassel's appearance while he confronts

Tassel: "The intensity and emptiness of her gaze were remarkable. She had the dead, blank eyes of a shark" (555). At this moment, Tassel is revealed to be a bitter woman, full of envy and hate towards more successful people around her, which is proved in her version of the Bombyx Mori, as Strike describes it: "One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself the unclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life" (556).

There is no such a female murderer in the Gray mystery novels, the Warshawski novels, or the Millennium Trilogy, as there is in The Silkworm. In An Unsuitable Job

For a Woman, private eye Gray in fact helps to cover the death of Sir Ronald Callender, who is shot dead by Miss Learning, who reveals to be Mark's biological mother. As

Drsova observes, Learning revenges her secret son Mark (previously murdered by

Callender), though she was never allowed to be his mother. Only towards the end of the novel, is it revealed that Learning was a long term lover of Callender's, who was not able to have an heir with his wife. As Drsova points out, sadly for Learning, she was forced to suppress her love for Mark for his whole life: "James sheds light on the woman's sad life of pretence and disability to function as a mother to her own 43 son" (56). In this sense, the murderess is pictured as a victim herself and readers are invited to sympathize with her. Cordelia Gray is regarded to feel the same way about

Learning's sad life and is even willing to cover the crime of Learning who shoots

Callender with "the sudden instinct of a mother who faces the person who hurt her child" (Drsova 56).

In the Millennium Trilogy, the leading female investigator Lisbeth Salander commits several crimes herself, including fraud, torture, assault, and battery. However, she always does so as to protect herself or punish crimes committed on others; in this sense, Salander acts according to her own moral law. In fact, Lisbeth, is many times proved to be willing to use a physical violence on men who abuse or threaten her, as has already been analysed in the previous Chapter (see Chapter 2.4). Lisbeth's criminal behaviour is clearly seen within the context of her revenge against the men who abused her. In the case of the fraud, it is a little different as the man named Wennerstrom, whose money Lisbeth steals, is not violent towards her personally; yet, it is certain that

Wennerstrom used violence to persuade his pregnant lover to agree with an abortion.

Apart from this case, Salander in many situations breaks the law when she tries to help people she holds dear, which would be no more than a few. Thanks to her brilliant knowledge of computers and hacking, Lisbeth helps to gain information for her former lover Blomkvist in his struggle against corrupted Wennerstrom; and also for

Blomkvist's friend and lover Erika Berger, when she is being anonymously threatened by her colleague.

Though Lisbeth commits a number of crimes over the course of the series,

Larsson wrote her past so tellingly that he invites readers to sympathize with Lisbeth and even admire her; rather than condemn her on the basis of her crimes. This might be because of the fact that Larsson created Lisbeth's complicated childhood, which was 44 full of loneliness, powerlessness, and, most importantly, violence, which remains to be a part of her adult life, too. In this sense, Lisbeth Salander has also been a victim since her childhood. Lisbeth's behaviour, in the way it is presented in the Millennium Trilogy, is thus clearly presented as a result of her troubled past.

As has been mentioned earlier, the murderess Elizabeth Tassel in The Silkwom revenges herself on Quine. Tassel's motive for the murder is thus solely personal. Quine had been a permanent reminder of Tassel's failure in both the working and private spheres of her life. Not only was Quine blackmailing Tassel, who functioned more or less as his mercenary for years; he also forced Tassel to stop representing Michael, who turned out to be a much more successful writer than Quine, which, of course, meant a loss for Tassel as a literary agent. This also reflected in Tassel's private life, resulting in her being a bitter and mean woman, later obsessed with hurting as many people as possible: "Off you went (...) to incriminate another woman who was getting what you never got - sex. Companionship. At least one friend" (560).

