Critical Essays on English and Bengali Detective Fiction 179364957X, 9781793649577

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Critical Essays on English and Bengali Detective Fiction

Critical Essays on English and Bengali Detective Fiction Edited by Debayan Deb Barman Foreword by Phil Fitzsimmons

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2022 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Deb Barman, Debayan, editor. Title: Critical essays on English and Bengali detective fiction / edited by Debayan Deb Barman ; foreword by Phil Fitzsimmons. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The book brings together three strains of detective fiction: British, American, and Bengal. The essays explore varied aspects of detective fiction, offering new avenues of critical thought from a Postcolonial perspective”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021038977 (print) | LCCN 2021038978 (ebook) | ISBN 9781793649577 (cloth) | ISBN 9781793649584 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories, English--History and criticism. | Detective and mystery stories, Bengali--History and criticism. | Detective and mystery stories, American--History and criticism. | Detective and mystery films--History and criticism. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. | Essays. Classification: LCC PN3448.D4 C748 2021 (print) | LCC PN3448.D4 (ebook) | DDC 823/.087209--dc23 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

In memory of Satyajit Ray, a tribute on his birth centenary 2021

Foreword

ENCOUNTERING NEW TWISTS Having agreed to write the foreword to Debayan’s book, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I downloaded it when it finally arrived. However, as I began reading through the chapters, I realized that writing an introductory precis in this instance was not going to be as straightforward as ones I had done before. As it was a new book, I expected different, but this text was a different kind of different. Indeed, as I read and re-read my way through this text, I was reminded of the age-ravaged sign that hung over a friend’s ancient “smithy’s barn” in Oxfordshire in England—Much Twisting and Turning Done In Here. The more I read, the more I was taken into twists and turns of new and interesting understanding. From the outset and throughout, this text takes the reader out of the Eurocentric view of literature and writing that I would argue is all pervasive, even if ultimately subliminal, in the realm of literature analysis and crime fiction. At the most rudimentary level, this book makes it clear that Bengali writers have always absorbed English language and literature, and also created a corresponding depth of socio-cultural understanding, bringing different and important cultural slants and perspectives Certainly some of the other key elements this book brings to light are the beliefs regarding the emergence of crime writing in the Bengal region. While there was always some lingering doubt in the often claimed statement that the detective genre had commenced with Poe’s Dupin narratives of the early 1840’s, this book makes it clear that this is plainly false. While crime fiction sales in the Western hemisphere can trace their peaks to key authorship, key times of “golden” ages, and high points of readership back to this time frame, the chapters that follow on from this foreword not only touch on this aspect but reveal that readership perspectives of academics in the West are perhaps a vii

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narrow illusion. It is only natural that the long association India has had with writing and hermeneutics that a natural affinity with narrative has evolved. Thus, with the advent of the English colonial powers, their literature was readily absorbed as well as generating a corresponding transtextual critical counter response. Bengali crime fiction was a medium reflecting the changes and cross currents of the English dominance as well revealing emerging Indian nationalism. More importantly, contributors to this book unpack key points related to the much longer time frame in which India has been deeply connected with crime narrative. Clearly the narratives in the Mahabharata, for example, fit the definition of crime and detection. Authors also raise questions related to the ancient use of register and overall text structure, and how these relate to modern detective fiction. This raises a raft of intertextual and transtextual research possibilities. This should come as no surprise given the expansive history of Indian culture and parallel linkage with literature. With the detective genre having always relied on the processes of disentanglement and extrication of all kinds, this book adds both bread and depth to these narrative and psychical agencies.While one would hope this is the case with each new foray into understanding, the new depths and breadths of twists in this book make it essential that the Indian context of understanding in general, and the Bengali in particular, are followed through with an even more intense spotlight of research. Assoc. Prof. Phil Fitzsimmons Head of School—Education Alphacrucis College Sydney, Australia

Acknowledgments

Every book involves the putting together of efforts from multiple persons, an edited anthology, being a collaborative endeavour, more so. This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of some people whom I must thank here. First, thanks to Lexington and my acquisitions editor Holly Buchanan and assistant acquisitions editor Megan Conley for keeping faith and patience in me. Without the contributions of the authors of the essays, the volume would not have taken shape—thanks to each of them. I should mention one, though I won’t name here, who battled against Covid, individually, and in the family, but still kept word and sent me the chapter. I am thankful to Prof. Phil Fitzsimmons, who happily agreed to write the foreword for the book. There were some technological issues that were smoothly worked out for me by Ashutosh Sarkar—thanks to him. The Covid situation brought some logistic problems for me, which were solved by Arka Bhattacharyya, thanks Arka. Every project needs some brainstorming and deliberations that slowly gives shape to it. I am thankful to Sumit Roy for discussions that I thoroughly enjoyed and was guided by. Last but not the least, thanks to Mou, my wife, for pushing me on, as always.

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Contents

Foreword vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Debayan Deb Barman BRITISH DETECTIVE FICTION



Chapter 1: From Secrecy to Knowledge: Detection and Literary Detectives in Dickens Kyamalia Bairagya Chapter 2: Heroine as Detective: Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Secret Madhumita Biswas Chapter 3: The Victims of Abuse and Misogyny in Crime Fiction: Women in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet Karabi Barman

19 21 27

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Chapter 4: Detection and Drawings: Sidney Paget’s Illustrations from Doyle’s Return of Sherlock Holmes Deepali Yadav

45

Chapter 5: Feminization of the Science of Detection: Agatha Christie’s Unusual Detective-Partners Amy Lee

57

Chapter 6: Locating The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in the Tradition of Detective Fictions Sourav Banerjee

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Contents

Chapter 7: A Place for Campion, Campion in his Place: Reading Margery Allingham’s Novels Jonathan Wilkins

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Chapter 8: Following Cordelia Gray: Gender “Suitability” and Detective Fiction Medha Bhadra Chowdhury

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Chapter 9: P. D. James: Narratives Bubbling to the Surface Anne K. B. Erickson



105

Chapter 10: Time Past and Time Present: Reading Kate Atkinson’s Novels 117 Purnima Chakraborti Chapter 11: Interrogating the Agency of the “Partner in Crime”: The Sidekick as the Reader in Popular Crime Fiction Barnali Saha

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AMERICAN HARD-BOILED FICTION

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Chapter 12: Dashiell Hammett: A Pinkerton Detective’s Fictional Sleuths 135 Robert McParland Chapter 13: Conflict, Desire and the City: Exploring Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep Neepa Sarkar

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BENGALI DETECTIVE FICTION

155



Chapter 14: Assertive Heroes and Male Heterotopia: Revisiting Select Detective Fiction by Hemendra Kumar Roy Stella Chitralekha Biswas Chapter 15: Nativizing Holmesian Tradition of Detective: A Reading of Select Stories of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda Abhinaba Chatterjee Chapter 16: The Purloined Artefacts: Tracing Repetition Automatism in Satyajit Ray’s Joy Baba Felunath and Jahangirer Swarnamudra Ipsita Chakrabarty and Soham Roy Chapter 17: The Glocalization of Detective Fiction by Satyajit Ray Ananya Chatterjee and Nisarga Bhattacharjee

157



165

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Chapter 18: Detectives and Father Figures: A Study of the Metamorphosis of the Indian Father Figure with Ray’s “Feluda” Gouri Parvathy V

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DETECTIVE FILMS

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Chapter 19: Byomkesh Breaks Bad: Unraveling the Hidden Desires in Dibakar Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! Kaustav Mukherjee

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Chapter 20: Serial Detectives and Reverse Forensics: Cases of Literary and Filmic Red Dragon Sheng-mei Ma

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Index

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About the Contributors



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Introduction Debayan Deb Barman

These tales of ratiocination owe their popularity in being something in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious—but people think them more ingenious than they are—on account of their method and air of method. (Edgar Allan Poe, Letter to Philip Pendleton Cooke, August 9, 1846). The good detective story writer (there must after all be a few) competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well. And on almost equal terms; for it is one of the qualities of this kind of writing that the thing that makes people read it never goes out of style. (Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”)

I Traces of what we call “detective fiction” has been found in many literary texts that usually do not fall under the purview of detective fiction “proper.” In ancient literature, such traces have been detected in the Bible, in the “Book of Daniel,” in the episode of “Susanna and the Elders”; in the Athenian tragedy Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. In the Indian context, such traces have been seen in the Puranic tale of Sarama. P. D. James, one of the most celebrated of detective fiction writers, has highlighted how the element of “mystery,” a necessary pre-requisite of such fiction, can be seen in the novels like Trollope’s Phineas Redux, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in Dickens’s Bleak House, and the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. James has precisely outlined the formula for detective fiction. She says: What we can expect is a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of suspects, each with a motive, means and opportunity for the crime; a 1

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detective, either amateur or professional, who comes like an avenging deity to solve it; and, by the end of the book, a solution which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness. (James 2009, 5)

Though early examples of the “detective” are Sergeant Cuff of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and Inspector Bucket of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, the first amateur detective figure who relies on “logical deduction” is Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, who appeared in Poe’s “tales of ratiocination,” namely—“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842), which was based on the true incident of the murder in New York of Mary Cecilia Rogers, and “The Purloined Letter” (1844). It is interesting how Poe had pioneered in two different strains of fiction, the Gothic horror genre and his logical tales of ratiocination. This relying on logic was pioneered by Poe through the character of Dupin, who according to James “was the first fictional investigator to rely primarily on deduction from observable facts” (James 2009, 12). This model of relying on deductive logic to arrive at the solution of the mystery or puzzle was further concretized by Arthur Conan Doyle, whose fictional detective sleuth Sherlock Holmes, “consulting detective” of the fictive 221 B, Baker Street, London, besides his sharp observation, physical agility, and high intelligence, relied very much on “scientific methods and logical deduction.” But though on the one hand we had such extraordinary sleuths like the eccentric, sharp, and thoroughly empirical detectives like Dupin and Holmes, a counter character would also emerge in the character of Father Brown, a simple, unassuming, lovable, almost comic parish priest, who however possesses a kind heart, a sharp mind, and a profound knowledge of the human self. P. D. James rightly points out that in the hand of G. K. Chesterton, detective fiction becomes “a vehicle for exploring and exposing the condition of society, and for saying something true about human nature” (James 2009, 15–16). The roots of detective fiction also lay in the spirit of scientific enquiry, empiricism and reasoning of the Enlightenment. Mary Evans points out: “ . . .the Enlightenment moved the forces of the moral order from the individual’s obedience to God to the ability of the individual to contain and regulate his or her inclinations and emotions, in order to live the life which makes social order and social cohesion possible” (Evans 2009, 25). Thus, the aim and ambition of a new, enlightened society was towards “social order” and “social cohesion,” to which crime and criminality would pose serious threats, and create a situation suitable for the arrival and justification of the necessity of law and order. The setting up of the police de surêté in Paris in 1812 with the help of François Vidoq, and through the efforts of Sir Robert Peel,

Introduction

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home secretary, the establishment of the New Metropolitan Police in 1829, in London (preceded by the Bow Street Runners, which was established in 1749 by Henry Fielding and his half-brother John Fielding) and the ultimate formation of the detective department of police in 1842 in London paved the way for the emergence and further development of the fictional detective, within the police force and as amateurs. Crime literature emerged in France with the Memoirs De Vidoq, Chef De La Surêté (1828) of Eugène François Vidocq, who was the chief of Surêté in 1812. In England, William Russel wrote “Recollections of a Police Officer” in Chamber’s Edinburgh Journal (1849–53). During the eighteenth century itself, crime and criminality started appearing as subject matter in the “picaresque” narratives of “rogues” in works such as Le Sage’s Gil Blas (1715), Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722), François Gayot de Pitaval’s Causes Célèbres et Intéressantes. The broadsides, conny-catching pamphlets (see Robert Greene’s The Defence of Conny-catching, 1592) and Newgate Calendar were important precursors in making the tales of crime and criminality in vogue among the general reading public. The coming of the detective department in London inspired Dickens to incorporate vignettes of the “detective” in his work Household Words (1850–59). II Coming back to the context of the Enlightenment, the spirit of enquiry and reason ignited by the movement paved the way for crime literature. As Lucy Sussex points out: The genre of crime writing is philosophically a child of the Enlightenment with its enquiring zeitgeist, but practically also of an increasing sophistication in the responses to crime. During the eighteenth century the legal systems of Western Europe, England and its colonies underwent a major process of reform, as detailed by legal historians such as J.M. Beattie and John Langbein. (Sussex 2010,10)

In the post-Enlightenment era, the spirit of science and enquiry did condition the rise of the literature of detection. Discussing the first detective story proper, Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Lawrence Frank points out how the story by alluding to the nebular hypothesis of Pierre Simon Laplace: “hinted at the existence of a contingent universe denied the trappings of divinity in which the detective finds himself as he sets out to render the apparently intelligible without recourse to supernatural explanations” (Frank 2003, 30). Further in the Darwinian world, without the cushion of an overarching

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and protective divinity, the detective, barren, logical, inquisitive, and highly effective, becomes the basis of confidence for a society where crime, any time, carries the potential to jeopardize social security and stability. Take for example Arthur Conan Doyle and his creation Sherlock Holmes. Lawrence Frank says: “In response to the loss of his Christian faith, Doyle was to find a new foundation in various proponents and defenders of Darwinian evolution and, later, to render that world-view imaginatively in the various adventures of Sherlock Holmes” (Frank 2003, 134). If we consider detective fiction’s enduring attraction to readers, we have to agree that, in spite of raging and lingering debates between “high brow” and “low brow” literature, in spite of it being conventional, structured and formulaic, its popularity as escapist reading material as well as being considered for critical interests is something which makes it controversial and interesting. There have been staunch detractors of detective fiction, most famous was perhaps Edmund Wilson. But Wilson himself wonders how detective fiction, a genre so detestable for purists like him, should be so likeable to “high brow” litterateurs like T. S. Eliot, Woodrow Wilson and W. B. Yeats. Though Wilson complains that detective fiction enjoys an unfair advantage, with its suspenseful plot that discourages the critic to disclose details, he ultimately does highlight the reason he thinks detective fiction of his age enjoys its popularity. He says: . . . the detective story has kept its hold; had even, in the two decades between the great wars, become more popular than even before; and there is, I believe, a deep reason for this. The world during those years was ridden by an all-pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility. Who had committed the original crime and who was going to commit the next one?— that murder which always, in the novels, occurs at an unexpected moment, when the investigation is well under way, which may happen, as in one of the Nero Wolfe stories, right in the great detective’s office. Everybody is suspected in turn, and the streets are full of lurking agents whose allegiances we cannot know. Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and—relief!—he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain—known to the trade as George Gruesome—and he has been caught by an infallible Power, the supercilious and omniscient detective, who knows exactly how to fix the guilt. (Wilson 1944)

Dhamini Ratnam, while celebrating the irresistible popularity of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, even after elapse of a century, makes a significant comment on the popularity of the genre of detective fiction in the following lines:

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Detective fiction is popular because it perpetuates a socio-cultural ethos that finds many takers. The detective doesn’t just find the murderer in our midst. By locating the evil—methodically, scientifically and through sheer genius—the detective allows us readers to collectively heave a sigh of relief; the evil can be cast out, a semblance of order and morality can be restored despite the chaos that surrounds us. The problem is never the social order itself. (Ratnam 2021)

Detective fiction’s attraction to readers is also due to a sense of surprise in the ingenuity of the crime as well as a sense of security that the solution to the problem is achieved and a closure has been made possible. R. A. York remarks: The detective novel does dissolve the tension of uncertainty. In doing so it provides an ending. The story is satisfying because it recounts a sharply defined period of time, with a question and an answer . . .. But the fact that the uncertainty is dissolved does not mean that it is denied. On the contrary, we exercise our sense of bewilderment for nine-tenths of the length of the book. And we may judge that the bewilderment is more real than the solution: the dazzling ingenuity and surprising-ness of the solution—and the often stagy presentation of it—may lead us to feel that it is the solution, more than the mystery, which is fictive and arbitrary. (York 2007, 6)

If we look at it from a Marxist point of view, the figure of the detective restores the confidence of the bourgeois world in its solid foundations, which though threatened by an aberration of crime and criminality, is ultimately restored and saved by the genius detective: In essence the detective story constitutes a mythos or fable in which crime, as a distinctive problem of bourgeois, individualistic, and quasi-democratic societies is handled without upsetting society’s fundamental institutions or its worldview. . . the detective reveals to us by his or her actions that, however corrupt or unjust society may be in some of its particulars, it yet contains the intelligence and the means to define and exercise these evils as particular problems. Even in the more pessimistic vision of some of the hardboiled detective stories, where the corrupt far outnumber the innocent, it is still possible for the detective to accomplish a significant act of justice or vengeance. (Cawelti 1997, 12)

Since the breakthrough popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, a second wave of famous detective fiction writers emerged during the inter-war years, now popularly labelled as the writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Apart from the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie, creator of the Belgian detective with a catchy name—Hercule Poirot—odd, eccentric, polished, and particular in attire and shoes, very particular in his style of appearance—especially his meticulously maintained

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moustache, his tight-fitted shoes and a remarkable “egg-shaped” bald head with his “little grey cells,” and the reclusive, observant, gossip-loving spinster, Miss Marple of St. Mary’s Mead, there have been others like Dorothy L. Sayers, Patricia Highsmith, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey et al. One of the first successful women detective novelists was however, the American Anna Catherine Green. Coming back to Agatha Christie, we know her enduring popularity among readers. Her books are outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Now, that is some achievement, though her detractors may not agree, accusing her of being repetitive in a certain formula. Her play The Mousetrap (1952) has achieved the status of the longest running play with shows closed down only due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not surprising that Edmund Wilson, a detractor of detective fiction, did not like Christie’s work. He complains: . . . her writing is of a mawkishness and banality which seem to me literally impossible to read. You cannot read such a book, you run through it to see the problem worked out; and you cannot become interested in the characters because they never can be allowed an existence of their own even in a flat two dimensions but have always to be contrived so that they can seem either reliable or sinister, depending on which quarter, at the moment, is to be baited for the reader’s suspicion. (Wilson 1944, n.p.)

