Pro-feminist Tendencies in Some Crime Novels by Christie, Sayers, Rendell and Fyfield

Bc. Tereza Jelínková

Master's thesis

Abstract:

This thesis explores some English women detective novels and looks for different literary images of women in four different authors’ texts to stress the various women approaches and ideas. I try to demonstrate how the female authors of the genre design their literary investigators, whether these need a woman’s assistance to solve a case, and focus on other examples of feminine support, attitudes or relationships. I purposefully select the novels in which women figures play significant roles, and in which they appear, both among the victims and the culprits. The English Queens of Crime of the twentieth century and their texts selected are not accidental; each of them represents a special approach towards the genre and contains some specific elements which characterize the individual’s female writing. I aim to focus on and analyze Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy (1939), Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison (1930), Ruth Rendell’s Road Rage (1997), and Frances Fyfield’s A Clear Conscience (1994).

Abstract:

This thesis explores some English women detective novels and looks for different literary images of women in four different authors’ texts to stress the various women approaches and ideas. I try to demonstrate how the female authors of the genre design their literary investigators, whether these need a woman’s assistance to solve a case, and focus on other examples of feminine support, attitudes or relationships. I purposefully select the novels in which women figures play significant roles, and in which they appear, both among the victims and the culprits. The English Queens of Crime of the twentieth century and their texts selected are not accidental; each of them represents a special approach towards the genre and contains some specific elements which characterize the individual’s female writing. I aim to focus on and analyze Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy (1939), Dorothy L. Sayers’ Strong Poison (1930), Ruth Rendell’s Road Rage (1997), and Frances Fyfield’s A Clear Conscience (1994).

Keywords

Genre, English Queens of Crime, crime fiction, detective, murderer and women criminals, victim, whodunit, female element, subordinate woman assistance, women police team, investigation, housewives, authority, the bonds of womanhood and manipulation.

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 13. 6. 2008

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 13. 6. 2008
• Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Philology / English Language and Literature