Strike correctly guesses that Tassel is still in love with a man from her studies, who reprobated her because of her representing Quine as his literary agent; and ultimately sees her as a sentimental person. Although, from the way Tassel murdered her old friend, it is absolutely clear that this sentimental Tassel is capable of a horrible crime, showing no mercy in her planned murder. Moreover, Tassel's apparent sentiment towards Quine's handicapped daughter Orlando seems to be false, too, when it is proved that Tassel was the one who murdered the writer. Quine's wife Leonora is accused of the crime instead and forced to leave her daughter with a friend, who takes care for

Orlando while Leonora is waiting for the trial. In this sense, Tassel does not mind

Orlando's misery and sadness, though she, Tassel, claimed that the whole time she was helping financially to Quine was because of his daughter. 45 Elizabeth Tassel is in comparison with Miss Learning and Lisbeth Salander depicted solely as a mean and evil character. Tassel is driven by her long term desire for revenge, and the murder she commits is done thoroughly and in an extreme way. Miss

Learning kills her lover, Mr Callender, in revenge, yet, she did it as a mother, who has lost her son. Readers are not invited to pity Tassel or excuse her as they are in the cases of Miss Learning and Lisbeth.

It might be observed that Tassel's victim, Owen Quine, was an egoistic and childish man who repeatedly left his wife Leonora and handicapped daughter Orlando for his mistress. Therefore, readers are not, in fact, invited to pity him or even sympathize with him either; they are more likely to feel compassionate about Leonora and Orlando, who are indirect victims of Tassel's revenge.

46 4. The Female Victim

The representation of women in crime fiction written prior to the 20th century was limited to the roles of victims, that is, catalysts for the crime or criminals. Female investigators, appearing in literature only occasionally, were written as characters that are, just like characters of female criminals, violating social norms, not complying with the picture of proper femininity (Worthington 109). Even female victims were usually seen as deviant from the expected behaviour, which contributed "in some way to their downfall". One of their most common crimes was attempting to gain autonomy and equality (Worthington 109).

In her detective Strike series, Rowling created several female victims; one of them, Lula Landry, in the first novel The Cuckoo's Calling, was a target because of her fortune; other female victims were exposed to crime and violence because of their gender, such as the number of victims of the serial killer in the Career of Evil, and the leading female investigator Robin Ellacott herself, who was raped during her studies at university and attacked again in the Career of Evil.

4.1. Lula Landry

In the first instalment in the series, The Cuckoo's Calling, Strike is hired to investigate the apparent suicide of a famous model named Lula Landry, who was in fact murderer by her step-brother John. During her career, the model's life was well-known due to the press, and details of her personal problems went public: "Lula has subsequently run away from two schools, and been expelled from a third, all of them expensive private establishments. She had slit her own wrist and been found in a pool of blood by a 47 dormitory friend, she had lived rough, and been tracked to a squat" (132); it seems that those widely known facts about Landry's complicated past had influenced the police who believed Landry committed suicide. As Bristow has put it: "But the police and the coroner couldn't see past the girl who had a history of poor mental health" (28), though

Bristow, of course, knew too well since he was the one to push Landry off the balcony.

However, the opinion of the police is shown in the opening chapter of the novel, when Landry's body is found and the detective in a charge of the investigation is already sure about Landry's suicide:

"They won't go while we're still treating the place like a fucking murder scene,"

snapped Carver.

Wardle did not answer the unspoken challenge. Carver exploded anyway.

"The poor cow jumped. There was no one else there. Your so-called witness was

coked out of her-" (3).

The motive for the murder is financial - John Bristow needs money to cover up a fraud which he has committed, and his stepsister Lula refuses to give him any. Moreover, with the death of his stepsister, John will become one of the two inheritors, once his seriously ill mother passes away. In this sense, the motive for the murder is "perfectly rational and comprehensible desire for money, usually associated with property and inheritance", as used to be the standard in the crime fiction of Sherlock Holmes's time and some of the Golden-Age detective novels (Worthington 22).

However, in The Cuckoo's Calling, the murderer is not driven only by the vision of money, just as the one in the Career of Evil is not driven solely by his desire for revenge: these murders represent a much more personal threat to "the ultimate property, that is, the self (Worthington 22). As Worthington notes, "The life of the individual is, in our solipsistic Western society, our most precious possession" (22). John Bristow, 48 who pushes his stepsister Lula off the balcony, does so because of his desire to inherit the family fortune; his action, however, is also driven by his jealousy to his stepsister, who is the favourite child of their dying mother. This sentiment of Bristow's is proved by the fact that Lula was not his only victim. As Strike finds out at the end of The

Cuckoo's Calling, Bristow has also murdered his stepbrother Charlie, a former friend of

Strike's from their childhood, who was also the favourite child of their mother.