In spite of such harsh words from Wilson, the enigma of Agatha Christie’s enduring popularity is well decoded by David Grossvogel: . . . even though the worlds she described are, for the most part, no longer with us, even though the very genre she helped fashion is largely obsolete—in a great part because of the disappearance of those worlds—Dame Agatha, her worlds and her particular notion of a genre still seem to be defining for an exceptionally large readership. (Grossvogel 1983, 1)

P. D. James also posits a similar high opinion: “. . . she is a literary conjurer who places her pasteboard characters face downwards and shuffles them with practiced cunning. Game after game we are confident that this time we will turn up the card with the face of true murderer, and time after time she defeats us.” (James 2009, 30–31) Christie’s creation Miss Marple is not what we know as the conventional detective. A simple village woman, Miss Marple is a spinster with great power of observation, common sense and a useful knack for gossip. Evans points out: “What is so distinct about Miss Marple’s way of looking at the world (and indeed that of Poirot) is that she sees the unruly, the unstable and the insecure behind the façade of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois life” (Evans

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2009, 61). He adds: “Miss Marple’s particular strength is to take what might be described as ‘domestic’ knowledge and use it for wider, social reasons” (Evans 2009, 65). Discussing the style of fiction and the nature of the detective Lord Peter Wimsey, created by Dorothy L. Sayers, Bruce Merry remarks: . . . the extraordinary search for truth in both Wimsey’s detection and Dorothy Sayers’ writing. He believes in Truth as an absolute. She struggles to create right balances and to show vanity, weakness and cleverness just as they are, coexisting in the same person or within a tradition. Truth is everywhere in Sayers’ books, an ideal and a target, far removed from the public prosecutor’s indisputable facts before a jury. Much of her search for truth involves a moralizing stance. Her characters pass snappy value judgements on matters of taste, clothing, style, grammar, speech, class, architecture, wine, food, etiquette. There are constant glimpses of cads and bounders and ladies in regrettable hats or Americans with brusque manners. Yet the thrust of this opinionated research is still towards a level of truth. Sayers is concerned to give a true account of social intercourse in pre-war England. (Merry 1983, 26)

Every detective character has some signature style and a trademark. For instance: Poe’s detective, Dupin, is pre-eminently a specialist, with one faculty, the faculty of analysis, developed to a high degree. Like many other Poe heroes, Dupin emphasises his specialism by excluding extraneous elements from his physical environment, such as company and daylight. The nature of the stories, too, is relentlessly concentrative: our search for the solution involves, by definition, a progressive exclusion of the contingent and the inessential, focusing our interest ever more tightly on a single issue. (Priestman 1991, 43)

There is a similar kind of specialized technique in case of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories that focus sharply on the process of detection. David Trotter points out: The hermeneutic foreplay which precedes each of his adventures is an announcement that, in Baker Street, sublimation is always already in progress. It textualizes matter (an abrasion, the scrape of mud on a boot). The corpses, too, are always already textual. They have been edited by assassination. Uncommon reader that Holmes is, a resident ‘interpretive community’ of one, or grudgingly two, they do not remain opaque (mere matter) for long. And they do not bring out an equivalent opacity in the interpreter; he knows doubt, on occasion, but

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never nausea, never shock. The fascination that stirs in him is chastely epistemological. (Trotter 2000, 22)

III Another strain of detective fiction emerged across the Atlantic in America, something far removed from the quiet, intellectual mind games of classic British detective fiction. This has been famously known as the hard-boiled detective fiction. P. D. James remarks: While the well-born and impeccably correct detectives of the Golden Age were courteously interviewing their suspects in the drawing rooms of country houses, the studies of rural clergymen and the rooms of Oxford academics, across the Atlanticcrime writers were finding their material and inspiration in a very different society and writing about it in prose that was colloquial, vivid and memorable. (James 2009, 25)

The leading writers of the hard-boiled genre were Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald. Dashiell Hammett was himself a detective in the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. His early works, as well as those of Raymond Chandler appeared in the magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s famous novels are Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Glass Key (1931), The Thin Man (1934). While writing detective fiction, Hammett was exploring a degenerated and corrupt American society: “The hard-boiled detective formula provided Hammett with an appropriate vehicle for exploring and articulating his insights on corruption . . .” (Hamilton 1987, 125). Unlike the meticulous, intellectual British detectives, Hammett’s detectives like the Continental Ops and Sam Spade were tough guys in a tough world: “Hammett came to value toughness, the ability to survive physically and psychologically in the teeth of a brutal universe. The importance of toughness is graphically demonstrated in his fiction” (Hamilton 1987, 126). The unique brand of Hammett’s writing is well analyzed in the following lines: His fiction is a rare combination of light entertainment and radical intelligence. He challenges the easy distinctions between popular and high art, and the critical language that normally sustains those divisions; any critical approach to him is likely to go awry if it becomes too serious, too sociological or too frivolous. A much greater problem is that the toughness of his characteristic voice is sexualized, linked to fantasies of male power, and nowadays especially it invites an easy clinical interpretation . . .. (Naremore 1983, 51)

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Raymond Chandler had served as a journalist and later as a soldier in the First World War. Like Hammett, he contributed to the Black Mask. His important novels are The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942). Chandler’s detective sleuth, Philip Marlow, it seems, has some traces of Sherlock Holmes. Cynthia S. Hamilton says that Chandler created: . . . a hero tough enough physically to cope with a world he himself felt unequal to as a sickly child. He created a hero tough enough emotionally to cross the social minefield of interpersonal relationships with self-assurance, without the sense of panic Chandler himself experienced. He created a hero who did not need his mother or any other woman and who did not revere any. He created a hero who would never be spoiled by success; indeed, one who would never have any success beyond the satisfaction of a job well done. And he created a hero who was capable of balancing sentimental romanticism with tough cynicism. Chandler’s hero is an alienated outsider who vindicates that stance by his demonstrable superiority in a society unworthy of his services. (Hamilton 1987, 155)

IV In the case of India, Bengal’s encounter and interaction with British culture and literature was an obvious process of colonization. The Bengal presidency remained the prime center of the colonial enterprise with Calcutta as the capital of British India until 1912. The import of detective fiction from Britain has influenced generations of writers of Bengali detective fiction. But since in early years, Bengali detective fiction did not have much status as “high literature,” neither proper documentation nor sustained studies emerged. As has been rightly remarked in the following lines: Unlike English detective fiction, where we find numerous anthologies of stories and novels, Bengali detective fiction has not shown such tendencies. There is no scope of getting at hand Bengali detective fiction of the yesteryears. We do not even have a clear understanding of the detective fiction writers of the first generation. Detective stories, mystery stories do not quite fall under high literature, was a view of educated Bengalis for a long time. (Sekaler Goenda Golpo, n.p) [Translation mine]

It is understandable from the above comment that the construction of a definitive historiography of Bengali detective fiction is probably a much difficult task. However, the foremost important work on the history of Bengali

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detective fiction was Crime Kahinir Kalkranti [Chronological History of Detective Fiction] by Sukumar Sen (1988). Some other histories on the genre are Mrinal Kumar Basu’s Darogar Dorbar [Office of the Police-Officer-incharge] (2008) and Prosenjit Dasgupta’s Sahityer Goenda [The Detective in Literature] (2010). The rise of detective fiction in Bengal was a direct result of the colonial encounter and influence. The British detective fiction brought in a “new” genre of fiction in Bengal that influenced the contemporary generation. Arindam Dasgupta writes: These detective novels had such glamour of colonial modernity which could not be avoided by the new readers. Calcutta’s police, intelligence branch detectives, and sometimes private detectives—who were of modern scientific attitude, who can solve crimes by using deduction like Sherlock Holmes, if needed, can avail the benefits of the ‘modern’ railway and telegraph, whose news is printed in newspaper with great flourish—how could the reader ignore the attraction of such smart moderns? (Dasgupta 2016, n.p)

Historian Sukumar Sen has pointed out how to curb the nuisance of “Thugs” Lord William Bentinck established the “Thugee and Dacoity Department” in 1835 under supervision of William Henry Sleeman and police officials were appointed for the task. The exploits of one of them, named Barkatulla, aka “Bankaulla,” an officer of the force, had been documented in English and were later translated as Bakaullar Daptor [Office of Bakaulla] in Bengali by Kaliprasanna Chattopadhyay. The pioneer of detective fiction in Bengali is Priyonath Chattopadhyay whose police procedural series Darogar Daftor [Office of the OC] was a great hit. Underlining the popularity and success of Darogar Daptor, the publisher Upendra Bhushan Choudhury writes: “After completing 11 years, Darogar Daptor has reached its 12th year. In Bengal, a Bengali Monthly magazine has been specially admired by the readers and has continued to run for such a long time. What can be of more pride for Darogar Daptor than this?” (Choudhury 1904, n.p.) He does complain about the irregular nature of publication of Darogar Daptor, but points out that it is due to the fact that Priyonath Chattopadhyay had to dabble between the responsibilities as a police officer and as a detective fiction writer at the same time. Talking about the merits of Priyonath Chattopadhyay’s fiction a critic points out that: The attractions of Priyonath’s narratives are primarily twofold. First, they supply the voyeuristic thrill of following the real-life detective-narrator as he exposes the seedy underbelly of society and seamier facets of the human mind, especially in the colonial metropolis of turn-of-the-century Calcutta with its

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jostling multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population. Second, Priyonath’s stories inspire confidence in the resilience and resourcefulness of the detective-narrator who embodies the law and almost invariably brings the criminals to justice. (Sarkar 2020)

Priyonath’s stories were a good admixture of true cases, imaginary ones and adaptations. However, it must be accepted that his stance was pro-colonial, his “stories register the colonial rule and resultant cultural formations, without playing up or calling attention to the discontents of the colonized” (Sarkar 2020). Another important name in the early years of Bengali detective fiction was Panchkori Dey. He was one writer of detective fiction who found great financial success in the publishing business. His novels gained such popularity that they were translated in Hindi. He fashioned his detective Gobindoram on Sherlock Holmes. However he did slowly indigenize his detective fiction. In the Preface to his novel Bangalir Birotto [The Bravery of the Bengali] (1908) he says: “I hope the readers will get acquainted with the intellectual and physical strength of Bengalis in this book (Sekaler Goenda Kahini, n.p.) [Translation mine]. Among some other important writers of the early phase was Dinendra Kumar Roy whose Rahasya Lahori [Wave of Mystery] series gained much popularity. Rahasya Lahori series was pro-British in alignment. His Ajay Singher Kuthi [Ajay Sinha’s Mansion] (1902) was an adaptation of a French work. He informs in his memoir Sekaler Katha [The Story of Past Years] that he was inspired after reading an English translation of a French novel. He created the hugely popular character of Robert Blake. Sekaler Darogar Kahini [Police Officer in charge’s tales of yesteryears] was published in ‘Nabajiban’ magazine (1893–94) by Girish Chandra Basu. Some important police procedurals that would inspire the later flourish of detective fiction were Police o Lokrakkha [Police and Public Protection] (1892) by Ramakhsay Chattopadhyay; Major H.M. Ramsay’s Detective Footprints Bengal 1874–1881 with bearings for a Future Course (1882); R. Reid’s Everyman His Own Detective! (1887) was partially translated as Ingrej Detectiver Chokhe Prachin Kolkata by Parimal Goswami. R. Reid’s other memoirs were Revelations of an Indian Detective (1885) and Reminiscences of an Indian Detective (1886). (Sen 1988)

Besides the well-regarded detective fiction writers in Bengali, a much popular but stigmatized group of such fiction came to be written by less recognized writers such as Ramanath Das, Binodbehari Shil, Satishchandra Bandyopadhay et al. This category was labelled as “Bat-tolar lekhok” [cheap entertainment fiction sold under the shade of Banyan tree, bearing degenerative connotations] (Dasgupta 2016).

