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Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like a Detective

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Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like a Detective Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects Honors Program 5-2020 Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like a Detective Emma A. Hallock Utah State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hallock, Emma A., "Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like a Detective" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 482. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/482 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors Program at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LITERARY LABYRINTHS: READING LIKE A DETECTIVE by Emma A. Hallock Capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with UNIVERSITY HONORS with a major in English Literature in the Department of English Approved: Capstone Mentor Departmental Honors Advisor Dr. Brian McCuskey Dr. Keri Holt ____________________________________ University Honors Program Director Dr. Kristine Miller UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY Logan, UT Spring 2020 i © 2020 Emma A. Hallock All Rights Reserved ii Abstract Studying literature is like walking through a labyrinth of interpretative possibilities. So, it is no mystery why an English major would be fascinated with detectives; they seem to show the way out of the literary labyrinth. Like detectives, literary critics look for clues in the texts they study and interpret them to find meaning. However, many critics argue that detectives make bad models, and that reading like a detective leads to interpretations that are at best boring and at worst dangerous. It is not clear whether detectives are the best literary critics or the worst. To make sense of this problem, I argue that it is necessary to pay attention to specific fictional detectives rather than talking about the figure of the detective in general. This thesis is a study in sleuths that examines how individual detectives fail and succeed as models for literary critics. I will begin in the nineteenth century with Wilkie Collins’s novel The Moonstone (1863) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and then move onto the twentieth century with the hard-boiled detective novels The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler and The Maltese Falcon (1929) by Dashiell Hammett and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple short stories. Later in the twentieth century, detective fiction turns metaphysical, as in Jorge Luis Borges’s “Death and the Compass” (1942). None of these detectives offer satisfactory ways out of the labyrinth. However, I argue that Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House (1853) anticipates the problems of interpretation that arise throughout the history of detective fiction and shows through Mr. Bucket, the detective, how to live in a literary labyrinth. iii Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Dr. McCuskey for always helping and supporting me throughout this project and my time as an English literature student. Learning from and working with him was a pleasure. I also want to thank Dr. Holt for serving as the Departmental Honors Advisor for English as well as the many other wonderful English professors I have taken classes from and worked with over the past four years: Dr. Graham, Dr. Jensen, Dr. Burkert, Dr. Crumbley, and Dr. Miller. I also want to extend my thanks to the Honors Program at Utah State, which has continually supported my growth by providing me with research and leadership opportunities, and the chance to engage with people outside of the English department. Being part of the Honors Program made the difference in my college experience, so a massive thanks to everyone who works so hard to make the Honors Program at Utah State a success. Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... iii Final Written Product ................................................................................................................. 1 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 40 Reflection ................................................................................................................................... 42 Author Bio ................................................................................................................................. 45 1 Literary Labyrinths: Reading Like a Detective Part I: The English Major To begin at the beginning, I am writing my senior capstone project. I would like to go on till I come to the end and then stop. But, unfortunately for me, this project does not have an end, and there is no stop. Instead, I am going to go the other direction, back to before I started writing my capstone. Two years ago, I was in my second year of college, in my second literature class, and the second paper of the semester had just been assigned. It was on Christina Rossetti’s surreal poem, “Goblin Market” (1862). I do not have time to tell you exactly how wild, confusing, and distressing reading “Goblin Market” was, so just know that the poem snapped my brain right in half. I was not alone in my confusion. Caroline Norton’s 1863 review of the poem says that “Goblin Market” is “one of the works which are said to ‘defy criticism.’ Is it a fable— or a mere fairy story—or an allegory against the pleasures of sinful love—or what is it?” (401). Norton suggests that we “not too rigorously inquire” (401-402). She is probably right. Sane people should leave the literary works that “defy criticism” alone. Thankfully, I am an English major. I have license to ignore Norton, which is good because “or what is it?” is a question that nags at my brain whenever I read. It is also a question that I have to try and answer if I want to pass my English classes. Answering Norton’s question was part of the assignment description for the Rossetti paper, and it was an extremely difficult task. Our class discussions were helpful, but in a way that made everything more confusing. When I started writing, that confusion only grew. There were false starts, dead ends, and ends that probably would have been better off dead. It would be generous to say that my first several drafts were a train wreck. Writing that goes that badly inevitably 2 makes you think about how you write. For me, the hardest part about being an English major was figuring out what I was supposed to be doing. Even when I “did it” well enough to get a good grade, I could never articulate, even to myself, why what I had done worked. It bothered me, but I could mostly repress it and move along. “Goblin Market” pushed all of that uncertainty and anxiety to the surface because whatever I had been doing clearly no longer worked. If I wanted to turn in a paper, the only option left was to spend some serious time thinking about how I think and how I write. This meant going back to the basics. What do English majors do? Well, I knew they started by reading a text. Then they read it again (and again and again), looking for the interesting or strange parts. After noticing details, English majors put the pieces next to each other and find a way to make sense of them. Then, they have to explain what they have found in a way that makes sense to other people. This thought experiment made me realize that I had been asking the wrong question all along. It was not a question of what I was doing as an English major; it was a question of who I was being, and I was being Nancy Drew. The quotes from “Goblin Market” that I had stuck up on my wall were clues, and now all I had to do now was be a sleuth. I had my elementary school dream job and did not even realize it. Instead of tackling the entire poem at once, I could point to specific details and explain their surface and deeper meaning. Together, all the details built the case that was my argument about “Goblin Market.” Reading like a detective gave me a framework to come up with an interpretation of the poem that I could support in a paper. The way that I approached writing my “Goblin Market” essay shaped the way that I have approached every writing assignment I have had since then. If reading like a detective could help me interpret a literary work that seemed to “defy criticism,” then I figured it could apply to 3 almost any work. I adopted it as my go-to strategy and have used it in every one of my English classes. Reading like a detective gave me a way to order my thoughts and then my writing. It did not make literature classes easy or unsurprising, but I was no longer completely unmoored. Being a literary detective helped me succeed in class, and I really enjoyed what I was doing. Studying literature is like walking through a labyrinth. You go around and around an endless maze. When I was a sophomore, writing about “Goblin Market,” I was trying to find my way out of the labyrinth. Reading like a detective seemed like the best solution. Solving impossible puzzles is in the detective job description. As long as I kept reading like a detective, everything would be fine. At least, that was what I used to think, but the idea of reading like a detective begs to be investigated, and I could not resist it. There is a long history of comparing detective work to literary criticism. There is also a long history of pointing out the problems with reading like a detective. Many critics argue that reading like a detective leads to interpretations that are at best boring and at worst dangerous. My perfect solution was not so perfect. Reading like a detective helped me succeed as an English major, and so I have had four years of college to prove myself right.
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