Bristow's motive for the murders, which Strike ultimately discovers, is presented in their last confrontation upon which Bristow tries to kill Strike in the office. At that moment, the reason why Lula Landry had to die is explained down to its origins in

Landry and Bristow's childhood:

All those hours you were alone, in all that luxury. Did you start to imagine how

wonderful it would be if Lula, who you were sure was intestate, died? (...) And

the moment Charlie had gone, when you must expected to be the centre of

attention at last, what happens? Lula arrives, and everyone starts worrying about

Lula, looking after Lula, adoring Lula (527).

As Sarah Dunant, author of the essay "Body Language: A Study of Death and Gender in

Crime Fiction", notes: "Far from being forgotten, the dead person stays around on the slab as a main character, albeit without words. In a key way the body is not dead"

(Chernaik 13). In The Cuckoo's Calling, the victim Lula Landry indeed stays around, as the story of her life and death is repeatedly harped on about in newspapers and the internet; and Strike, naturally, tries to get as much information about Lula as possible, talking to her family and friends. On the account that Lula was a famous and successful model, she is naturally still present in photos and advertisement (this is even more apparent in the 2017 BBC miniseries based on the novel). Only a week after the official verdict about Landry's suicide went public, her friend and designer Guy Some uses a 49 picture of Lula "naked except for strategically placed handbags, scarves and jewels" in his fashion campaign (135). Some claims that "it was supposed to be a fucking tribute to her, to us" and not a way to capitalize on her death, which he was criticized for (313).

What is constantly referred to about the victim of this novel is her extraordinary beauty, as both Strike and Ellacott's recall "the bronze-skinned, colt-limbed, diamond-cut beauty that had been Lula Landry" (24).

The first full picture Lula Landry is introduced only later on in the story, when

Strike visits her flat, from which she fell to her death. By that moment, Strike has already questioned a number of people who were close to Lula and shared their memories of their beloved Lula with Strike:

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through

the signs they left scattered behind them. Strike had felt the living woman

behind the words she had written to friends; he had heard her voice on a

telephone held to his ear. (341-42)

However, this is the first time Lula is present again in her full picture and not only fractionally, by means of what others say about her posthumously. In spite of the fact that Lula was described by some of her relatives as spoiled and selfish, Strike cannot help the feeling of closeness to and sympathy for her, picturing her last moments of life in her apartment:

She had flailed, trying to find handholds in the merciless empty air; and then,

without time to make amends, to explain, to bequeath or to apologise, without

any of the luxuries permitted those who are given notice of their impending

demise, she had broken on the road (341).

50 As the victim, Lula Landry is being taken advantage of many times in the novel. By her stepbrother and murderer of course, since her money was one of the main reasons why

John pushed Lula over the balcony. Many people think that Guy Some is one to benefit from her publicly discussed death; be it as it may, Some really loved Lula as a person and friend, and not only as a model who earns him a lot of money: "But he had begun to cry in earnest; not like Bristow, with wild gulps and sobs, but silently, with tears sliding down his smooth dark cheeks" (321).

Another character who tries to benefit from Lula's death is her friend Rochelle, whom Lula met while being on an addiction treatment, which they both attended.

Though Rochelle was described as a friend by Lula, others viewed their relationship differently: "Strike noted how very little Rochelle had told him about Lula the person, as opposed to Lula the holder of the magic plastic cards that bought handbags, jackets and jewellery" (283). Rochelle did not care for Lula even after her death and started to blackmail John: "she was bitter enough, after seeing a will in which she didn't feature, and being dumped in that shop on the last day of Lula's life, not to care about the killer walking free as long as she got the money" (520-21), not realizing that he is the actual killer - a mistake that becomes fatal for her as John murders Rochelle as well.

