From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction

232 Pages·2001·0.96 MB·English

by  Susan Rowland (auth.)

From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell
Crime Files Series
General Editor: Clive Bloom
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been
more popular. In novels, short stories, films, radio, television and now in
computer games, private detectives and psychopaths, prim 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 fiction. Every aspect of crime writing, detective fiction, gangster movie,
true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation is explored
through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and
theoretical sophistication.
Published titles include:
Ed Christian (editor)
THE POST-COLONIAL DETECTIVE
Paul Cobley
THE AMERICAN THRILLER
Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s
Lee Horsley
THE NOIR THRILLER
Susan Rowland
FROM AGATHA CHRISTIE TO RUTH RENDELL
British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction
Crime Files
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From Agatha Christie
to Ruth Rendell
British Women Writers in Detective
and Crime Fiction
Susan Rowland
Senior Lecturer in English
University of Greenwich
© Susan Rowland 2001
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-67450-5
All rights reserved.No reproduction,copy or transmission of
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2001 by
PALGRAVE
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Companies and representatives throughout the world
PALGRAVEis the new global academic imprint of
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ISBN 978-0-333-68463-4 ISBN 978-0-230-59878-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230598782
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and
made from fully managed and sustained forest sources.
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rowland,Susan.
From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell / Susan Rowland.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Detective and mystery stories,English—History and criticism.2.
Women and literature—Great Britain—History—20th century.3.
Christie,Agatha,1890–1976—Criticism and interpretation.4.
Allingham,Margery,1904–1966—Criticism and interpretation.5.
Rendell,Ruth,1930–—Criticism and interpretation.6.English fiction–
–Women authors—History and criticism.I.Title.
PR888.D4 R68 2000
823'.0872099287—dc21
00–042202
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
For my mother, Mary Rowland, a courageous woman
Contents
Preface viii
1 Lives of Crime 1
2 Gendering the Genre 15
3 Social Negotiations: Class, Crime and Power 39
4 Lands of Hope and Glory? Englishness,
Race and Colonialism 62
5 Detecting Psychoanalysis: Readers, Criminals and Narrative 86
6 Gothic Crimes: A Literature of Terror and Horror 110
7 The Spirits of Detection 135
8 Feminism Is Criminal 157
Appendix A: The Complete Detective and Crime
Novels of the Six Authors 181
Appendix B: A Conversation with Ruth
Rendell/Barbara Vine 192
Appendix C: A Conversation with P.D. James 196
Notes 199
Select Bibliography 214
Index 217
vii
Preface
Upon finishing this book I realised that its true subject is pleasure.
These six authors have not only accompanied my own life for many
years, but have enchanted millions of readers. Perhaps there has been
an inverse relationship between their enormous popularity and serious
critical attention. Their comparative neglect has been an additional
spur to From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell. As well as inspiring such
widespread delight in the reading public, Agatha Christie, Dorothy
L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, P.D. James and Ruth
Rendell/Barbara Vine have all made definitive contributions to the
crime and detecting form. Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Marsh con-
stitute the ‘Four Queens’ of the so-called English country house mur-
der, which I will refer to as the ‘golden age genre’. The novels of James
and Rendell engage in a literary debate with the earlier form in order
both to scrutinise its limits and to develop the representation of crime
in the context of literary realism. The lack of critical engagement with
the profoundly influential work of all six writers is astonishing. From
Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendellaims to remedy some of this neglect and
to suggest areas for future consideration.
My subject is pleasure: this book will concentrate on the deeply liter-
ate embedding of readerly pleasures in these crime and detecting sto-
ries. All six writers maintain their reputations because their novels are
not only widely read but treasured and repeatedly reread. This suggests
that the reader is engaged not so much by the ‘closure’ of these novels,
the ‘whodunit’, but the ‘process’, the means by which the criminal is
finally identified out of many narrative possibilities. It is, in fact, the lit-
erary qualities of these crime fictions, which sustain their popular and
cultural significance, making the refusal to treat these authors as literary
artists all the more glaring an omission. If the pleasure of these novels
does not rely upon the final pinpointing of a single criminal, then it
must also be found in their stories of social and self-discovery. This
is not to deny the very real differences between them as artists, and as
writers with differing social and political approaches. From Agatha
Christie to Ruth Rendell pursues a dual purpose in evaluating generic
developments in the light of exploring their individual artistic visions.
What this book does discover is that the pleasures of these novels are
bound up with an interrelated set of concerns. Unsurprisingly, these
viii
Preface ix
crime stories are interested in society and its attitude to deviance, but
they express their anxieties by strategies ranging from social comedy to
tragic realism. The reader’s sense of identity, both personal and
national, is also debated. In responding to other literatures, the fictions
of the six authors draw upon the pleasurable terrors of the literary
Gothic. As might be expected of writers who are women, the changing
roles of femininity and sexuality receive their conscious attention
which, I will also demonstrate, affects developments in the genre.
In an age in which psychoanalysis has become such a widely dissem-
inated cultural phenomenon, the six authors record thoughtful critical
appreciations of its resources for portraying unconscious nightmares
and irrational passions. By considering the function of unconscious
fantasy in the detecting literary form, I shall show some of the plea-
sures of the genre’s duel with death. Last but not least, these six writers
explore the metaphysical dimension possible to a genre depicting the
healing of a society through a redemptive detecting figure. Again, I will
suggest that part of the reading pleasure lies in alternately secure and
ambivalent supernatural echoes.
Crucial to the reconsideration of these writers as literary artists is the
acknowledgement of the power of individual novels. Therefore all bar
the first of the subsequent chapters contain analyses of one individual
novel by each author. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell provides 42
studies of key texts as well as detailed explorations of the novelists’
work as a whole. Throughout the book, I detect the possibilities of
pleasure in the ‘playful’ nature of the golden age form, part of which
survives in the succeeding, more realistic authors. In wanting to
emphasise ‘process’ over ‘closure’ I am, of course, disputing the dismis-
sive reaction to most of these authors as unproblematically conserva-
tive. This work aims to initiate debate by opening these fascinating
novels to new forms of scrutiny. It does so in the cause of re-evaluating
the literary delights engendered by these authors.
My acknowledgements should properly occupy many pages, so I can
only mention a few of the people who have been the most helpful in
the making of this book. Without the support of Gerard Livingstone
this work could never have been written. I owe him more than I can
say. Evelyn Hewitt made the completion of this text possible by nobly
volunteering to type most of it. In this onerous task Joan Livingstone
ably assisted her. I am deeply grateful for their generous and unstinting
efforts. Part of the structure of From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell is
indebted to the pioneering efforts of Juliet John, and I am also
indebted to Gill Plain for helping me to see the importance of also
x Preface
focusing on individual novels. Her own published work on Dorothy
L. Sayers is an inspiration. Conferences of the Association for Research
into Popular Fictions, based at Liverpool John Moores University, have
proved to be valuable sources of ideas, and I would like to record per-
sonal thanks to Nickianne Moody for all her work. The support of
friends, in particular Wendy Pank, Christine Saunders, Claire Dyson,
Ailsa Camm, Wendy Young, Edmund Cusick, Janet and Frank Carter,
Linda Gilman, Margaret Erskine and James Forde-Johnston, have made
all the difference in the world. My family has, as usual, put up with me
with great patience.
Greenwich University supported this work both financially and in
providing a congenial teaching environment. Particular help was given
by Peter Humm, John Williams, Ann Battison and Mick Bowles. My
students’ cheerful interest and ready sympathy has been invaluable.
October 1999