From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell

Transcription

1 From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell

2 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 Series Standing Order ISBN hardcover Series Standing Order ISBN paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

3 From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction Susan Rowland Senior Lecturer in English University of Greenwich

4 Susan Rowland 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / 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, Criticism and interpretation. 4. Allingham, Margery, Criticism and interpretation. 5. Rendell, Ruth, 1930 Criticism and interpretation. 6. English fiction Women authors History and criticism. I. Title. PR888.D4 R ' dc

5 For my mother, Mary Rowland, a courageous woman

6 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 The Spirits of Detection 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

7 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 constitute the Four Queens of the so-called English country house murder, 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 Rendell aims to remedy some of this neglect and to suggest areas for future consideration. My subject is pleasure: this book will concentrate on the deeply literate embedding of readerly pleasures in these crime and detecting stories. 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 literary 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

8 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 disseminated 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 pleasures 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 dismissive reaction to most of these authors as unproblematically conservative. 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

9 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 personal 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