Apart from Rochelle and John, Lula's own birth mother, Marlene Higson, whom

Lula manages to find, is willing to sell her story with details about Lula to the press, once it becomes certain that she will not get any of Lula's money: "Higson's a ghastly person; shamelessly mercenary. She sold her story to anyone who would pay, which, unfortunately, was a lot of people" (252). Higson admits that without any shame, feeling it was her right to share the story with the press, since she did not receive any money from the Landry family after Lula's death.

51 4.2. Female Victims as Sexual Objects

According to Worthington, women have always been exposed to violence from men, especially those who wanted a change in the social, political or cultural spheres - to name a few, the suffragettes in the 1900s and later, in 1970s, members of second wave feminist movement. Worthington claims that, historically, women have always been more sexually vulnerable and more likely to experience anxiety in "what is still a predominantly patriarchal world" (22). From these actualities arises the literary character of the serial killer "who brings together sexual vulnerability and overt and brutal violence" (22).

The serial killer Donald Laining from the Career of Evil has already been introduced in the present thesis (see Chapter 2.4). Considering what Worthington claims about the elements which are combined in the character of the serial killer, Rowling has created her serial killer in total concord with the formula. As a child, Donald Laining had experienced a certain kind of maltreatment and resentment from his mother, which might have resulted in hatred and scorn which he feels towards women in general. The murders which Laining commits in the course of the novel are not explicitly of a sexual character: "He never seemed to get hard when he was actually killing. Thinking about it beforehand, yes: sometimes he could drive himself into an onanistic frenzy ideas of what he was going to do" (437). Yet he has definitely committed sexual assaults and rape before. In the opening chapter of the novel, the character of Daniel Laining and the motives for his crimes are introduced, while recalling the night when he killed Kelsey, a sixteen-year old girl, whose leg he sent to Robin: "They belonged to you once you had killed them: it was a possession way beyond sex. Even to know how they looked at the moment of death was an intimacy way past anything two living bodies could

52 experience" (The Career of Evil 1). As is revealed later on in the novel, Laining knew his victim very well since he was Kelsey's sister partner.

Kelsey, the victim, is pictured as a vulnerable and rather lonely girl, suffering from the body integrity disorder, which means she had the urge to become an amputee.

Kelsey was neglected by her sister for it:

To be in a wheelchair - pushed around like a baby and to be pampered and the

centre of attention (...) imagine that. It's disgusting. There are people who are

really disabled and never wanted it. (329)

She found comfort in Laining, a fact that he has exploited to gain Kelsey's trust and favour: "He had read and charmed the girl who had died yesterday among the blood- soaked peach towels" (3). Though being the character which is introduced as a victim in the very first lines of the novel, Kelsey is not really a focus of the novel. After Robin is delivered a package containing the limb, the main investigation of the novel revolves around the possible killer and consignor of the leg. It seems as if Robin was the only one sympathizing with this victim:

Death and a hatchet had reduced the unknown female to a lump of meat, a

problem to be solved and she, Robin, felt as though she was the only person to

remember that a living, breathing human being had been using that leg. (99)

Strike is rather concerned with Robin's safety: "The second communication with her

(...) had told him for certain that this man, whoever he was, had Robin in his sights (...)

Rage burgeoned in the motionless Strike, chasing away his tiredness" (318-19).

Apart from the women whom Laining murders, there are two more women in the Career of Evil who are attacked by Laining and who manage to survive. One of them is a prostitute named Lila, whom Laining injures severely and leaves her to her death, thinking she would not make it and, more importantly, that nobody will care: 53 "Prostitutes didn't fucking count, they were nothing, no one cared" (421). The other one is Robin Ellacott, whom Laining seems to be obsessed with and whom he wants to kill to take revenge on Strike: "[S]he was his means of getting the bastard" (336). Apart from being wounded on her arm with a knife, Robin manages to overpower Laining and escape from a certain death.