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Hemendra Kumar Ray’s famous detective trio were Jayanta-Manik and inspector Sunder baboo. His book Jaker Dhan [Miser’s Treasure], with Bimal-Kumar duo was an adventure tale serialized in 1923 in the Mouchak [Beehive] magazine. Recently it has been made into a film in 2017. The first appearance of Jayanta-Manik duo was in Jayantar Kirti [Adventure of Jayanta]. Some other works are Manush Pisach [Human Demon], Sahjahaner Mayur [Sahjahan’s Peacock], Kancher Coffin [Glass Coffin]. One of the most popular detective characters to emerge in Bengali literature, who has captured the imagination of generations and which finds mass acceptance through recent film adaptations is the character of “Satyanweshi” [the truth-seeker] Byomkesh Bakshi created by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay. He was a fan of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, and the characters of Byomkesh Bakshi and his sidekick Ajit were inspired by the Holmes-Watson duo. However, his achievement was in creating an indigenized and organic detective character through Byomkesh. Sukumar Sen, after speaking on the similarities, underlines the uniqueness and the difference of Byomkesh and his sidekick Ajit from the Holmes-Watson duo. He says: But there is no other similarity between Holmes and Byomkesh. Byomkesh was a Bengali youth of the third decade of the then century—educated, meritorious, a man of few words, kind hearted . . .. He is perfect as an amateur young Bengali detective. His name too matches his reserved character. In the name “Byomkesh” there are hints of being like the meditative Shiva or Mahadeva, of smoke and of being intoxicated (in thoughts) . . .. His surname is also fitting. He is not in the police, does not take fees like a lawyer. But he expects accolades, fame, self-satisfaction. Thus, his surname is Bakshi which, if we look at it carefully, is a word minus an extra ‘s’ at the end which would mean ‘Bakshis’ in Bengali, meaning perks. There is difference also in the characterization of Byomkesh’s sidekick, Ajit. Ajit is not the Bengali version of Watson. There was much age gap between Holmes and Watson, their mental scapes were also different. But Ajit and Byomkesh are of the same age and their mentalities match. Ajit can be taken as a contemporary Bengali gentleman type character. The stories of Saradindu baboo move ahead steadily in the partnership of Byomkesh-Ajit. The partnership of Holmes-Watson is not so much intimate. Perhaps therefore the import of varied flavours have been made possible in them. By drawing a Puranic comparison it may be said that as if Holmes and Watson were like Krishna and Uddhav, while Byomkesh and Ajit are like Krishna and Subal. (Sen 2000, n.p) [Translation mine]

Another important point that Sen highlights is the speciality of the language style used by Saradindu Bandyopadhay in his Byomkesh stories: “The quality of Saradindu baboo’s stories have been multiplied by his language. His stories have a free flow towards the climax through his language. It is hard to say

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if his language is formal or informal. Saradindubabu’s style is his own—clear, minimalist, easily beautiful” (Sen 2000, n.p.) [Translation mine]. Saradindu’s stories are not to be seen merely as detective stories. The social element in them as well as the rich language elevates them to a status of serious literature. The author says in an interview: I want to keep detective story at the level of intellectuality. The stories are not merely detective stories. You can read each story as a detective novel as well. I want to create a familiar ambience in the story. Some problems barge into the simple lives of people, Byomkesh solves these problems. I have tried to show social problems in these stories . . .one thing, I have never tried to write detective story by avoiding life’s realities. (Chattopadhay 2000, n.p.) [Translation mine]

Nihar Ranjan Gupta created a very popular detective sleuth Kiriti Ray who first appeared in Kalo Bhromor. His detective was anglicized in appearance, an image similar to Sherlock Holmes. A critic informs: “Set in the early 1940s, Kiriti Ray was aristocratic and eccentric gent. . . His clients were equally posh—princes, zamindars and business magnates—and well dressed. The same could often be said of the villains on many occasions” (Mukhopadhyay 2014, n.p.). In the post-Byomkesh era, no Bengali detective story writer could match the finesse and popularity of the Feluda stories created by Oscar winning director Satyajit Ray. Ray’s fundamental difference with Bandyopadhay was that he was writing detective stories for the teens. Thus his plots and storyline were not as complex as that of Saradindu’s Byomkesh stories that were targeted towards adult readers. His stories featured a trio, which enhanced the variety and range of the principal characters. Though his detective sleuth Feluda, a.k.a Prodosh Chandra Mitter (who in spite of the Anglicized style and spelling of his name, was a model of the modern Bengali who has embraced the best qualities of his native origin as well as Western culture), is modelled on Sherlock Holmes, his attitude of concern and brotherly feel for his cousin Topesh, a.k.a Topse, and his affectionate tolerance for the gullible and comic Lal Mohan Ganguly only give greater range to his stories. Since the stories were serialized in Sandesh, a children’s magazine, the element of teenage adventure and expedition play an important role in the plots. The stories serve as guided tour for teenage readers, with obvious social, cultural, historical curiosities answered by Feluda to his young fans through his informative rejoinders to his cousin Topse. Sandip Ray, son of Satyajit Ray, who has adapted many of Feluda stories for the television, rightly points out: You’ll agree that an added attraction of Feluda stories is travel around the country. [Satyajit Ray] had travelled in the places Feluda visits. Among these places,

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Darjeeling was his favourite. Thus, there is no surprise that his first original screen-play of Kanchenjungha and the incidents of his first Feluda story occur in Darjeeling. (Ray 2015, Feluda Samagra).

Similarly, regular Puja holidays in Puri brought the town in Hatyapuri. Visits to Lucknow and Kashmir inspired Badshahi Angti [Royal Ring] and Bhusawrga Bhoyonkor Dangerous Kashmir]. Satyajit Ray’s foreign trips also influenced him to send Feluda to adventures in foreign lands, such as in Tintoretor Jishu [Tintoretto’s Jesus] (setting is in Hong Kong) and Londoney Feluda [Feluda in London] (set in London) (Ray 2015, Feluda Samagra). Satyajit Ray’s film locations often simultaneously occur in Feluda stories: We get proof that [Satyajit Ray’s] film life was also intimately associated with Feluda stories. Just after the completion of a documentary on Sikkim, Gangtokey Gondogol [Trouble in Gangtok] was written. The Halla king’s fort of Jaisalmer in the film Gupi Gayen Bagha Bayen becomes the “Sonar Kella” [of the eponymous film]. The shooting for the imaginary place called Jhundi, an imaginary place in the film, is done in the Kufri region of Simla. Simla and Kufri become the locations for the thrilling climax of Baksha Rahasya[The Box Mystery] For the film Aporajito, Satyajit Ray had combed every nook corner of Benaras, an experience which helped him write Joy Baba Felunath. (Ray 2015, n.p.) [Translation mine]

Sunil Gangopadhay created Kakababu, a retired archaeologist who has a lame foot and uses a crutch to walk, along with his nephew Santu. His detective stories have the quality of adventure in them. Some works are Sabuj Dwiper Raja [King of the Green Island], Pahar Churay Atonko [Terror on Mountain Peak], Mishar Rahasya [Egypt Mystery]. Some films made from his stories are Sabuj Dwiper Raja (1979), Kakababu Herey Gelen? [Kakababu Vanquished?] (1995), Mishar Rahasya (2001), Yeti Abhijan [Yeti Expedition] (2019). Syed Mustafa Siraj created the character of Colonel Niladri Sarkar, a detective who is a retired colonel and an amateur “naturist,” nature lover, bird watcher. His description goes like this: Nature scientist Colonel Niladri Sarkar, with a beard and moustache like Santa Claus. He has a bald head which is covered by a hat. Huge in stature and strong. He has got a binocular hanging from his neck. In the kit-bag on his back there is net-stick to catch butterflies. He may appear as a foreigner but he is a decent Bengali who loves to talk. His hobby is to travel to dangerous, difficult to reach places to solve mysteries. His skill in the gradual unwinding of the mystery mesmerizes. (Sinha 2015) [Translation mine]

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It is worth noting that characters like Colonel Niladri Sarkar and Kakababu are not the typical classical detective of the Holmes-Poirot-Byomkesh-Feluda line. Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay created the character of Sabar, an inspector of the detective department of Kolkata Police, a departure from the norm of casting amateur or private detectives as protagonist. Surbek Biswas points out: In some novels of Panchkori Dey, a writer of the early years of Bengali detective fiction, we do get to see a police inspector named Gangaram Basu, but not as an important investigative character. In Bengali mystery stories or in films based on them, the police character has been shown in a lower scale to highlight the amateur detective. As if, without showing the police as incompetent, the efficiency of the private detective is not depicted properly. For instance, the fat-bellied Inspector Sunder baboo created by Hemendra Kumar Ray. He consumes seven egg-poaches in breakfast . . ..He relies on [Jayanta-Manik] duo for solving mysteries. The duo were far more advanced in intelligence compared to the gluttonous Sunder baboo. In none of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda stories has the inspector been downplayed in such a manner. Yet the police plays a secondary role. In Joy Baba Felunath Feluda takes the help of his old acquaintance Inspector Tiwari to solve the theft of the Ganesha idol of the Ghoshals. But it is only logistic support. . . . And Police in Bengal movies means uniformed police. But the detective department of Calcutta Police was established in 1868 for preventive and investigative purposes. But the detectives of the police department do not appear in stories from Hemendra Kumar to Satyajit. Probably so that no challenge appears before the amateur or professional private investigator. (Biswas 2016)

Samaresh Majumder created the character of Arjun, a young boy from North Bengal’s Jalpaiguri town. An article in Times of India says: “Byomkesh and Feluda are huge figures. But they belong to the city, while Arjun comes from mofussil and has his limitations” (Times of India 2017). In recent years, both Byomkesh stories of Saradindu Bandyopadhay and Feluda stories of Satyajit Ray have been translated into English and published by Penguin India, a marker of their popularity beyond Bengali language readers. Many remarkable film adaptations and television serials have been created and were well received. Following these examples detective stories of other Bengali writers like Sunil Gangopadhay’s Kakababu novels, Sirshendu Mukhopadhay’s novels on inspector Sabar of the C.I.D. of Kolkata, Suchitra Bhattacharya’s Mintin Mashi have been adapted for films.

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V In conclusion, it must be underlined that there are merits in detective fiction that demand critical analyses, though detractors or purists of “high brow” literature would downplay it as merely “popular,” in a degenerative sense. The merits are outlined well in the following comments: “I have never felt that a crime novelist is barred from exploration of the realities of the human condition merely because, as in The Black Tower, she is working within the constraints of the classical English detective story” (Introduction to Murder in Triplicate, qtd. in Harkness 1983, 119). In the same essay, Harkness says: “ . . .the classic detective story is not only one of puzzle, it is often selfconsciously literary and witty” (Harkness 1983, 120). Mary Evans in an essay elaborates: The first argument for elevating crime and detective fiction to a place of greater significance in our critical pantheon is that in doing so we might avoid the worst excesses of those tediously hierarchical views in western culture which distinguish between the ‘high’ and the ‘low’ in culture. Although the advent of more culturally democratic times has limited some of the more flagrant absurdities of this view (absurdities often based on the class position of readers rather than any intrinsic value of the fiction), there still remains a sense in which some forms of fiction, and crime and detective fiction is one, are afforded less cultural esteem. In this context there is a real loss to the cultural and social world because as citizens we refuse the possibilities of the imaginative about those fractures in society that involve us all. (Evans 2009, 2)

Among the Bengali detective fiction writers, Saradindu Bandyopadhay asserts: “There is an attitude of indifference in many about detective story— as if it is an inferior class of literature. I don’t think so. I don’t feel ashamed to write what stalwarts like Edgar Allen Poe, Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton could write” (Bandyopadhyay 2000, 1005). Detective fiction has proved itself, in spite of and defying criticism and downplaying by purists and will continue to do so, adapting and evolving with time into new avatars like crime fiction, spy stories, police procedurals, psychological crime thrillers. In this anthology of critical essays by scholars on detective fiction, we have divided the contents into three groups. First, there are essays on classic British detective fiction, with essays on Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Kate Atkinson, and Margery Allingham. The second section is on American hard-boiled fiction with essays on Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The third section is on Bengali detective fiction with essays on Hemendra Kumar Roy, Saradindu Bandyopadhay and Satyajit Ray. The last section contains two essays on

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detective films. The essays on Bengali detective fiction is a unique feature of the volume because the intent was to create a broader perspective to bring within the ambit of a single cover three strains of detective fiction, and especially to show the gradual postcolonial attempt of Bengali detective fiction to outgrow colonial influences and create an original and organic tradition of regional and vernacular detective fiction. In other words, to strive, seek, and find like “Satwaneshi” [truth-seeker] Byomkesh Bakshi a new tradition of detective fiction. WORKS CITED Biswas, Surbek. 2016. “Sotti Jemon Hoy.” [What Truly Happens]. Ananda Bazar, 11 September, 2016. www.anandabazar.com. Cawelti, John G. 1997. “Canonization, Modern Literature, and the Detective Story.” In Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction, edited by Jerome H. Delamater and Ruth Prigozy. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. Chattopadhyay, Partha. 2000. “Byomkesher Songe Sakkhatkar.” [Interview with Byomkesh] In Byomesh Samagra [Byomkesh Complete Works]. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Choudhury, Upendra Bhushan. 1904. Motia Bibi (Detective Stories No. 133) by Priyonath Chattopadhyay. Calcutta: Upendra Bhushan Choudhury. Dasgupta, Arindam, ed. 2019. Sekaler Goenda Kahini vol.1 [Detective Stories of Yesteryears]. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Evans, Mary. 2009. The Imagination of Evil: Detective Fiction and the Modern World. London: Continuum. Frank, Lawrence. 2003. Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigations of Poe, Dickens, and Doyle. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Grossvogel, David I. 1983. “The Long Life, Splendid Afterlife and Mysterious Workings of Agatha Christie.” In Essays on Detective Fiction, edited by Bernard Benstock. London: Macmillan. Harkness, Bruce. 1983. “P. D. James.” In Essays on Detective Fiction, edited by Bernard Benstock. London: Macmillan. Hamilton, Cynthia S. 1987. Western and Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction in America: From High Noon to Midnight. Hampshire: Macmillan. James, P. D. 2009. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Merry, Bruce. 1983. “Dorothy L. Sayers: Mystery and Demystification.” In Essays on Detective Fiction, edited by Bernard Benstock. London: Macmillan. Mukhopadhyay, Dipankar. n.d. “The Great Bengali Detectives.” The Great Growlery (blog). Naremore, James. 1983. “Dashiell Hammett and the Poetics of Hard-Boiled Detectives.” In Essays on Detective Fiction, edited by Bernard Benstock. London: Macmillan.

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Priestman, Martin. 1996. Detective Fiction and Literature: The Figure on the Carpet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ratnam, Dhamini. “Hercule Poirot, Sleuth of the Century.” Hindustan Times, Feb 14, 2021. www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/art-culture/hercule-poirot-sleuth-of-thecentury-101613122653729.html Ray, Sandip. 2005. Feluda Samagra [Complete Feluda] vol. 1.n.p. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers. Rowland, Susan. 2001. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Sussex, Lucy. 2010. Women Writers and Detectives in Nineteenth-Century Crime Fiction: The Mothers of the Mystery Genre. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Sinha, Shanti. 2015. “Byatikromi Jibaner Kathashilpi Syed Mustafa Siraj.” [Writer of Unorthodox Life, Syed Mustafa Siraj], May 17, 2015.www.kaliokolom.com. Times of India. 2017. “Samaresh Majumder’s boy-next-door sleuth Arjun comes alive on celluloid.” Jan 11, 2017. Trotter, David. 2000. “Fascination and Nausea: Finding out the Hard-Boiled Way.” In The Art of Detective Fiction, edited by Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilain. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, Edmund. 1944. “Why do people read detective stories?” New Yorker. Oct 14, 1944. www.newyorker.com/magazine/1944/10/14/why-do-people-read-detective-stories. York, R. A. 2007. Agatha Christie: Power and Illusion. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Chapter 1

From Secrecy to Knowledge Detection and Literary Detectives in Dickens Kyamalia Bairagya

Narratives of police detectives in European culture elaborate that the early functions of policing primarily included surveillance on the general mob for better detection of crime and criminals. This is very well specified by J. M. Beattie, as he says that surveillance was one of the major functions performed by police officials appointed by the state in early eighteenth century London, when the police constables were charged with the keeping of peace and order in their domain (Beattie 2012, 260). He specifies that surveillance was definitely helpful prior to the commitment of any crime or offence but the role of locating any offender after the commitment of a crime required detection as a method to be practiced for the purpose of bringing justice to the victim. Detection of criminals developed in the eighteenth century as a profession for fund-raising. With an increase in the number of crimes and criminal occurrences, the state was bound to announce rewards for people helping in the process of detection. This process of getting rewards whether from state or from other private sources became an encouraging cause for people getting into the business of detection all the more toward the end of the eighteenth century (Beattie 2012, 261). Narratives about detective pursuits also had the unusual charm of narrating crime along with it. Genres like crime reports, criminal biographies, and memoirs were gathering attention in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The nineteenth century had its own concern regarding the subject of criminality and representation of detectives with their art of detection of criminals. As Makov’s book on Police detectives has, it can be said that Scotland Yard had 21

