Desires and devices

on women detectives in fiction

Birgitta Berglund

pp. 138-152

in: Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales, Robert Vilain (eds), The art of detective fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

The traditional pattern of representing women in fiction as objects and men as subjects has in general posed great difficulties for those (presumably female) writers who have wished to create strong and positive women protagonists. Because of the specific demands of the genre, this is even more true of detective fiction. Thus, in spite of the great number of women writers in this genre, it is a fact that the overwhelming majority of detectives in fiction have until quite recently been men. Women in detective stories have been victims, or they have been perpetrators, but they have not, on the whole, been detectives — that is, they have not been given the most important part to play. In novels written by men, women detectives are very few indeed (although they do exist) but even in books written by women, male detectives dominate. Thus we have, for instance, such notable fictional detectives as Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, Roderick Alleyn, Adam Dalgliesh and Reginald Wexford — all of them created by women.