What is unique about this particular instalment in the Strike series is the fact that

Rowling provided an access to the murderer's point of view. According to Martin

Priestman, providing readers with a criminal's perspective, (which regularly disrupts the narrative of the investigator and puts an increasing pressure on them as the serial killer threats their life or life of those who are dear to them), is one of the typical features of a story featuring a serial killer (66).

On that account, readers are invited to see Laining's motive for killing and also the way Laining thinks of women in general: "Women were so petty, mean, dirty and small. Sulky bitches, the lot of them, expecting men to keep them happy" (3). The hatred which Laining feels towards women is emphasized by the fact that he mutilates bodies of his victims and removes parts of them to keep in his apartment. The feeling of superiority is present in his every thought, whether he recalls his victims or thinks about

Robin and his partner. As Worthington notes, "the criminal is still constructed by the crime but, as the crime becomes increasingly extreme, the perpetrator is not simply criminal but monstrous" (14). Not only does Laining murder his victims in extremely violent way, many times literally cutting them into pieces; on top of that, as has been mentioned above, he takes bits of their bodies and keeps them as his trophies: "Alone with his trophies, he felt himself entirely whole. They were proof of his superiority, his astonishing ability to glide through the ape-like police and the sheep-like masses, taking whatever he wanted, like a demigod" (437). 54 The character of Robin Ellacott has already been introduced as a leading female investigator in the Strike series and devoted a thorough analysis. However, Ellacott is not only a secretary in a detective agency who turns out to be a talented investigator.

Rowling has made the character of Robin more complex with each novel. In the first one, The Cuckoo's Calling, Robin functions merely as a capable assistant to Strike, who eventually in the end of the novel decides to stay permanently. In the second novel, The

Silkworm, Ellacott's perspective starts to be much more present, and by the third novel,

Career of Evil, her character is fully developed and pictured in more detail with some essential information from her past. Due to Ellacott's crisis with Matthew, which follows the exposure of her fiance's infidelity, Ellacott's reason for her drop-out of university is revealed for the first time. According to Strike, a reason that makes the way Ellacott's life is set much clearer. Strike admits "A lot of things about Robin were explained now. The long allegiance to Matthew, for instance: the safe boy from home"

(169). So far, Ellacott's involuntary withdrawal from university had been described as an "unforeseen incident" which made her leave the psychology studies, even though

Strike feels that something traumatic made her leave just like in his case.

As mentioned above, the plot of the Career of Evil involves a serial killer who seems to be obsessed with Ellacott and even attacks her at one point. In this context,

Ellacott is described as a victim for the second time. Firstly, she was sexually assaulted and survived an attempted murder during her studies at the university; secondly, she manages to defend herself against the attacker in the Career of Evil and escapes only with an injury. In both cases, Ellacott has proven herself of being capable of thinking clearly and fighting for her life, even in this kind of horrific situation. In this sense,

Ellacott is not only a victim - she is also the one who survived and refuses to give up.

In both situations, Ellacott helps to catch the attackers despite her mental wounds 55 caused by the assaults: "He tried to strangle me; I went limp and played dead and he ran for it. He'd attacked two more other girls wearing that mask and neither of them could tell the police anything about him. My evidence got him put away" (169).

56 Conclusion

J. K. Rowling has conceived her Cormoran Strike detective series within the boundaries and popular tropes of the genre. As Bernice M. Murphy, in her study Key Concepts In

Contemporary Popular Fiction, states:

Crime fiction narratives tend to conform to much the same basic structure: a

crime is committed (often, but not by any means always, a murder); the crime is

investigated, either by a professional detective or an amateur sleuth; and some

kind of resolution or form of justice is achieved in the closing stages of the

text. (121)

In every instalment of Rowling's detective series, there is a female character connected to each of the aforementioned features of the common structure of a detective story, which are, of course, essential for the plots of the narratives. When regarding Rowling's depiction of the female characters in her detective series, it can be certainly argued that the author has created intelligent and independent female individuals, whether positive or negative, who are able to stand on their two feet.