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its detective unit created in 1842 (Makov 2017, 135). Along with the progress in print media in the late eighteenth century, the news of criminals or prime suspects in several cases on being detected began to spread faster than before and a newer interest in the figure of the detective became more enticing than before to occupy a significant position in the world of literature. Literary detectives began to frequent the literary milieu only in the nineteenth century, particularly the Victorian era. European examples and continental influences were also important in this regard. Fictional private detectives were indeed very well represented in literary texts and there are quite a number of examples of fictional private detectives in figures like Sherlock Holmes. But people like Charles Dickens were more interested in narratives of crime and detection surrounding police detectives like that of Inspector Bucket. He also had real life detectives being discussed in articles published in his Household Words. A brief analysis of the fictional and non-fictional detectives created by Dickens in his works is going to be the topic of discussion in this chapter. Detection was necessary for the purpose of solving mysteries that intertwined the fate of characters in the plot. The work of detection, as will be seen, is also not always limited to that of the police detectives or private detectives in Dickens’s work. The story “Hunted Down” is an example of the work of detection being carried out by a life assurance manager. Mysteries are indeed solved through detection and along with this, the narrative guides us from what is concealed to the realm of knowledge in the process of the mystery being solved. Any study of detective fiction would perhaps be incomplete without highlighting the critical insight of Michel Foucault regarding the relation that is shared between the “shift in eighteenth and nineteenth century law enforcement methods from public execution as a form of deterrence to targeted investigation and surveillance . . .” (Rzepka 2005, 22) and the role of detective fiction in its cultural power of shaping the individual mind through the use of similar surveillance techniques in its representation of detection for detecting crime and criminals. Although Dickens never makes his literary detectives as famous as detectives from other canonical detective fictions, the art of detection used by these detectives are proto-typical to all detective narratives. Engaging police detectives in the work of setting the chaos in the plot into order by Dickens is only one way of the writer engaging in the major discourse of maintaining the stability in the existing order of things of a developing colonial culture. Beginning with Inspector Bucket of Bleak House, it can be surmised that Dickens had set in the trend of blending the mystery sub-plot with the main plot so that the police detective can be given a space in the main plot. The novel is kind of an experimental detective fiction embedded within a fully structured novel (Zywko 2017, 1–25). The two parallel narratives in this novel are mysterious in their own right. Although the mystery regarding the



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murder is solved, the omniscient present tense narrator remains unidentified till the end of the novel. This is quite unconventional as far as other novels are concerned. The readers are unable to identify with neither the detective nor the narrator by the end of the novel. Bucket is not the stereotypical detective of all other detective fictions. Nor is the narrative voice totally discovered. Bucket in this novel is not only the police detective to unravel the murder mystery but the person who is a binary to what Tulkinghorn is (David 2001, 169–190). The detective acts as the “principal unifying force,” in this novel, which restores the faith in the law by tracking down the murderer and thus helping to reveal the true identity of Esther the protagonist. Bucket over here is the representative of that authoritative force which is symbolic of the growing authority of the newly established legal police force of London. The character of Bucket is also thought to have been inspired by Inspector Field who was one of the early known members of London’s detective police force (Schlike 2011, 156–158). Dickens being a journalist was in particular awe of the real-life detectives and their method of detection. In his representation of Bucket and many other similar characters in smaller narratives he was able to acquaint the readers with the newly set detective branch of the police force in Victorian England. Bucket is thus, an antithesis to what Tulkinghorn represents. He is a dutiful servant as opposed to the manipulative Tulkinghorn. Bucket is the one to bring all those secret mysteries into knowledge through his sharp intelligence and detecting skills. He is the one to settle order into the world of chaos by bringing “justice to the criminal condition that has been set by the lawyer” namely Tulkinghorn. Ronald Thomas’s essay, titled “Detection in the Victorian novel” refers to what Said calls the “molestation” of the “authority” of the criminal’s subjective self by asserting ‘objective social authority over individual freedom’ (David 2001, 169–190). He says, “ the detective story imposes restrictions on the autonomy of the self by identifying certain kinds of behavior as criminal and arresting or even punishing them” (177). This also alludes to Foucault’s idea of the usage of surveillance as method of regulating human bodies when kept in either physical or mental segregation (Rzepka 2005, 22). The detective helps in exercising the cultural gaze of constraint upon bodies under suspicion. They amplify the society’s power imposed through what Said means by “restrictions on the autonomy of the self” of the supposed criminal. John McBratney’s essay on Bleak House takes up the issue of “secrecy and detection” and he points out that Dickens had a mind to expose and thus reveal the injustice hidden in the corrupted Victorian society (Millstein 2016, ch 4). John claims that Dickens expanded the idea of detection far beyond the “simple uncovering of the dark shapes of sin and crime” (Millstein 2016, ch 4). Thus, detectives are actually made guardians to the moral and social code of the age in which they are represented. Bucket and all other fictional detectives or quasi detectives

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in Dickens are shown to represent as having the desire of being omniscient in the suspected offender’s life. Besides Bucket, who is considered to be the first exemplary police detective to have been inspired from real life police detectives and feature in fiction, there are numerous other examples where the unravelling of mystery through detection by some “minor” character becomes crucial for the structural development of the plot. There are many such instances of crime and detection in Dickens’s novels, like Martin Chuzzlewit, Hard Times, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood and so on. The character of Mr. Nadgett of Martin Chuzzlewit is also another instance of an active detective agent working with his great powers of observation for the purpose of solving the mystery embedded in the plot. There are direct references to Nadgett’s eyes having the omniscient powers of observation which makes him different from other characters in the novel. A major achievement for Dickens in the field of detective fiction however is his short story titled “Hunted Down” in which a life assurance manager performs the work of detecting the possibilities of crime and thus locating the criminal by the end of the story. The title is synonymous with the kind of hunt that the assurance manager is involved in. He is successful in hunting the murderer down with his technique of tracing the suspect’s activities and thus tracing the real criminal mind hidden behind his fake appearance. The reader is however kept in mystery until the last part of the story. Unlike major detective novels where the reader is identified with the progress that the detective makes, the narrator in “Hunted Down” chooses to keep the reader in dark as long as he wishes. The fact that the mystery is solved not by any professional detective but only a man of different profession marks the importance that the writer wants to show for the kind of job that detection is. Thus, detection, as Haia Shpager Makov suggests, is perceived as an elevated scientific task and this establishes the detective as “a superior order of police” to handle criminals (Makov 2011,194). Dickens was aware about Wilkie Collins and his detectives in fiction. The detective in “Hunted Down” is like no other contemporary fictional detectives. The process of detection is never disclosed explicitly and readers do not get the chance of identifying with the thoughts and contemplations of the detective or the assurance agent in this case. The narrative acts as a kind of web that keeps few details withheld in the spaces between words making the reader feel engaged with the act of discovering the narrative web itself. The narrative voice takes us into a journey of crime, deception, secrets, and discovery in this story. The life assurance manager is like a quasi detective who manages to discover Slinkton, the offender’s real intentions and save an innocent victim by the end of the story. The writer’s interest in amateur detectives of his time is thought to be responsible for his interest in portraying such non professional detectives as hunting down criminals and averting the possibility of any further crime. Readers are never



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empowered with any prior knowledge of the real intension of Slinkton. Neither is the entire procedure of detection disclosed throughout but there is a reversal of power relations in the narrative. Although Slinkton is discovered of his evil intentions by the life assurance manager, the first part of the story indeed empowered the criminal without much of the reader’s suspicion about his true identity. The narrative is so structured that it does not allow the reader to occupy an empowered pseudo omniscient space in the reading of the text. The process of the hunt is never fully disclosed, thus making this story a departure from the usual modes of contemporary detective narratives. Any discussion on detectives of Dickens would perhaps never be complete without talking about the other articles and anecdotes available in his Household Words. An article titled “The Modern Science of Thief Taking” which talks about the act of “thief taking” which is detection in the modern sense of the term, was published in Household Words (Makov, 2011, 194). It was written by William Henry Wills, who shared similar interest in the world of detectives and detection. Among all other smaller pieces on detectives published in Household Words, “A ‘Detective’ Police party” and “Three ‘Detective’ Anecdotes” are significant texts taking up the cause of police detectives and their work. All the detective figures are representations of real life detectives of Victorian England. According to Heather Worthington a common factor to be found in detectives of nineteenth-century popular fiction is their capacity to enforce vigil on the general population or the suspected offender (Worthington 2005, 164–170). They are said to possess good eyes and this “observant and inspecting eye” seems to be the key to the detectives” success in these narratives. Yet they are not out of the ordinary in their manner. The element of heroism in their characters is also diluted by making fun of their silly flaws at certain instances in the texts. Beginning with Inspector Bucket to the amateur life assurance manager of “Hunted Down” and finally the several shorter anecdotal references of the police detectives in Household Words, the detectives in Dickens are experts in using the tool of surveillance and the technology of detection in order to locate the criminals and thus restrict their freedom. All these detectives are however not as omniscient as Bucket, but their role is to bridge the gap created by the criminals or antisocial in any society. The narratives embark us on a journey from secrecy to knowledge along with the process of detection which is applied by the detectives acting like agents restoring a sense of order in the microcosmic world of fiction which is a symbolic representation of the practical world outside the realm of the fiction.

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WORKS CITED Beattie, J. M. 2012. The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and The Policing of London, 1750-1840. London: Oxford University Press. http://books. google.co.in Dickens, Charles. 2019. Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens. N.p. Good Press. http://books.google.co.in ———. 1977. Bleak House. New York: Norton. Frank, Laurence. 2003. Victorian Detective Fiction and the Nature of Evidence: The Scientific Investigation of Poe, Dickens and Doyle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. http://books.google.co.in Makov, Haia Shpayer. 2011. The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England. United States: Oxford University Press. http://books. google.co.in ———. 2017. Police Detectives in History 1750-1950. New York: Routledge. http:// books.google.co.in Millstein, Tischler Denise. 2016. Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment. New York: Routledge. http://books.google.co.in Rzepka, Charles J. 2005. Detective Fiction 30. United Kingdom: Polity. http://books. google.co.in Schlike, Paul. 2011. The Oxford Companion to Charles Dickens. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. http://books.google.co.in Deirdre David, ed. 2001. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.co.in Worthington, Heather. 2005. The Rise of Detective in Early 19th Century Popular Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. http://books.google.co.in Zywko, Lucyna Krawczyk, ed. 2017. Victorian Detectives in Contemporary Culture: Beyond Sherlock Holmes. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. http://books.google. co.in

Chapter 2

Heroine as Detective Wilkie Collins’s The Dead Secret Madhumita Biswas

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), “one of the most popular novelists writing in English during the nineteenth century” (Heller 1992, 110), is seen as “the grandfather” of detective fiction (Ashley 1950, 273). Famous for The Moonstone (1868), hailed by T. S. Eliot as “the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels” (quoted in David 2001, 179), Collins is universally acclaimed for his labyrinthine narratives of gripping secrets. His sensational novels often feature a cast of women who break the mold of the quintessential nineteenth-century heroine—women who actively take charge of their own lives and thus come across as agential subjects. Foremost among these unconventional fictional women are Collins’s amateur “she sleuths” whose exploits are as extraordinary as that of the author’s male detectives (for example, Sergeant Cuff and Ezra Jennings from The Moonstone) and hence worthy of critical consideration. The present chapter concentrates on one such “she sleuth”: Rosamond Treverton, the protagonist of The Dead Secret (1957). The Dead Secret is Collins’s fourth novel and his first to appear in a serialized version; it ran in Charles Dickens’s Household Words from January 1857 onward and was published in book form in June of that year (Nayder 1997, 53). The Dead Secret is generally regarded as a minor novel in the Collins corpus; as Steve John Farmer notes, Antonina (1850), Basil (1852), Hide and Seek (1854), and The Dead Secret (1857) have been deemed as Collins’s “apprentice fiction,” as mere “stepping stones to success” (Farmer 1991, 7). Yet, despite being a neglected piece of work, The Dead Secret is a compelling gothic-styled page-turner with Rosamond as an iron-willed mystery-solver who embarks on a suspenseful journey to unravel a buried “dead secret” of her family. 27

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Although The Dead Secret remains outside Collins’s acclaimed novels, it is, nevertheless, a strongly constituted novel, comprising six books and numerous chapters with tempting titles, building the suspense and weaving a multifaceted detective story. The sinister “secret” hinted at by the title, constitutes the core mystery of the novel, and Book I acts as a prelude to this secret, shaping the foundation of the mystery that the heroine, Rosamond Treverton eventually unmasks, bringing her unforeseeable doom. The brilliance of this detective fiction relies heavily upon the complexity of the eponymous “secret,” and Collins in his masterful writing technique inflicts a triple-layered connotation of the same a potentially “dead”-ly secret, unraveling of which will crash the status quo; a secret surfacing from or encompassing death (here, the death of Mrs. Treverton); and the burial or “dead-ness” of the secret holds the key to the mystery and crime of this story. The first chapter of Book I opens at a crucial moment, titled “The Twenty Third of August, 1829” at the deathbed of Mrs. Treverton at Porthgenna Tower, and we encounter a curious looking Sarah Leeson by her side, the lady’s maid— the origin of the crime, “the Accomplice” (Collins 1979, 18), the clue, and the answer to the mystery as well: Not tall, not handsome, not in her first youth—shy and irresolute in manner . . . She is Mrs. Treverton’s maid; . . .she must have passed through the ordeal of some great suffering at some former period of her life. Much in her manner, and more in her face, said plainly and sadly: I am the wreck of something that you might once have liked to see; a wreck that can never be repaired—that must drift on through life unnoticed, unguided, unpitied—drift till the fatal shore is touched, and the waves of Time have swallowed up these broken relics of me forever. This was the story that was told in Sarah Leeson’s face—this, and no more. (Collins 1979, 9)

Chapter II, “The Child,” and Chapter III, “The Hiding of the Secret” tactfully hint at a titillating controversy of an illegitimate child and deceitful identity. Contrary to Victorian conventional heroines, Rosamond Treverton, brought up as Royal Navy Officer Captain Treverton’s daughter and heiress to the Cornish stately home of Porthgenna Tower, turns out to be an illegitimate “love-child” (Collins 1979, 283) of Mrs. Treverton’s maid, Sarah Leeson with a Porthgenna miner, Hugh Polwheal, who died of an accident at the age of twenty-six at the mine. Mrs. Treverton was barren, and passed off Sarah’s “love-child” as her own to improve her marriage with Captain Treverton. Here, it is noteworthy that Mrs. Treverton’s barrenness is implied in the novel as a situation related to her being a “Play-actress” (Collins 1979, 8), an unseemly profession allied to all sorts of impropriety according to the prejudices of the era. In Book I, the plot thickens as, summoned to Mrs.

