Gender and Representation in British 'Golden Age' Crime Fiction

Gender and Representation in British ‘Golden Age’ Crime Fiction Women Writing Women Megan Hoffman General Editor: Clive Bloom Crime Files Series Editor Clive Bloom Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies Middlesex University London Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fi ction has never been more popular. In novels, short stories, fi lms, radio, television and now in computer games, private detectives and psychopaths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators one mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fi ction. Every aspect of crime writing, detective fi ction, gangster movie, true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoretical sophistication. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14927 Megan Hoffman Gender and Representation in British ‘Golden Age’ Crime Fiction Megan Hoffman Independant Scholar Southsea , United Kingdom Crime Files ISBN 978-1-137-53665-5 ISBN 978-1-137-53666-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53666-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940530 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adap- tation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London This book is dedicated to my parents, Neal and Colleen Hoffman ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful for the enormous amount of support that so many people have given me throughout the completion of this project, which began its life as a PhD thesis. Firstly, I would like to thank the School of English at the University of St Andrews, particularly Gill Plain for her wis- dom and encouragement, and Emma Sutton. I am also grateful to my editors at Palgrave, April James and Ben Doyle, for their help over the course of writing this book. Thanks must also be extended to the University of St Andrews Library, particularly the Inter-Library Loans Department. I would like to extend special thanks to the other postgraduates in the 2007/8 Women, Writing and Gender MLitt at the University of St Andrews for many memorable occasions of sharing thought- provoking conversation, friendship and food. I am also very grateful to Huw Lloyd Richards, Joyce Taylor, Lewis and Skye, whose house in Kingsbarns has been a peaceful and beautiful space in which to fi nish this book. Thanks also to my brother, Joel Hoffman, for his support as well as for lending his time to help in my research. It is no exaggeration to say that this book owes its existence in its fi n- ished state to Ben Davies. I cannot thank him enough for the benefi t of his proofreading skills, as well as for the astonishing depth of his confi dence, patience and love. It is no small thing to have found someone with whom to eat apples. Finally, thanks must go above all to my parents, Neal and Colleen Hoffman, whose unwavering love and support have sustained me throughout my life. vii CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 Change and Anxiety: Historical Context 15 Women’s Education 18 Careers and the Workplace 20 Marriage and Motherhood 25 Birth Control 27 The Cult of Domesticity 29 Spinsters 31 Homosexuality 32 3 ‘Everybody Needs an Outlet’: Nonconforming Women 39 Nonconforming Women as Detectives: Miss Climpson 41 Nonconforming Women as Detectives: Miss Silver 48 Nonconforming Women as Detectives: Miss Marple 52 Nonconforming Women as Detectives: Mrs Bradley 56 Nonconforming Women as Victims and Villains: Overture to Death and Murder is Easy 58 Strong Poison: The Vilifi ed Victim 65 4 A Joint Venture?: Love, Partnership and Marriage 73 ‘Treat ’em rough?’: Courtship in Artists in Crime and Death in a White Tie 78 ix x CONTENTS Partner, Interrupted: Representing Companionate Relationships in the Work of Margery Allingham and Dorothy L. Sayers 92 ‘Happily Ever Afterwards’: Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence 101 5 Ladies of a Modern World: Education and Work 113 ‘In Her Own Place’: Successful Communities of Women in Gaudy Night and St Peter’s Finger 117 Quite Normal?: Stereotypes and Sexuality in Miss Pym Disposes and Laurels Are Poison 126 ‘A Most “Natural” Reaction’: Personal and Professional Confl ict in The Fashion in Shrouds and Death in High Heels 139 6 Sensational Bodies: Villains and Victims 157 ‘Not an Ordinary Murderess’: The Killer’s Body in Lord Edgware Dies, Unnatural Death, Dumb Witness and Peril at End House 159 ‘Erased from the Page’: The Victim’s Body in Speedy Death, The Body in the Library and Evil Under the Sun 172 7 Conclusion 191 Bibliography 195 Index 203 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Classic British ‘golden age’ crime fi ction provides an ideal space in which to explore issues that accompany changing models of femininity. In this particular subgenre, certain elements are already required; the potential for deviance through transgressing social codes—the ‘law’—is necessary to the plot of a golden age narrative. At the same time, classic investiga- tive crime fi ction requires resolution; the break in law and order must be mended by an all-powerful detective fi gure. 1 While predominantly conservative, this formula allows a ‘safe’ textual space for the exploration of anxieties surrounding constructions of femininity in the period during which British golden age crime fi ction was being written. The fi rst half of the twentieth century saw signifi cant changes in the construction of gender roles in the popular consciousness, social policies regarding women and, consequently, perceptions of femininity; the inevitable anxieties that accompanied these changes are evident in portrayals of women and femininity in popular culture. The depiction of a woman in a crime novel, whether as victim, villain, suspect or detective, is loaded with social and cultural meanings as well as with expectations attached to the genre’s typical characters.2 Though inevitably contained and forced into compliance with social and genre conventions through marriage, death or occasionally the necessity of playing the detective fi gure’s regulatory role, female characters are nevertheless used in ways that can be read as questioning and rene- gotiating social, gender and genre norms.3 With its resolution, the golden age crime novel contains any deviance that might have emerged within the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1 M. Hoffman, Gender and Representation in British ‘Golden Age’ Crime Fiction, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53666-2_1 2 M. HOFFMAN body of the text; however, it is often the case that this resolution is shaped in a particularly modern fashion.4 Alison Light identifi es what she calls a ‘conservative modernity’ in women’s middlebrow literature of the period, pointing out that it was the cultural production of ‘a time when older forms of relationship and intimate behaviour were being recast and when even the most traditional of attitudes took new form’. 5 How, then, does British women’s golden age crime fi ction negotiate these shifting models through the portrayals of women and the feminine it offers? I do not attempt to suggest either that depictions of women in golden age crime fi ction written by women are unequivocally empowering, or that their conservatism is inevitably repressive. Rather, I argue that these depictions are ambivalent, advocating a modern, active model of femininity that gives agency to female characters, while also displaying with their resolutions an emphasis on domesticity and on maintaining a het- eronormative order. This ambivalence provides a means to deal with anxieties about women’s place in society without advocating either a radical feminist dismissal of social conventions or a return to a Victorian ideal of submissive domesticity. The active models of femininity, including deviant femininity, provided in these novels speak to a changing society in which a woman’s place—in the home, in the workplace and in education—was continually being questioned, and the exploration that I provide of both confl ict and resolution in these texts adds to the existing body of work on both the crime fi ction genre and women’s middlebrow fi ction in general. I shall begin with a chapter on historical context, which is vital to under- standing the concerns explored in these novels.

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