The character of Lula Landry, introduced in The Cuckoo's Calling, who was analysed in this thesis as the victim (see Chapter 4.1), is only present in the story by means of what other characters say about her. What is repeatedly mentioned about

Landry is her extraordinary beauty, her problematic past and her fortune. Only once is

Lula directly described by her friend as "razor-sharp" (308), and her family members sometimes refer to Lula as ungrateful and "spoiled-rotten" (238). In the course of the novel, the real and living Lula Landry is fragmentally presented as an intelligent and initiative person, capable of retracing her biological father and half-brother. During the

57 confrontation with Lula's murderer, Strike gives the full picture of Lula's last moments, presenting a person who had thoroughly made her will in a favour of her biological brother and had hid it as she sensed John's desire to keep her money for himself.

Rowling wrote Landry primarily as a victim, a person who suffers an ultimate loss, that is, one of their life, because someone else decides to take it. On the other hand, Landry is retrospectively, and in fragments, presented not only as a popular and wealthy model, which is the reason why is murdered, but also as an intelligent and inventive person, whose last actions, which took as preventive measures, ultimately serve as an essential piece of evidence for the conviction of her murderer.

Rowling's character of the female criminal is portrayed by a literary agent named Elizabeth Tassel in the second instalment of the Strike series, The Silkworm.

Rowling wrote this character primarily as a villain, even though Tassel herself is not described so until the moment Strike confronts her. Yet, her villainous character and behaviour are present throughout the whole novel anonymously (that is, without the readers knowing it belongs to her), and are assigned to her retrospectively. In this sense,

Tassel as the murderer appears by means of the details of Quine's horrific death, which are repeatedly recalled during the investigation. Moreover, Tassel even cunningly pretends to be sentimental towards Leonora and Orlando, who are indirectly victims of her criminal behaviour, too. Her wicked character is thus also remembered by means of the consequences of Leonora's arrest for her husband's murder, as Leonora takes care of their mentally handicapped daughter. Due to Leonora's arrest, Orlando is separated from her mother and left alone without any of her parents, perhaps not being able fully to understand the new state of things. In both mentioned situations, Tassel is proved to be cruel and ruthless, enjoying her bloody revenge and not minding the consequences of her crime, which ruins the lives of the innocent. 58 One of the central characters of the Strike series is the private investigator Robin

Ellacott, who was originally a temporary secretary to Strike, appearing only as a secondary character in the first instalment, The Cuckoo's Calling. As the series proceeds, Ellacott becomes professionally equal to Strike, capable of acting on her own.

Ellacott's professional capability has been analysed as the main part of this thesis, since she is regarded to be the leading female character of the whole series.

Under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, J. K. Rowling has created several female characters, each important for a certain novel of the series. Without any doubts, all three of the analysed females, that is, Lula Landry, Elizabeth Tassel, and Robin

Ellacott, were written as intelligent and capable (each in her own right) characters.

Robin Ellacott becomes an equal investigator to her male counterpart, even very often trumping him in their investigations, which could be perceived as a feminist statement.

Similarly to that, the issue of violence targeted at women, especially sexual violence, is vastly addressed by Rowling in the third instalment, The Career of Evil, and it is also intimately linked with her female leading character Robin Ellacott. By providing the killer's point of view, Rowling addresses this issue in a unique way. It is especially in this instalment that women, including Ellacott, are pictured as objects, serving only to satisfy men's desire. In the Career of Evil, Rowling also tackles the issue of paedophilia, once again by means of Robin Ellacott, who seems to be the only one willing to take an action. For Ellacott personally, this situation means that once again, a man usurps a female's body as an object of his wicked desire; it is for her the more painful as the victims are children, left totally defenceless and at the predator's mercy.

Rowling tries to address these issues in a very sensitive way, yet she does so with a strong emphasis, underlining the importance of the issue. Since the fact that

Robin was raped during her studies is presented for the first time in its full picture not 59 earlier than in the third instalment of the series, until that moment, readers have had a certain impression of Robin Ellacott and what is she like. Thus, when the horrific part of

Robin's past is introduced, readers feel naturally shaken and sympathetic to Robin as they already know her closely as a character. Moreover, frequent insights into Robin's feeling about the rape and its aftermath are presented to the readers; on that account, it creates an even more burdensome and anxious atmosphere.