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Treverton’s deathbed-side, Sarah is compelled to jot down a letter on Mrs. Treverton’s behalf confessing of their sins of treachery and deception to Captain Treverton regarding the child. Furthermore, Sarah is sworn in by Mrs. Treverton that she “will not destroy the paper” (Collins 1979, 19) and that she “will not take the paper away with [her], if [she] leave[s] the house” (Collins 1979, 19) after her death, and if she disobeys Mrs. Treverton will come beyond her grave to haunt her and compel her. However, death claims Mrs. Treverton before she could make Sarah promise that she should immediately and without fail hand over the aforementioned letter to Captain Treverton. Now, taking advantage of this little loophole, Sarah decides to obey her two oaths; and thus, painstakingly hides the confession letter in a drawer, tucked under a picture frame, at the deserted North Tower of Porthgenna, at “The Myrtle Room” (Collins 1979, 32). After hiding the letter, she goes one step further to conceal its presence by cutting off all the labels from the keys of the North Tower rooms, making it additionally difficult for anyone to identify the appropriate key to the “Myrtle Room” and discover her dreadful letter. She was relieved, “whether for good or for evil, the fatal Secret was hidden now—the act was done.” (Collins 1979, 33) Sarah leaves Porthgenna Tower immediately after hiding the letter, and flees the town. As a result, the truth about Rosamond’s scandalous parentage remains hidden, and she grows up as Captain Treverton’s legitimate daughter. Book II opens “Fifteen years After” (Chapter I) and we learn that Rosamond is marrying her longtime friend, Leonard Frankland who became blind before their marriage owing to intricate watch-making business. Between Book I and Book II, fifteen years have passed by, and we learn that after Mrs. Treverton’s death, Captain Treverton left the tower and went to sea for office. After Rosamond and Leonard’s marriage the couple planned to renovate the mansion, which is purchased by Leonard’s father from Captain Treverton for the newlyweds to settle back in. The Porthgenna Tower is riddled with mystery and memory of loss and unease, as Rosamond recollects: My mother had a favorite maid who lived with her from the time of her marriage, and who was, accidentally, the only person present in her room when she died. I remember hearing of this woman as being odd in her look and manner, and no great favorite with anybody but her mistress. Well, on the morning of my mother’s death, she disappeared from the house in the strangest way, leaving behind her a most singular and mysterious letter to my father, asserting that in my mother’s dying moments a Secret had been confided to her which she was charged to divulge to her master when her mistress was no more; and adding that she was afraid to mention this secret, and that, to avoid being questioned about it, she had resolved on leaving the house forever. She had been gone some hours when the letter was opened—and she has never been seen or heard of since that time. (Collins 1979, 76)

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Although Rosamond refers to this mystery linked to the mansion as the “Romance of the house” (Collins 1979, 76), an air of dread can be felt by the contractor in-charge of the renovation of the tower as he informs the Franklands of the present whereabouts of the mansion. The contractor, after careful evaluation of the estate declares that some part of the West wing of the tower is in good condition as Captain Treverton used this side of the house during his occupation, however, “in the rooms on the north front, the state of dilapidation, from top to bottom, is as bad as can be” (Collins 1979, 76), and adds that nobody ever used these rooms, and the housekeepers have a “superstitious dread” about the North Towers as they never open the north doors or go near them. Furthermore, all the keys of the North Tower are in impossible disarray as none of them bear any labels to ascertain their appropriation. As the novel furthers, we learn that a large portion of the storyline, the mansion remains uninhabited, as the couple’s moving in plan after their honeymoon gets delayed first by the unfortunate news of Captain Treverton’s demise at sea, and then Rosamond’s pregnancy and a premature child birth (Book III, Chapter II—“Will they Come?”). It is at this point that (Chapter IV, “The New Nurse”) Rosamond coincidentally meets her biological mother unbeknownst of her real identity, now a widow, named Mrs. Jazeph (Book III, chapter III), as the later gets appointed as Rosamond’s new nurse for helping out with her baby boy. However, Mrs. Jazeph recognizing Rosamond, secretly tries to warn her against going to Porthgenna, and consequently discovering the hidden secret, and thus, cautions her by saying “When you go to Porthgenna, keep out of the Myrtle Room” (Collins 1979, 125) before mysteriously escaping the scene. Nevertheless, the warning backfires, and instead of dissuading Rosamond from going to the North Tower, it rather ignites her interest regarding the hidden secret at Porthegenna and sets the tone for Rosamond’s attempt at sleuthing. The rest of the story follows Rosamond’s gradual search for the mysterious Mrs. Jazeph, née, Sarah Leeson, and the truth, and her final unraveling of the mystery. At this juncture, before examining the sleuthing techniques of our amateur-detective, Rosamond, it is noteworthy that Rosamond is a curious, strong-willed, level-headed person with iron-clad convictions. She married Leonard as promised even though he lost his sight prior to their marriage; and it shows her resolution of character. Collins paints her not as a demure Victorian maiden but as an intelligent woman with agential subjectivity and assertive, alert features as her husband praises her “Brown eyes, large eyes, wakeful eyes, that are always looking about them. Eyes . . . capable, on very slight provocation, of opening rather too widely, and looking rather too brilliantly resolute” (Collins 1979, 66). We see her determination shining through while embarking upon her quest for truth, regardless of the consequences, “They are not the reward or the beings about whom or for whom others

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undergo struggles of conscience” as Susan Morgan asserts. “They undergo those struggles [and take] the consequences of their actions” (Morgan 1989, 4). She is courageous, and instead of cowering in the face of warning she asserts, “I must know, if I am ever to feel easy in my mind again!” (Collins 1979, 135) and declares to find “proof” about the mysterious letter: By continuing [their] journey to Porthgenna the moment [she is] allowed to travel, and by leaving no stone unturned when [they] get there until [they] have discovered whether there is or is not any room in the old house that ever was known, at any time of its existence, by the name of the Myrtle Room.” (Collins 1979, 136)

And upon finding the room, she declares to march into it instantaneously, as she asserts “Am I not a woman? And have I not been forbidden to enter the Myrtle Room . . . I should walk into it immediately.” (Collins 1979, 136) These very words of her utmost courage to brave the unknown, also underscores the Woman Question, and goes on to show that at the helm of resistance as a woman, she is not afraid to break the boundaries to reach her goal. Her strength of character, bravery, assertiveness, knack for the unknown, and fortitude to solve a mystery enables her as a perfect aspirant to take on sleuthing. Before evaluating Rosamond’s sleuthing techniques, however, it is important to note that Collins’s detective fiction differs from the nineteenth-century canonical detective stories that carved the niche for detective writing, such as Edgar Allan Poe’s three famous stories, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842), and “The Purloined Letter” (1844) where Poe’s eccentric detective character, Chevalier Auguste Dupin, solves the mysteries that police has failed to decipher, or Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes who changed the course of crime solving four decades later in A Study in Scarlet (1887). It is pertinent to note that as Poe “had no intention of writing detective stories or of creating a detective” (Binyon 1889, 4), similarly Collins never deliberately wanted to create detective fiction, a genre that he nonetheless inaugurated. In Collins’s sensational fictions, mystery, hidden secrets, and labyrinthine multifaceted plots paved the way of detection, rather than the central detective figure’s innovative detecting techniques, and apart from Sergeant Cuff of The Moonstone (1868), most of Collins’s detectives are amateurs, and none of them reappear in any series of stories. Moreover, most popular and majority of his amateur detectives are women; which in a way creates a counter narrative of mystery writing that abstains from the machismo of a socially aloof, eccentric, super-intelligent male detective figure, who emerges as the ultimate savior in a detective fiction, often engaging in physical confrontations,

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such as, epitomized in Holmes. Breaking the masculine mold, Collins’s amateur “she-sleuths” are often warm-natured, family-oriented women, wife, and mother. Rosamond’s investigation into the illusive figure of Mrs. Jazeph and the hidden secret, buried during her mother’s death, parallels Collins’s other woman sleuths, for example, Anne Rodway in “The Diary of Anne Rodway” (1856), Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White (1859), and Valeria Macallan in The Law and The Lady (1875). Most strikingly, womanhood in Collins’s heroines never render them helpless bystanders, but make them more determined and passionate investigators in solving the mystery. Walking away from the dispassionate, objective detective figures, these amateur detective heroines are often fueled by their personal lived experiences and inner-bonds to reach the pit of the mystery. For example, in Collins’s first murder mystery story, “The Diary of Anne Rodway” (1856), notably the eponymous heroine acts as the first female detective in fiction (as argued by Ashley 1951, 50), to solve the murder mystery of her fellow seamstress and dear friend, Mary, as she is found dead by a blow to her temple and declared an “accidental death” by the coroner. Following the tiny clue of a torn end of a man’s cravat found clutched at Mary’s hand; Anne embarks on a personal journey to resolve the murder of her friend when the police shows reluctance to proceed further with their investigation. Here, her endearing bond with Mary acts as her motivating factor to fuel her investigation, to bring justice to Mary. Similarly, in The Dead Secret, it is the personal need to find the truth of one’s family home that accentuates Rosamond’s need to unravel the mystery. In both the cases, the heroine’s lived experiences and often faint recollections act as the next powerful clue in unhinging the mystery. And, Collins’s intricate multilayered plots offer them the necessary boost to reach their next stepping stone in unraveling the secrets, as Dorothy Sayers rightfully argues, it is Collins’s “peculiar English genius for combining melodrama with calculation which has made the English detective story a thing apart” (Sayers 1977, 25). To the merit of the meticulous plot weaving by Collins, the mystery story of The Dead Secret checks all the prerequisites for meeting Ellery Queen’s threefold test for the “pure detective story” as mentioned by Ashley in “Wilkie Collins and the Detective Story”: featuring “a detective who detects, who is the story’s protagonist, and who triumphs over the criminal” (Ashley 1951, 48–50). Although, in case of The Dead Secret the word “criminal” comes off as a bit heavy-handed, as the supposed “crime” in this novel plays on the vice of omission of truth, rather than a sinister murder. After embarking on the journey of detection, our heroine, Rosamond, although an amateur, acts authoritatively and tries to locate the mysterious Mrs. Jazeph, and on learning that after blurting out the warning and fleeing the scene, she has headed for Cornwall, Rosamond perceptively infers that Mrs. Jazeph might visit Porthgenna Tower and try to access it, to do

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away with the hidden secret. And, meticulously instructs staff members (Mr. Munder, the steward, and Mrs. Pentreath, the housekeeper) at Porthgenna to let Mrs. Jazeph in if she claims to access the mansion, and then minutely follow her actions to locate the site of crime, as she might revisit it. Her detective instincts bear fruit, as a mysterious woman matching the description of Mrs Jazeph enters Porthgenna North Tower but unceremoniously faints before committing any particular deed and leaves with her companion (uncle Joseph), without leaving any clues to track her down. After arriving at the mansion, and placing all the pieces of the puzzling conducts of this aforementioned woman together, Rosamond come to the conclusion that Mrs. Jazeph might in fact be the missing maid of Mrs. Treverton, Sarah Leeson. After solving the palpable mystery of the identity of the woman inciting the warning, Rosamond turns to the next aspect of the mystery—the site of the warning, that is, the mysterious “Myrtle Room” at the decaying North Tower of Porthgenna. However, she soon realizes that without a blueprint of the rooms, it will be nearly impossible to locate the room in question, and thus, decides to procure a blueprint of the same from a manservant of her uncle, Andrew Treverton, Shrowl who has unscrupulously stolen it from Andrew Treverton. Here, it is notable that, while Leonard has strong objections against obtaining a purloined blueprint, as to him “it is out of the question to traffic with a servant for information that has been surreptitiously obtained from his master’s library” (Collins 1979, 252), Rosamond shows no such reservations. Her will for detection overrides her moral propriety. After purchasing the blueprint from Shrowl for five thousand pounds, Rosamond accompanied by her husband ventures out to search and locate “The Myrtle Room” to solve the mystery. At Book V, Chapter V, titled, “The Myrtle Room,” they finally locate the eponymous room, and after meticulously observing and tossing the room, she finds a picture frame in a drawer with a letter hidden behind the frame. The final unraveling of mystery takes place in Chapter VI (The Telling of the Secret) where Rosamond finally reads aloud the letter and to her utmost horror discovers that she is the “love-child” of Sarah Leeson, the lady’s maid. Although, the horrendous mystery comes to light at this point, the storyline does not just end at that note, rather owning to Collins’s tactful plot writing goes on to encompass the aftermath of the fateful revelation about Rosamond’s parentage, and adds a polemic comment on the social injustices, class hierarchies, illegitimacy issues, and the problems of married woman’s property rights in Victorian era. With the onset of mid-nineteenth century, the Woman Question became a pertinent topic of discussion owing to John Stuart Mills’s The Subjection of Women (1869), and it became a covert element of Collins’s fictions. The whole legal system, Graham Law points out, from the electorate to the judiciary to the assembly, was an entirely male institution until after the end of the Victorian era (Law 1886, 13). Consequently, in 1856

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Parliament failed to pass the first married women’s property bill submitted by liberal Members who were attempting to revise the common-law doctrine of coverture (Nayder 1997, 73). Under English common law until 1870, a married woman had no legal identity: The husband exercised almost complete control of the wife and her property and earnings (MacEachen 1950, 134). In Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–69), William Blackstone expressed the doctrine of coverture: “the very being or legal existence of a woman is suspended, or at least it is incorporated or consolidated in that of the husband, under whose wing, protection and cover she performs everything, and she is therefore called in our law a fem e covert” (quoted in Nayder 1997, 73). Both in The Woman in White and The Law and The Lady, Collins made a point to underline such unfair marriage laws and property rights of married women, by enmeshing it deeply into the fabric of the core mystery story. In The Woman in White Marian Halcombe embarks on solving the mystery of Sir Percival Glyde’s mysterious origins, and the marriage settlement that suggests that Laura Fairlie’s entire fortune will go to her husband Glyde if she dies without leaving an heir, thus putting her in a vulnerable position, leading to her impending doom. The multilayered narrative of The Woman in White is based on, and fueled by the disproportionate legal and property rights of woman, and the clauses of entailment, and illegitimacy. Similarly, in The Dead Secret, once the secret is revealed, the power dynamics shifts, as Rosamond becomes doubly disempowered in society—first, as an illegitimate child from the working classes, and then being a married woman having no property rights. Leonard Frankland, although a loving husband, is most highly strung, as far as class consciousness is concerned, and he dictates that Rosamond now bared off all her previous family glory and heritage, must not have any right over any property of Captain Treverton, and the family fortune on her name must go to Captain Treverton’s true next to kin—his estranged brother, Andrew Treverton. Leonard uses his authority as Rosamond’s husband, and asserting the nineteenth-century law declares that Rosamond needs his permission and must denounce her fortune according to his will: I believe. Rosamond, that my consent, as your husband, is necessary, according to the law to effect this restitution. If Mr. Andrew Treverton was the bitterest enemy I had on earth, and if the restoring of this money utterly ruined us both in our worldly circumstances. I would give it back of my own accord to the last farthing—and so would you! (Collins 1979, 289)

It comes as a surprise when the miserly Andrew Treverton going out of his character, declines Rosamond’s property, and returns it back. Although, his gracious benevolence does not stem from any superior altruism but rather a deep-seated disgust of Mrs. Treverton, the “Play-actress,” and in a way,

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rewards Rosamond for not being the daughter of the said woman. This again critiques the helpless position of women in Victorian society and the strict conventional codes they had to adhere to appease the status quo of “Angel in the house” versus the woman in public. Collins’s amateur woman detectives somehow, transgressed this aforementioned boundary between the two categories; being respectable women, they braved to venture into the public world of the fallenness, and returned victorious. Collins through his brilliant manipulation of labyrinthine plots succeeded in creating a new genre of English fiction writing which projected conventional women in unconventional places, thus, shattering the social stereotypes of “good” and “bad/fallen” woman, with covert critique against arcane and unjust laws of nineteenth-century. Assertive, alert, passionate yet level-headed, agential heroine cum amateur detectives challenged the male-dominated culture of the Victorian society, as Ashley rightfully asserts: “He deserves particular credit for his resolute heroines, unique among Victorian fictional females . . . . In his audacity in creating women with minds of their own as well as strong physical charm, Collins was ahead of his time” (Ashley 1950, 259). WORKS CITED Ashley, Robert P. 1951. “Wilkie Collins and the Detective Story.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 6:1 (1951): 47–60. ———. “Wilkie Collins Reconsidered.” Nineteenth Century' Fiction 4 (1949–1950): 265–73. Qtd. in Barickman et al. 259 n. 1. Binyon, T. J. 1989. “Murder Will Out”: The Detective in Fiction. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP. 1989. Collins,Wilkie. (1857) 1979. The Dead Secret. New York: Dover. ———. (1856) 1995. “The Diary of Anne Rodway” in Wilkie Collins: The Complete Shorter Fiction, edited by Julian Thompson. New York: Carroll & Graf. ———. (1860) 1974. The Woman in White. New York: Dutton. ———. (1868) 1992. The Moonstone. London: David Campbell, distributed by Random House. ———. (1875) 1992. The Law and the Lady. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP. David, Deirdre. 2001. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. 179. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Farmer, Steve John. 1991. “A Search for Form: Wilkie Collins’s Early Fiction.” Wilkie Collins Society Journal 8 (1991): 5–29. Heller, Tamar. 1992. Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Law, Graham. (1886) 1994. Introduction: The Evil Genius By Wilkie Collins, edited by Graham Law. 7–30. Peterborough. Ont.: Broadview.

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MacEachen, Dougald B. 1950. “Wilkie Collins and British Law.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 5.2(1950): 121–39. Morgan, Susan. 1989. Sisters in Time: Imagining Gender in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. New York: Oxford UP. Nayder, Lillian. 1979. Wilkie Collins. New York: Twayne. Swinburne,  A. C. 1889. “Wilkie Collins.” Fortnightly Review 1 Nov. 1889: 589–99. Sayers, Dorothy L. 1977. Wilkie Collins: A Critical and Biographical Study, edited by E. R. Gregory. Toledo: U of Toledo Libraries.