As part of this thesis, the problem of violence against women has been analysed in the first chapter. Stieg Larsson set this problem as an essential feature of his

Millennium Trilogy, whose leading female character, Lisbeth Salander, has been analysed in this thesis in the context of this issue. Apart from the problem of violence, especially the sexual one, other social issues pertinent to the present thesis's topic appear in novel series by Sara Paretsky, featuring the private eye named V. I.

Warshawski. Perhaps it could be said that the two aforementioned authors, Stieg

Larsson and Sara Paretsky, addressed certain social concerns, such as corruption, human trafficking, guardianship abuse, etc., with much more emphasis than J. K.

Rowling. Of course, there are more Strike novels to come and there might be more stories in which the author will touch upon some of the delicate problems of British society, as she did in the Career of Evil and as Larsson and Paretsky did in their detective series.

Based on the analysis of the analysis of each female investigator, it could be argued that all of them are found in some kind of struggle - struggle to gain independence and prove their capabilities, whether in a personal or professional sense, as they are doubted by other characters. The female investigators who have been analysed in this paper might provide the examples of the areas where women have, historically, struggled. The Cordelia Gray mysteries by P. D. James first appeared in 60 1972 and Cordelia's main struggle concerned self-doubts as to whether she is capable of investigating on her own. Unfortunately, at the end of the series (which contains only two novels The Unsuitable Job For A Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin), James decided to redirect her female private eye to searching for lost pets in the aftermath of her second, and unsuccessful, investigation.

In her detective series, which started in 1982, Sara Paretsky has placed the leading character of V. I. Warshawski in many situations when she is forced to prove her ability to investigate; moreover, V. I.'s competence to do her job is also doubted.

These doubts on the part of V. I.'s partners, sometimes her clients, and, most importantly, the perpetrators of the crime she confronts, are dispelled by V. I.'s ability and willingness to use both physical strength and violence if necessary.

Similarly to that, Stieg Larsson's leading character, Lisbeth Salander, faces certain struggles; however, in her case, they are of a different nature. Since Lisbeth is officially proclaimed to be in a need of guardianship, she struggles to gain her independence from the state for the whole trilogy and, naturally, this fact is reflected in a way in which other people treat her and doubt her mental capabilities, though Lisbeth is in fact outstandingly intelligent. Finally, by the end of the third instalment, The Girl

Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, Salander, after many years, succeeds and is proclaimed to be able to manage her affairs.

In this context, Robin Ellacott struggle, similarly to the aforementioned characters in both the working and personal sphere, as has been thoroughly analysed

(see in Chapter 2.1.). The problems and struggles the female characters have faced and overcame naturally changed through time, and Rowling has continued in picturing the real issues concerning women nowadays. Comparing and contrasting Ellacott with other

61 female investigators chosen for the analysis, it might be said that Rowling continues in the manner of writing an intelligent and independent female investigator.

In addition to that, Rowling's female victim Lula Landry is a mix-raced model with a truly problematic past; plus, one of Rowling's supporting characters is a mentally handicapped young girl named Orlando. In this sense, it could be observed that Rowling has not only created characters who are white and middle-classed - she has also tried to involve all kinds of people from the wide spectrum of society and address their struggles, too. Employing methods of intersectional feminism and critical theory, focusing on these other identities and their depiction might be a possible way to expand and elaborate on the research in the present thesis.

Yet, it could be said that there is still a certain space for shifting female characters even further towards their male counterparts. Firstly, even though Ellacott becomes central to the stories, J. K. Rowling's detective novels are from the beginning addressed as the Cormoran Strike novels, as if to give a preference to the male investigator. Secondly, though Rowling has created also female villains, one of them being capable of cruel revenge, it seems like the author has still left a space in her detective series for more feminist female criminal, who would be feared and considered wicked just like her male counterpart is - for example like the serial killer Donald

Laining in the Career of Evil.

62 Bibliography

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—. The Silkworm. Sphere, 2014.

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Vintage Books, 2008.