Chapter 3

The Victims of Abuse and Misogyny in Crime Fiction Women in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of Baskervilles and A Study in Scarlet Karabi Barman

I Abuse, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, “is an action of cruelty or violence occurring repeatedly or regularly for a bad purpose.” Abuse is central to the idea of detective fiction as it is during the incidents of abuse that the law and order breaks down in the society which hampers the normal functioning of the society. This necessitates for the detective to step in to solve the mystery, eliminate the harmful elements in the community and restore the society back to normalcy. Detective fiction thus thrives on the idea of perpetrators of violence and their victims. These perpetrators of violence can work alone and/or take the aid of accomplices to commit their crimes. A victim according to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary is one who has been “harmed, injured, or killed as a result of crime, accident, or other event or action.” Closer scrutiny of the term “victim” calls for a historical outlook that reveals women as the victims of abuse at any stated point in history. While patriarchal forces have been subjected women to cruel forces even in normal times, during wars their bodies have been the sites of torture or violation and/ or the prize won to be violated by the victors. 37

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Literature, in engaging in mimesis of reality, has often mirrored these actions of abuse and misogyny against women in every age and genre. Detective fiction or crime fiction is no different to this end and they too have largely portrayed women and women’s bodies as the sites of violation in the acts of crime. In addition to being the victims of misogynistic abuse, women have been used as tools or means to carry out violent crimes by the criminals, often without their consent. Arthur Conan Doyle, as a detective fiction writer from the Victorian period, depicts the social realities of his time in the Sherlock Holmes series. He presents the gory violence that marks even the most humble societies. As detective Holmes remarks in A Study in Scarlet, “there’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it” (Doyle, 1887). Holmes’s stands true to his statement and unveils the lamentable realities of the Victorian times both towards men and women. The Victorian age, despite its prosperity, has been earmarked as one of the most restricting especially toward women, even with a female monarch ruling the nation. And indeed, the women in Doyle’s work grapple with the limitations thrust in front of them by Victorian society. As Hadar Aviram states, “Women in Sherlock Holmes stories represent a full spectrum of the Victorian social universe” (Aviram, 2011, 240). Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous works A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of Baskervilles exemplify the struggles of Victorian women to the extent that they are never free to live a life of their own. All the women are reduced to mere daughters, sisters, and wives of the men in their families. In fact, more often than not, the women are forcibly silenced, ostracized and/ or abducted violently without even allowing the barest minimum agency or freewill. II Misogyny and abuse in A Study In Scarlet A Study in Scarlet, published in the year 1887, was Doyle’s first work in the Sherlock Holmes series. It marks the first appearance of the duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who despite their immense popularity reflect their misogynist attitudes. In likening the staunch competition between his two contemporaries, Lestrade and Gregson, to the jealousies between two professional beauties, Sherlock Holmes views women as only capable of harboring petty jealousies. In refusing to accept that the old lady, who turned up to collect the gold ring from him in response to his advertisement in the newspaper, was indeed an old lady, he rebuffs the possibility of any woman having the

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prowess to defeat or outsmart him. For him, only a man in a woman’s disguise could have done that, thus deeming women as incapable of competing as equals of males. All the other characters in the novel share the same misogynist views that characterize Sherlock and Dr. Watson. The novel has only one female character, Lucy, who as John Ferrier’s daughter, is central to the plot but never engages in much action. All the males in the story vie to gain control over her while she largely remains in the background. In fact, Lucy’s importance derives only from her position as the daughter of the effluent John Ferrier. This mirrors the manner in which Victorian society dismissed women from platforms of public importance and deemed them important only if they had wealth associated with them for the men to take control over. Lucy Ferrier definitely drives the plot forward, but the story is not about her or her feelings. She is of immense importance only as of the object for which the men fight for while she herself has very little agency of her own. She and John Ferrier are the only survivors from their lot of twenty people who attempted to cross the desert and subsequently Lucy is brought up by father John Ferrier who adopts her as his child and brings her up in the midst of the Mormon settlement. In adopting Lucy as his daughter, John Ferrier, a Christian, instills in her the Christian principles that he lives for. Lucy becomes the exotic Victorian lady in the Mormon community, upholding the same ideals as her father. She is exoticized as the flower of Utah, gazed at by everyone-the Mormon youths and also the hordes of immigrants and travelers who cross Utah way on their way to California in the wake of the Gold Rush. Like the flower, she is an exotic beauty of fairness, unique to the Mormon settlement of Utah and an object of the public gaze. Lucy’s exotic nature can be explained by the fact that in addition to being the perfect embodiment of the Victorian “Angel in the House” (Gilbert and Gubar, 1979), she was also a lady who rode her own horse, thereby setting herself apart from the other Mormon women. Lucy, in being the daughter of the wealthy farm owner John Ferrier, exhibits the passions of the upper-class Victorian women. Arthur Conan Doyle grants Lucy the minimal freedom to venture out of the household to run errands for her father, but not without stooping down for help from men. She is continually portrayed as the damsel in distress as it is her father John Ferrier who rescues her in the desert and then it is Jefferson Hope who guides her to safety as she gets embedded in a maze of fierce-eyed bullocks. A close reading of the narrative also unfolds the impression that Lucy is obliged to bow down to each of the males who help her in the story. She adopts a role of a subservient daughter toward her father John Ferrier and the role of a faithful lover to Jefferson; always abiding by their wishes in return for the protection that these men offer to her. This reiterates the Victorian mentality

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that women were helpless and always in need of a man. In falling in love with the young Christian hunter Jefferson Hope, Lucy does exercise her free will but only in accordance with her father’s preferences. She is relieved when Hope informs her that her father had already consented to their choice of each other. The patriarchal inhibitions are quite apparent when she says, “Oh, well; of course, if you and father have arranged it all, there’s no more to be said” (Doyle, 1887). This reveals the psychological conditioning of the nineteenth century that they saw incapable of standing up for a choice of their own without needing to have the approval of a significant male. Lucy’s father John Ferrier not only guides her upbringing but also closely monitors her interests and her romantic affairs. However, her father is just one among the authoritarian figures who drive her destiny. Beyond his authority looms in the strict dictates of the Mormon elders who decide the suitors Lucy is to choose from. Thus, women were never expected to act as they wished. They were just expected to act as either someone’s daughters, wives or community women. Doyle, in presenting the Christian father at par with the authoritarian Mormons, hints at the same ruthless misogyny of all communities around the globe. The cruelty of the Mormons unfold when Lucy and her father disobey and the Mormons leave no stone unturned in punishing the father and daughter for violating the norms of the society. While John Ferrier is punished with death for his disobedience, Lucy is forced to marry one of the two selected suitors. The emotional and physical abuse that Lucy is subjected to is apparent from her description as a “pale wane moon” before dying, devoid of any of the previous charm or beauty as the flower of Utah. The incident carries the warning to all the Mormon women to obey their Elders and the males. The Mormon community was a polygamous society and the men show the least emotion on the death of their women. It is only the other wives of the husband who sit up the night with Lucy’s cold corpse, perhaps weeping over their own fates. For the men, she was just a means of amassing wealth and property. Lucy is the ultimate victim of misogynistic abuse in A Study In Scarlet, for she in being the other woman must follow the guidelines of the society. The processes of othering and forced womanization transform her from an able and agile lady to a forcibly silenced victim of patriarchy. She is made to marry and live with the murderers of her father as a constant reminder of her transgression and her subdued position in society. Her escape from punishment ends only when she dies, freeing herself from the clutches of an abusive society. The one month of marital life that she has is a subject of conjecture given the emotional and physical torture she might have been subjected to. This shows that the structures of power in the nineteenth century were too rigid to be violated by the individual will. If the father

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is punished for disobeying the community, Lucy is punished for not obeying her chosen husband. III Representation of misogyny and abuse in The Hound of Baskervilles In The Hound of Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle aptly portrays the conditions of the Victorian society of Devonshire in England. The plot, dealing with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and the subsequent threats to Henry Baskerville, takes into its fold the lives of three women whose quality of life is determined by the men in the story. Mrs. Barrymore is a domestic help at the Baskerville estate along with her husband. She is the only woman in the novel who is in a good marriage and has a loving husband. However, this does not free her from exploitation as her brother, the escaped convict Selden, demands her aid. Thus, in carrying out her familial responsibilities, Mrs. Barrymore is forced to disobey the law putting herself and her husband at potential risk. As a Victorian lady from the lower class, she takes up a job in the domestic sphere only to be a source of security to a brother who takes advantage of his relation to his sister. She becomes an ally in crime not by her own choice or will but because of her role as a responsible and caring sister. Her actions are manipulated by a brother who knows that she has a soft spot for him and that a woman will always fulfill her responsibility toward her family. Being a woman from the lower class, she is also exploited by Dr. Watson and Sir Henry for extracting information. As the novel shows, her life is a well of tears that she often sheds at night silently. Mrs. Stapleton, the wife of Mr. Stapleton, is another woman in the novel, notable for her dynamic role in the plot. Despite being the wife of a highly educated man, Beryl Stapleton is caught up in a bad marriage as she is forced to hide her marital status and is physically abused to keep her silence. She becomes a tool in the hands of the criminal not by her own choice but by her position of being the married wife of the criminal. Like Lucy in A Study in Scarlet, Beryl is the exotic other in The Hound of Baskervilles. She is a Costa Rican whose real identity remains hidden. She is described as dark and elegant, luring the attraction of bystanders and the affectionate gestures of Sir Henry. Abused and dictated by her own husband, she is incapable of acting according to her free will. While her position as Mr. Stapleton’s wife requires her to be his aid, she does exercise some minimal agency in attempting to warn Sir Henry of the imminent dangers. However, she is forced to subdue her freewill by her authoritative husband while he carries out other affairs in her ignorance. This highlights the helpless situation and the exploitation that

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women were subjected to by the men upon whom they depended. As evident from Holmes and Watson’s own horror at finding Mrs. Stapleton tied up and gagged in her bedroom all mottled with bruises, Victorian society was only a façade of manners and etiquettes on the outside while being ruthlessly violent from within. Mrs. Stapleton confesses her misery: “But this is nothing—nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool” (Doyle, 1901). This represents the grim realities of Victorian women, where they found themselves used only as objects for men to achieve economic power. The psychological as well as physical abuse faced by women in such misogynist times trapped them in a cage from which there was no escape. And when there was an escape, the accumulated frustration and pain of abuse let itself out in a ferocious outburst and they exemplified the mad woman in the attic, the other of the Angel in the House in Victorian novels as studied by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Mrs. Stapleton exhibits such madness and a demonical outburst when she learns about Mr. Stapleton’s disloyalty to her. Subsequently, Dr. Watson remarks about Mrs. Stapleton’s excitement of having her husband surrounded by trouble: “She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment. ‘He may find his way in, but never out,’ she cried” (Doyle, 1901). Echoing the character of Bertha Mason in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Mrs. Stapleton takes up the demoniac persona celebrating the doom of the man she had so far loved and served so far. Like Bertha who was a Creole woman, Beryl is a Costa Rican, exotic to the English people. Unlike the subservient English women of the time, these women have been portrayed with a sense of fierceness which marks them different from the English “angels of the house.” They are necessarily the “other,” who questions the actions of the men they serve and are not afraid to speak up and act when the deceit of the men have been unveiled. It is perhaps their fierceness that makes the Victorian men tie them up in locked chambers, from which they get freed with disastrous energies. It is these other women who become the doom for the abusive men. Beryl Garcia mirrors the “monstrous women” Bertha who set Rochester’s house on fire and caused his blindness. Beryl knows Stapleton’s secrets and his weaknesses. She triumphs over the downfall of her deceitful husband as Dr. Watson recounts: “On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman’s life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband’s track” (Doyle, 1901).

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The third woman in the story is Mrs. Laura Lyons, who is subjected to a life of utter misery by her husband and her uncaring father. As she confesses, a rash marriage was her mistake and in trying to save herself from a husband she abhorred, she sought the law which was unfairly biased towards the men. This highlights the difficulties that Victorian women faced in obtaining a divorce. Laura is not only persecuted by her husband but is also abandoned by her own father leaving her at the mercy of a few rich and noble-hearted men in Devonshire like Sir Charles Baskerville and Mr. Stapleton yet not without the fear of probable rumors of scandal. The helplessness of single women in the society is evident from Laura Lyon’s confession: “ . . . If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared” (Doyle, 1901). The lack of freedom for such single women also put them at a risk of exciting a “scandal” with caused them to constantly check their movements as evident from Mrs. Lyon’s statement: “Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor’s house?” (Doyle, 1901) This highlights the taboo associated with a woman visiting a man at late hours in the Victorian society. Her life is full of constant fears as apparent from her reason for cancelling her appointment with the late Charles Baskerville: “Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal” (Doyle, 1901). Clearly, this reveals the difficulties of a Victorian woman in seeking divorces at a time when women once married were expected to be a humble servant to their husband. Additionally, the lack of any source of income often put these women at the mercy of men with evil motives. It is her desperate situation that enabled Mr. Stapleton to use her as a ploy for securing Sir Charles’s Baskerville’s trust so that Stapleton could plan his doom. Laura recounts Stapleton’s false promises: “This man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way . . . But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands” (Doyle, 1901). It is only a shock that lay in store for women like Mrs. Laura Lyons when they become aware of being duped by the men they trusted. Such helpless situation of these women also detectives like Holmes and Dr. Watson to extract valuable information from them. Dr. Watson manipulates her for information by saying: “The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control” (Doyle, 1901). This reveals that Mrs. Lyons is the epitome of a victimization and exploitation. She is hurt by her husband, turned down by her father, taken advantage of by deceiving scoundrels and also used as a tool in the process of official

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investigation. She is thus, reduced to a position of “nothingness,” being devoid of any respect or family. V Therefore, Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes, mirrors the harsh realities of the nineteenth century and depict the various ways in which women were subjugated by the forces of patriarchy and crime. As Barett argues: “Women throughout the Victorian Era were treated as secondary citizens to men in society” (Barett, 2013). Their desires and wishes were seldom taken into consideration and they were subjected to victimization in some or the other form all throughout their lives. They were denied any individuality and always considered inferior, leaving them at the mercy of men who controlled them to achieve their own selfish motives. The Sherlock Holmes stories highlight this honestly as Aviram points out: “The Sherlock Holmes stories place women in a variety of situations involving criminality and victimization” (Aviram, 2011). The stories hold up the vulnerability and exploitation of woman by taking up both married and unmarried characters, all falling prey to the deceit and violence of misogynist societies. They are the unacknowledged victims in every situation. The problem lies in the law overlooking the victimization of women in ordinary circumstances and the misogynist societies refusing to accept their exploitation of women. This calls for a thorough scrutiny and a clear introspection of the present times to analyze the changes in present circumstances and to assess what still needs to be changed. Without this introspection, the human history will forever be one of an ever-continuing cycle of abuse and victimization. WORKS CITED Aviram, Hadar. 2011. “Dainty Hands: Perceptions of Women and Crime in Sherlock Holmes Stories.” UC Hastings Scholarship Repository: 240. Barrett, Kara L. 2013. “Victorian Women and Their Working Roles.” Digital Commons at Buffalo State. Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1887. A Study in Scarlet. New York: Street & Smith. ———. 1901. The Hound of Baskervilles. New York. Grosset and Dunlap. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Chapter 4

Detection and Drawings Sidney Paget’s Illustrations from Doyle’s Return of Sherlock Holmes Deepali Yadav

Dennis Porter points out the reason behind immense success of popular works which differs from their counterpart classics: “The importance of popular works resides in their status as meaning systems that embody implicit world-views. Properly interpreted, therefore, they can provide important clues to the anxieties and frustrations, aspirations and constraints, experienced by the mass audience that accounts for their best-seller status” (Porter 1981, 1). Porter names detective story as the most popular genre which had always appealed to the tastes of members of society by constantly being reintroduced for its audience/readers in the form of TV series, movies, theatrical adaptations, paintings/illustrations, and parodies that have been experimented since the very first time they were created by their authors. This argument of Porter implies that people were not limited to reading stories only but they derived equal pleasure in seeing their detective hero or stories in different visual media. It means that unlike critics who categorize detective stories as “predictable problems of no intrinsic interest, stereotyped characterizations, and undistinguished writing-in short, a literature for puzzle addicts and thrill seekers produced at best by ingenious purveyors of commodities” (Porter 1981:3), its readers at large consider it to be the perfect way to escape and relax from their monotonous routine life which lacks thrill, suspense, and constant urge to explore the unknown boundaries. The detective story instills its readers with the motive of solving mystery so that one is deeply engrossed in the unmasking of the criminal which is furthered by way of setting up a trap for catching the criminal. I endeavor to explain the relationship between 45