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Hamilton, Ben. "Gossip With A Kind Heart." Review of The Silkworm by Robert

Galbraith. The Spectator. 28 June 2014, p. 46.

Horsley, Lee, and Charles J. Rzepka. A Companion to Crime Fiction. Blackwell

Publishing, 2010.

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64 Summary

The aim of the present thesis is to examine J. K. Rowling's depiction of female characters in her detective series featuring the private investigators Cormoran Strike and

Robin Ellacott in the historical context of gender representation in crime fiction.

The first chapter of the thesis addresses the general concept of the traditional depiction of women in crime fiction narratives in several distinct periods of the past in the context of the major waves of women's liberation movement. The second chapter provides an analysis of Rowling's female investigator, Robin Ellacott. This chapter also includes a comparison of the ways in which other significant female investigators, that is, Cordelia Gray by P. D. James, V. I. Warshawski by Sara Paretsky, and Lisbeth

Salander by Stieg Larsson, are depicted in their detective series. The third chapter is devoted to an analysis of Elizabeth Tassel, who is introduced in the second instalment of Rowling's series, The Silkworm, as the ruthless murderess of her old friend Owen

Quine. Rowling's female criminal is compared to similar characters by James and

Larsson, who are, in fact, victims themselves. The last chapter addresses the characters of female victims in the Strike series, that is, Lula Landry, a mix-raced model, and a number of female victims targeted by the serial killer Donald Laining.

The thesis concludes that Rowling has created a number of intelligent and very capable female characters, each being at the centre of her respective novel. In addition,

Rowling employs motives of rather risque and pressing issues concerning women, especially the topic of sexual violence. Yet, she still leaves room for an even braver feminist statement, which could be, for instance, an introduction of a proper female

65 serial killer who would be an equal to the dreaded Donald Laining of Rowling's Career of Evil.

66 Resumé

Cílem této bakalářské práce je analyzovat způsob, jakým J. K. Rowlingová vyobrazuje

ženské postavy ve své sérii detektivních románů, ve kterých se objevuje Cormoran

Strike a Robin Ellacott, jakožto dvojice soukromých detektivů, v historickém kontextu způsobu vyobrazení genderu v krimi žánru.

První kapitola uvádí tradiční způsob vyobrazení ženských postav v detektivní literatuře z různých historických etap na pozadí významných vln feministického hnutí.

Druhá kapitola se zaměřuje na analýzu hlavní ženské postavy této detektivní série,

Robin Ellacottové. Vedle samostatné analýzy tato kapitola srovnává postavy Robin s dalšími významnými literárními vyšetřovatelkami, jmenovitě - Cordelie Grayové od autorky P. D. Jamesové, V. I. Warshawski z pera Sary Paretsky a Lisbeth Salandrové od

Stiega Larssona. Třetí kapitola obsahuje analýzu Elizabeth Tasselové, která se jako vražedkyně svého starého přítele Owena Quina objevuje v druhém dílu série s názvem

Hedvábník. Tato postava je dána do kontrastu s ženskými postavami vytvořené

P. D. Jamesovou a Stiegem Larssonem, které se také dopustily zločinu, zároveň jsou však i oběťmi. Poslední kapitola se zabývá vyobrazením ženských obětí v detektivkách

Rowlingové. První část této kapitoly se zaměřuje na analýzu postavy modelky jménem

Lula Landry, druhá je věnována několika ženským obětem sériového vraha Donalda

Laininga.

Bakalářská práce shrnuje způsob, jakým Rowlingová ve své sérii detektivek vytvořila plejádu inteligentních a emancipovaných ženských postav, z nichž každá má ve vybraném příběhu nepostradatelnou roli. Rowlingová navíc do svých příběhů zasazuje velice choulostivá témata, zejména problém sexuálního násilí. Lze však říci, že

67 v jejích knihách stále zůstává místo pro ještě silnější feministické sdělení, například uvedením postavy sériové vražedkyně, která by se vyrovnala obávanému sériovému vrahovi Donaldu Lainingovi z knihy Ve službách zla.

68