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the reader and illustration which takes away readers into their world of detection by making them equally important as the hero detective in the story. The illustrations, in addition to the verbal narrative of the story, provide its readers constant clues giving them an experience of being true detectives. The art of illustrating literary pieces gained momentum with the Pre-Raphaelite movement in Victorian era with the highly imagistic language of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelites involved minute description of everything in words ranging from faces, clothes, and streets to the mental agony, trauma and varied emotions of the characters. But in the last decade of nineteenth century the trend shifted to illustrations of text. An eminent critic James McNeill Whistler argued for the equal importance of illustration in literary texts. He refuted the academic exercise of viewing art through moralistic lens and propagated the view that, “The aim of picture . . .is entirely aesthetic. Art, being concerned entirely with itself and being an end in itself, has no wish to improve the human race . . .” (Kooistra 1992, 42). Whistler helped in emphasizing the fact that illustrations used in text are equally important as the written word. Thus, any attempt to view the picture as a residual or a sub-part of the written words may offer you a misleading reading of the text. Moreover, the picture suffers in comparison to words on the hands of publishers too who do not think it important enough to publish all the pictures of a text in its successive publications, thinking it to be no different than the original. Hence the age-long tradition of privileging word over the picture needs to be rectified. The illustrations are not a separate unit but the co-producer of the meaning of text. The language of the written word and the language of illustrations get juxtaposed in order form a comprehensive whole. M. M. Bakhtin provides fitting response to two kinds of arts (such as verbal and visual) in a text. He explains, “there are two voices, two meanings and two expressions. And all the while, these two voices are dialogically interrelated. “They—as it were—know about each other . . . it is as if they actually hold a conversation with each other” (Bakhtin 1981, 324). This mixing of verbal and visual languages “each characterized by its own objects, meanings and values” is termed as “Heteroglossia” and if one overlooks one over the other, then one has failed in successfully reading of the text. (292) Another prejudice against illustrations is that they are considered as the translations of the written word. It is because the illustration is mostly done after the verbal description as a result of it the pictures are seen merely as narration of verbal by using visual techniques. In cases where illustrator and author are separate entities, it is always considered that the illustrator must have imagined the situation that the author has tried to convey in words. But in deriving such a conclusion, the readers forget to question themselves why did the artist choose to draw only a particular situation or character rather

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than any other incident of the story? If pictures are taken to be visual translation of a situation in an illustrated text, then one must also think why the artist has not drawn the entire story into pictures thus making reader visualize the entire narrative? This implies that illustrations may offer distinct perspective which the critics and readers tend to overlook only as the explanation of verbal. Hence, there always exists a gap between the verbal and visual. Unlike the verbal mode of presentation where the written words directly signify the meaning, the visual has the responsibility of adhering to two worlds—one that of the author which resides in the textual and other that of the reader which they imagine after seeing the image and tries to relate it to the verbal. Thus, the illustrator is at much more risk than the author because his art would fail if he fails to do justice with either of the worlds. Sherlock Holmes, launched by Doyle in 1887 in A Study in Scarlet was later identified in an extraordinary manner: His attraction is not only that of power through reason but also of leisure and privilege, of upper-middle class bachelor life, of heroic adventure punctuated by pipe smoking in gentleman’s chambers, meditation, and opera . . . He is a polished, chivalrous hero of a culture whose ideal in all human endeavors is the well-heeled amateur, because the amateur at his best is not only brilliant and incisive, he is also relaxed and disinterested, a man of honor imbued with the spirit of sprezzatura . . . a man who dominated and served his world but stood apart on the lonely pinnacle reserved for genius. (Porter 1981, 156)

Thus, Doyle’s composition of Holmes seemed to be of a creator who was resolute in his decision to write pulp fiction which can be utilized for leisure reading. This idea of Doyle was already well adapted by Strand magazine which produced entertaining articles with the illustrations. Strand was a magazine that reflected the tastes and attitudes of late Victorian society. Reginald Pound, a major historian of the Strand remarks that: Certainly the middle-classes of England never cast a clearer image of themselves in print than they did in The Strand Magazine. Confirming their preference for mental as well physical comfort, for more than half a century it faithfully mirrored their tastes, prejudices, and intellectual limitations. From them it drew a large and loyal readership that was the envy of the publishing world. (Ousby 1976, 160)

Sidney Paget’s illustrations of the Doyle’s selected stories which were published in Strand and later collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes forms the basis of my chapter. The criteria for selecting the illustrations depend on Paget’s art of making his illustrations as one of the clues to the readers in solving the mystery:

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The illustration makes a ‘hole’ in the text-actually forces the letterpress into the restrictions of a narrow linear column at left-to reveal the sensational secret whose truth the narrative will ultimately disclose . . . . Paget’s illustrations, then, place the reader/viewer in a position of power and authority superior to that of the text itself by providing clues which draw attention to the act of double-reading . . . . When a scene or a character is important enough to be depicted, the reader may be fairly confident s/he is being offered a material clue. (Kooistra 1992, 102–104)

Also, in order to record the continuity of sketched events; I have taken all the illustrations of a story. “The Adventure of Black Peter,” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” are the two stories that form subject of my analysis. (Doyle 2009) The collection of these stories was published in the first decade of twentieth century when Sherlock Holmes entered his last phase of detection where he had become more mature and grave in his temperament of delivering justice to the villains. In the story titled “The Adventure of Black Peter.” I will analyze the figure of the detective and then the role of illustrations as clues towards solving the mystery. It is a story narrating the skill and intelligence of Holmes in finding the murderer of seaman Peter Carey. Holmes is successful in finding the murderer Patrick Cairns by his method of logical reasoning and his all-round understanding of things. In the first illustration, “‘Good gracious, Holmes!’ I cried. ‘You don’t mean to say that you have been walking about London with that thing?,’” we see both Holmes and Watson looking at each other (Paget 1904: np). While Watson is sitting dressed on the dining table to have his meal, Holmes has just arrived into the room as he stands near the closed doors behind him. The sight of Holmes holding spear is not only shocking sight for Watson but his gesture of sitting straight instead of taking support of chair’s back speaks about his disturbed state of mind. It appears like the sight of Holmes is completely unexpected and comes as a shock to Watson. He cannot believe his eyes that Holmes walked freely in the streets of London openly with such a dangerous and harmful weapon in possession. It is relevant to note here that spear occupies an important role in entire narrative and Paget is wise enough to draw it in the very first illustration of the story. The sight of spear in his hand and reaction of Watson towards it, forces readers at once to think about the possibilities of Holmes carrying spear in his hand. The picture offers a very important clue to its readers as one is curious to know the importance of spear. Later, explanations of Holmes about who can use the spear and his disguise of butcher are noteworthy as they help in offering an “indirect bearing upon the mystery of Woodman’s Lee” (Doyle 2009, 638). Later on, when he puts forth his experience in using it, “I have satisfied myself that by no exertion of my strength can I transfix

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the pig with a single blow” is noteworthy in order to prove that a person of immense strength can use an instrument like spear. (Doyle 2009: 638) This experience turns out fruitful in solving the mystery of Peter Carey’s murder and saving young and fragile John Hopley Neligan from the false accusation of murdering Carey. Holmes defends Neligan by speaking truth about the art of using spear. “Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? . . . It is no easy matter, and requires strong and practiced arm . . .. Do you imagine that this anemic youth was capable of so frightful an assault?” (Doyle 2009: 648). Thus with the very same argument he declares Patrick Cairns as the real murderer as he had “gigantic strength that, even with the handcuffs . . . he would have very quickly overpowered my friend . . .” (Doyle 2009: 650). Thus the very sight of spear in the first illustrative panel of the story calls forth its readers to be alert about its description as it forms one of the most important motifs of the story. The second picture “Holmes examined it in his minute way” depicts three people in it namely Holmes, Watson and the police officer Hopkins. (Paget 1904: np) Holmes has occupied the central and dominating position in the picture. He is seen sitting on the chair while the other two men are standing and bending towards him with an anticipation of hearing his ideas about the details of the notebook. The illustration serves another important clue for its readers for two reasons: firstly, the usage of the word “minutely” signifies that the notebook is of great importance and it may serve as an important development in solving the mystery. (Paget 1904: np) Secondly, the notebook in the hands of Holmes and the other two men waiting for his response about it is a symbol of the fact that it must be of great relevance as “Sherlock Holmes” has “examined it in his minute way.” (Paget) It is well-known fact that Doyle’s stories gained fame due to the impressive personality of Sherlock and that is why the notebook itself may not be considered important in first instance but a reader is bound to pay attention to it if it is held in the hands of the great detective figure Sherlock Holmes. Everyone knows that Sherlock Holmes does everything for a purpose and anything that interests him or holds his attention must serve a great clue in searching the detective. Later, in this notebook he finds the initials of Patrick Cairns marked as “P.C.” and “C.P.R.” the initials of the securities held by the father of John Neligan. (Doyle 2009: 641) Holmes remarks: “I confess that this note-book which did not appear at the inquest, modifies any views which I may have formed” (Doyle 2009: 641), it is important as the note-book in concern will help in forming their future course of action in pursuing the criminal The third illustration, “‘Someone has been tampering with it,’ he said.,” takes its readers to next level where the presence of “someone’ is declared to be in connection with the mystery of murder. (Paget 1904: np) The picture offers sight of three men Hopkins, Holmes, and Watson, where Hopkins

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has bent down to unlock the door but finds that someone has tampered with the lock in an attempt to unlock it secretly. The other two men, Watson and Holmes, stand behind Hopkins, trying to see what Hopkins has just now said about the lock. This picture directly leads us to the first prominent clue of a man who might have murdered Carey. This picture is seen in sequence with the very next illustration: “He rapidly turned over the leaves of this volume,”  resolves the mystery of a man who had tampered the lock in the previous picture. (Paget) The earlier illustration of tampered lock now finds a man in the next visual that might have tampered it. The posture of the man in the illustration completely describes the situation of fear and anxiety in the man. The picture has a chair on the extreme left, a table with a burning candle on it and the man with his back who is looking into some sort of booklet. The standing posture of a man despite of a chair being there by his side, gives an impression that he is in some sort of hurry to look into the book and that is why he prefers standing to sitting. His slight leaning on the table to look into the booklet also suggests that he does not want to comfort himself much so that he can hurriedly leave that place in case of any threat. His physical features, as described by Watson, “young man, frail and thin, with a black moustache which intensified the deadly pallor of his face” (Doyle 2009, 645) also play an important role in making the readers see that whether such a man can possibly commit the murder of Peter Carey or not by using a “steel harpoon [that] had been driven . . . [Right into his broad breast] . . . and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card” (Doyle 2009: 640). But he fails in his attempt to run away secretly from there as he has now been held in the custody of three men in the very next illustration. It must be noted that in the illustration: “He sank down upon the sea-chest, and looked helplessly from one of us to the other,”  Hopkins alone has strength enough to catch the fellow from his collar and scare him to the point of shivering and make him feel helpless. (Paget) Unlike any other captive who might have tried to escape or at least attempted to fight back, Neligan completely surrenders himself in the custody of Hopkins, not knowing about the presence of other two men, whom he saw later. So, if we go back to the earlier version of strength and skill required to use a harpoon and pin Carey to the wall like a “beetle on card,” Neligan appears too weak to execute the crime. (Doyle 2009, 640) Hence, Neligan can be considered an agent to seek out some sort of information which might help in solving the mystery to some extent but it would be a mistake to take him as a criminal. So, it turns out as expected that young Neligan is ignorant but he speaks out the story behind the securities which were now in possession of Carey. His statements help in the development of the case and thus reaching the final culprit in the form of Patrick Cairns. He informs Holmes about the possibility

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of his father’s boat drifting away to north due the immense sea storm where he might have met Patrick Cairns” boat. This information given by Neligan turns out to be the final solution of the mystery. In the next illustration, “’Shall I sign here?’ he asked,” we see four men in the panel. (Paget 1904: np) While Watson and Hopkins are quite far away from the reader’s view, Holmes and the stranger occupy very close position to the reader’s eye. Holmes is seen standing right behind the man and trying to keep an eye over his movements. The stranger as described by Watson had “remarkable appearance. A fierce and bulldog face was framed in a tangle of hair and beard and two bold dark eyes gleamed behind the cover of thick, tufted, overhung eyebrows. He saluted and stood sailor-fashion . . .” (Doyle 2009, 649). Paget cleverly takes hint from this description and chooses to draw Patrick Cairns very close to reader’s eye so that one is easily able to identify the culprit before the story actually reaches its end. Even before the revelation of the murderer, the reader gets an idea about Cairns being the criminal and only the unraveling of the manner along with the reason behind committing the crime, remains to be narrated. As Holmes puts it rightly in the end: “The amazing strength, the skill in the use of the harpoon, the rum and water, the seal-skin tobacco-pouch, with the coarse tobacco-all these pointed to a seaman, and one who had been a whaler. I was convinced that the initials P.C. upon the pouch were a coincidence, and not those of Peter Carey, since he seldom smoked: and no pipe was found in his cabin” (Doyle 2009, 652). The last illustration, “We sat down and we drank and we yarned about old times,” visualizes the successful solving of the mystery, which gave Holmes and Watson time to relax and remember about their old adventures together. (Paget 1904: np) Another story named “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” is about the murder of a young man named Willoughby Smith in the study of Professor Coram (Sergius). Though Stanley Hopkins tries his best to know about the murderer and his/her motive behind it yet he fails in reaching any logical conclusion. Finally, he asks Holmes to intervene in the case and help him solve the murder mystery of Yoxley Old Place, the place of crime. The very first illustration of the story, “It was young Stanley Hopkins, a promising detective,” presents Watson and Hopkins in the panel. (Paget) It is clear from the picture that it is raining heavily outside as Hopkins is dressed in his long raincoat entirely drenched in rain water which is falling down from his raincoat in the form of small droplets on the ground. Behind Hopkins, we get a glimpse of glowing street light that is getting reflected on the wet ground surface. Any visit in such a turbulent and rainy night can only make one think about the urgency of matter which would have led a person visit Holmes’s home. The situation turns out to be exactly the same

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when Hopkins narrates the turn of events asking for Holmes to intervene in the case. He tells Holmes about the skill of the murderers because despite the heavy rain everywhere near London, he was unable to trace the footsteps of the criminal on the rain-soaked muddy ground. As evident from the absence of footmarks on the ground, the case turns out to be a tricky one. In order to give a detailed account of the house and the scene of crime, Hopkins takes out a roughly drawn map of the house to make things comprehensible to Holmes. Through the second illustration Hopkins is no doubt showing Holmes about the Yoxley Old Place, but this illustration is also necessary in conveying the information to the readers who is waiting to have an idea of the same place. The reader, like the detective waits to know the description of the scene of crime so as to get a clear idea of how murder was committed. Hopkins’ narration includes very graphic language to render justice to its readers. It is for this reason the illustration includes sketch of a paper in order to justify the relevance of graphic style of language. The reader after seeing the illustration unconsciously imagines that the graphic style dialogues are written only because Hopkins is “showing” the rough map of place to Holmes sidelining the fact that it is for him (reader) the author and illustrator has taken the pains to use an illustration which fits aptly with word imagery: Now first of all, presuming that the assassin entered the house, how did he or she come in? Undoubtedly by the garden path and the back door, from which there is direct access to the study . . .. The escape must have also been made along that line, for of the two other exits from the room one was blocked by Susan as she ran downstairs and the other leads straight to the Professor’s bedroom . . .. I next examined the corridor. It is lined with coconut matting and had taken no impression of any kind. This brought me to the study itself. It is scantily-furnished room. The main article is a large writing table with a fixed bureau. This bureau consists of a double column of drawers with a central small cupboard between them . . .I now come to the body of a young man. It was found near the bureau, and just to the left of it, as marked upon the chart. The stab was on the right side of the neck and from behind forwards. (Doyle 2009, 706–07)

In the next illustration: “He endeavored to read through them,” depicts Holmes trying to read something through the glasses in the lamp’s light. (Paget 1904: np) Holmes’s holding of the glasses from the right hand suggests that he is giving more emphasis to the glasses than the book in hand which is falling off from one side. The glasses in picture are an important clue which helps in knowing its possessor. As Holmes is trying to adjust those glasses, it is clear that the glasses do not fit on his face and as a result, he is having problems in reading through it. Consequently, from this close examination of the glasses it is clear that the murderer was a lady:

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That they belong to a woman I infer from their delicacy, and also, of course, from the last words of the dying man. As to her being a person of refinement and well dressed, they are, as you perceive, handsomely mounted in solid gold, and it is inconceivable that anyone who wore such glasses could be slatternly in other respects. You will find that the clips are too wide for your nose, showing that the lady’s nose was very broad at the base. (Doyle 2009, 708)

The story of Golden Pince-Nez offers two clues to the readers, one that it was a lady and second that she had short-sightedness. If the glasses were found from the pocket of the victim, Willoughby, it means the murderer went back without them and hence would have faced some difficulty in escaping from the room. The lady, who was unable to look clearly without glasses, mistakenly chooses wrong coconut matting way which leads to the bedroom of Professor Coram rather than choosing the one that of the garden from where she entered. This confusion finally leads to the solution of mystery and also in revealing the murderer. Later, when Holmes reveals the truth of the lady being hidden in the bookcase kept in Coram’s room, she throws open the doors as seen in the illustration: “A woman rushed out into the room.” She emerges from it and confirms all the propositions of Holmes in committing the crime. (Paget 1904: np) After the detection of the murderer, only the reason behind committing crime still remains unclear. In the illustration, “Did you dust this bureau yesterday morning?” we see Holmes, Watson, and Hopkins standing on the side of the illustration while the Mrs. Marker stands on the other side of the frame looking at the three men. (Paget 1904: np) Holmes is looking at the lady and has seemed to find a new clue in the case which resolves the manner in which the murder might have been committed. He is seen asking Mrs. Marker about the fresh shining scratch in the brass keyhole of the bureau to which she answers that she did not see it yesterday while dusting the furniture. It gives him an idea about the nervousness of the criminal who might have tried to take out the key when Willoughby entered the room and saw her. After knowing the kind of key the bureau requires, he goes to meet Professor Coram, where he demands to see the key of the same bureau which the criminal was unable to lock. In the next illustration Holmes is seen examining the key. In both the panels it seems that the “key” hints to something very important which might help in knowing the cause of murder. The very fact of Holmes’s questioning about the type of key and later demanding it from the professor for investigation implies that the bureau contained something very valuable that was of grave importance to both Professor Coram and the woman murderer, Anna. She narrates the entire story of entering secretly to Coram’s house. She tells Holmes the truth about Coram:

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I am this man’s wife. He is not an Englishman. He is a Russian . . . My husband came to England with his ill-gotten gains, and has lived in quiet ever since, knowing well that if the Brotherhood knew where he was not a week would pass before justice would be done. . . . Among our comrades of the Order there was one who was the friend of my heart. He was noble, unselfish, loving - all that my husband was not. He hated violence . . . He wrote for ever dissuading me from such a course. These letters would have saved him . . . He hid them, and he tried hard to swear away the young man’s life. In this he failed, but Alexis was sent a convict to Siberia, where now, at this moment, he works in a salt mine. (Doyle 2009, 718)

Professor Coram is shocked at the audacity of Anna, who spoke the entire truth in the presence of everyone despite of his warning. He feels helpless and tries to stop her by constantly intruding and asking for her forgiveness. “I am in your hands, Anna,’ said he,” illustrates the scene of Anna revealing the entire truth and villainy of Sergius. (Paget 1904: np) In the picture we see Hopkins standing on the other side of bed with his one foot on a chair, while the other two men, Holmes and Watson are carefully being witness to her story. The old professor is sitting on his chair puffing a cigarette while Anna is sitting diagonally opposite to him. She is seen pointing a finger to Sergius, which gives an impression that she makes him accountable for some reason. The other three men seem to be completely listening to her with utmost attention. This is the time when she tells them that she came here seeking the possession of those papers which could free Alexis from false charges but as Willoughby entered the room at that moment, it unintentionally led to his murder. The last illustration: “Holmes had bounded across the room and had wrenched a small phial from her hand” is free from any kind of clue as the mystery has been completely solved but it is absolutely necessary in understanding the conscience of the lady who mistakenly murdered the young man. (Paget 1904: np) She is so deeply ridden with guilt from the murder and also with her failure in helping Alexis that she feels her life to be futile and burdensome. Her remarks, “I have only a little time here,” “I must speak, or I shall be too late,” and, “I must finish” are an intimation to the readers that something drastic is about to happen to the lady. (Doyle 2009, 716) Readers are prepared to witness an act that might be harmful to the lady. The picture shows a swooning lady who is trying to drink something from the phial but is stopped by Holmes, who instantly snatches it from her hand. Hopkins, too, hurries to rescue the lady from drinking it which is clear from the illustration that depicts a falling chair, on which he was resting his foot a few moments ago. The picture is important in knowing Holmes’ disposition about the lady after hearing her story. His attempt in trying to stop her proves that he completely believes in Anna’s story and does not wants her to suffer any more for

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the wrongs done to her by Sergius. Later, Holmes decides to fulfill Anna’s wish of sending the papers to Russian embassy, which will set Alexis free. As a result, we see that Paget’s illustrations are the best way to extract relevant clues, as he sketches matters of utmost relevance by leaving unwanted and excessively detailed information. His illustrations focus on details that might be worth seeing. Unlike Watson, who reports everything to the readers but hardly understands anything, Paget tries to bring out the hidden secrets of the narrative close to his viewers. These illustrations help readers form their own point of view, which is very important for the success of the detective genre. WORKS CITED Illustrations Paget, Sydney. 1904. “Illustrations.” The Strand Magazine. Web. https://www.arthurconan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_Black_Peter. Accessed April 14, 2014. ———. 1904. “Illustrations.” The Strand Magazine. https://www.arthur-conan-doyle. com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Golden_Pince-Nez. Accessed April 14, 2014.

Primary Works Cited Doyle, Arthur Conan. 2009. “The Adventure of Black Peter,”  “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez.” In Selected Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes. Delhi: Jainco Publishers.

Secondary Works Cited Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin, translated by Carlyle Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Chernaik, Warren, Martin Swails, and Robert Vilain, eds. 2000. The Art of Detective Fiction. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Irwin, Michael. 1979. Picturing: Description and Illusion in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. London: George Allen and Unwin. Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. 1992. The Artist as Critic: Bi-Textuality in Fin-De-Siecle Illustrated Books. Open Access Dissertations and Theses. Paper. Ousby, Ian. 1976. Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction from Godwin to Doyle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Porter, Dennis. 1981. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Worthington, Heather. 2005. The Rise of Detective in Early Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New York: Macmillan.

Chapter 5

Feminization of the Science of Detection Agatha Christie’s Unusual Detective-Partners Amy Lee

INTRODUCTION: AGATHA CHRISTIE’S LONG-TERM SUCCESS AND FEMININE BRANDING Agatha Christie’s name needs no introduction in the world of detective fiction, and is probably well-known to popular fiction readers in general too. Her decades-long writing career produced sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short-story collections of the same genre, and to date more than two billion copies of her detective fictions have been sold. Even to non-readers, her name is easily associated to intriguing mysteries, as a number of her stage plays have enjoyed great reputation—The Mousetrap, one of her most famous plays, has been staged at London’s West End since 1952, bearing the record of the longest running stage play in history. Over the years, many of her novels have been adapted into feature films and television drama, shown to audience globally. The demand for the “Agatha Christie Brand” is seen not only in the new film and television adaptations being made continuously, but also in the great desire for new stories featuring much-loved detectives she created. British writer Sophie Hannah was authorized by the estate of Agatha Christie to write continuation novels featuring Hercule Poirot, and the first of such works, The Monogram Murders, was published in 2014. At the time 57

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of the writing of this chapter, a total of four such continuation novels with Monsieur Poirot using his little gray cells have already been published. Critical and analytical discussions of Christie’s skills in plotting, characterization, and even presentation of the imagined crimes have been non-stop since the beginning of her writing career. This comment describing her as having “the intellect and the technical skill to make of the clue-puzzle what Wells conceived it could be: she isolated in her technically brilliant plots, her restrained characterization and subtle thematic nuances just what a dedicated reader could hope for as a fictional defense against feared crime” (Knight, 89) is representative in summaries of her appeal. Other individual discussions which attempt to champion her contributions to detective fiction as a genre have referred to uniqueness in different works; for example, seeing And Then There Were None (1939) as creating a new sub-genre, the fantastic detective story, a new entity incorporating the down-to-earth-ness of detective fiction and the mysterious atmosphere of fantasy (Beek 2016, 22–30). In a discussion about Christie’s secret fair play, using The A.B.C. Murders (1936) as an example, she was recognized “as an author who made important contributions not only to the classic clue-puzzle style of the genre but also to the metaphysical detective story tradition” (Kinugawa, 177). Among detective fiction writers, Christie’s stories “transcend genre categorizations dependent on broad strokes of periodization, showing that Golden Age authors can also be at home with devices that are more often than not seen as the purview of postmodern writers” (Kinugawa, 177). Critics also noted the writer’s own development throughout her long career, while her “early titles portray crime solving as an intellectual puzzle” (Knepper, “Curtain Falls,” 78), some of her later titles were considered as showing “a preoccupation with the morality and psychology of crime: for example, Nemesis (1971), Postern of Fate (1973), and Sleeping Murder (1976). These later titles suggest both hidden crimes of passion and inexorable justice and fit the emphasis in Christie’s later Poirot and Miss Marple novels” (Knepper, “Curtain Falls,” 78). Indeed, Christie’s first success The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) was published two years after the First World War, the following decades witnessed not only the Second World War and its horrendous destructions, but also major changes in ways of life and people’s values. Agatha Christie had served as dispensary nurse in both wars, allowing her to acquire a knowledge of chemicals and poisons which had contributed much to her own brand of murders. Parallel to the dramatic changes in the world, her personal life also went through various ups and downs: her disappearance in 1926 after she found out about her first husband’s affair, their subsequent divorce, her second marriage, old age, and ill health. Poirot and Miss Marple, her two greatest creations, also aged with her, and were described as suffering from poor health and getting fragile in later

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novels. It was a running joke that “[i]f computational-minded readers follow the dating of the books in these two series, the two detectives would clearly be as old as certain Old Testament figures” (Knepper, “Curtain Falls,” 73), and “Poirot must have been between 130 and 135 at his death” (Knepper, 73), but the wider world and her personal world through these decades had indirectly been portrayed in the stories. Referring to the huge amount of discussions that have been made in relation to this Queen of Crime Fiction and her works, one may ask what else is there to write about more than forty years after her death. In the first place, as Rolls and Gulddal (2016) pointed out, there is a division between scholarship and connoisseurship of Christie’s work. For those who claim to revisit her work from an academic perspective, “sound bites like ‘feminist icon’ are increasingly deemed suitable grist to the mill that is the rereading Christie machine” (Rolls and Gulddal, 5). While it is true that Agatha Christie had created a phenomenon in detective fiction writing, not only through her female detectives, but also in the unique way she crafted murder, one must be careful in labelling her a feminist, or categorizing her writing as feminist detective fiction. In the following, I propose to review “the gendering” of Agatha Christie’s works, through a discussion of the two greatest detectives—Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple—she created, as well as through a reflection of other uniquely interesting features she wrote into her fictions. I would like to argue that Mrs. Christie’s corpus feminized the science of detection, not only through Jane Marple, the female detective, but also through feminine writing in her presentation, as well as feminized ways of detection, as exhibited in Hercule Poirot. GARDENING, GOSSIP, AND VILLAGE LIFE: MISS MARPLE THE LADY DETECTIVE OF ST. MARY MEAD Talking about “feminist features” in Agatha Christie’s works, a common response would be to cite the creation of Miss Jane Marple, an elderly lady who lives alone in St. Mary Mead, an imaginary village that is supposed to be close to London, but which only exists in Christie’s fiction. Miss Marple has two favorite hobbies—gardening and gossiping—both of which lend her considerable help when faced with puzzling murders as they are unobtrusive and effective means of gathering information. Together with circumstantial information that she collects or is presented to her, Miss Marple exercises her intuitive crime-solving abilities based on the principle that human nature is the same everywhere; and arrives at the right conclusion about who the murderer is. The fact that Miss Marple is an ordinary, elderly lady, and behaving in ways common to her kind, has been regarded as an example of Christie’s

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unique brand of feminism: “Christie uses Miss Marple to highlight and value underrecognized female roles and skills. She even places women in the role of murderer” (Maslin, 105). In Maslin’s discussion, Christie’s work shows an interesting variety of female images. On the one hand, women can be extremely efficient, not only as the shrewd detective figure, but also very capable workers in different professions, and more specifically as characters in crime fiction, “half of Christie’s perpetrators are women—single women” (Maslin, 105). Gossip, which Miss Marple so unashamedly engages in, is not only a feature in the general description of life in a village such as St. Mary Mead, but is in fact endorsed and credited with real use. In The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) Miss Marple said, “idle tittle-tattle is very wrong and unkind, but it is so often true, isn’t it” (Christie, Vicarage, 18), and in another short story, she made a similar remark on its value, “How often is tittle tattle, as you call it, true! And I think if, as I say, they really examined the facts they would find it was true nine times out of ten! That’s what makes people so annoyed about it” (Christie, “A Christmas Tragedy,” 156). Such observations from someone who has long life experience, and who has made excellent practical use of gossip, is the strongest acknowledgement that “gossip, although potentially harmful, is also often accurate” (Maslin, 105). This rational comment about gossiping as a moral action and its valuable practical function in crime-solving makes Miss Marple an ambiguous spokesperson for feminism, for she is critical about this often feminine-gendered action despite acknowledging its truth and value. Another counter-argument to seeing Miss Marple as an icon of Agatha Christie’s feminism is her humilty, almost to the extent of self-effacement in the novels. Despite her reputation of always knowing the answers to puzzling incidents, even murders, Miss Marple never considers herself a local celebrity, and even “goes to great lengths to credit her accomplishments to others” (Maslin, 105). In her conversations, she always refers proudly to her nephew, Raymond West, who is a famous detective fiction writer. Despite his aunt’s track record in crime detection, Raymond never consults her in his writing, although their relationship is a mutually loving and respectful one. The image of Miss Marple in the story, with features like “[h]er preoccupation with traditionally domestic tasks such as gardening and knitting, coupled with her self-effacing demeanor runs contrary to the conventional goals of feminism” (Maslin, 105). In other words, although it is true that Agatha Christie has created an unusual detective who solves crimes using gossip and gardening as strategies of investigation, and intuition as guiding principle, this mere fact cannot be seen as proof that Miss Marple is a feminist, for she has not engaged in any action to further women’s rights. I would therefore also argue

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that the construction of such a character does not make Mrs. Christie herself a feminist writer. Before I move on to discuss other aspects of what I describe as “feminization of the science of detection” in Agatha Christie’s works, I would like to make a final comment about the character of Miss Marple. Rather than debating whether she is a feminist icon, it may be more interesting to ponder on her relationship with her creator. Knepper in “Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead: A Geographical Mystery Solved?” (2007) has elaborated an interesting investigation in the location of St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple’s home village, and concluded that the location was in fact modeled partly on Sunningdale, Mrs. Christie’s home. The result of the investigation was based on Christie’s personal life preceding the creation of Miss Marple. In 1926 publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd brought her major success, but that same year she discovered her husband’s affair, and then disappeared from her Sunningdale home, which led to a national search. Two years later, she divorced her husband, which coincided with her creation of her most famous female detective, living in a village. “For Christie, Sunningdale must have become a dark place—perhaps a metaphor for her fictional St. Mary Mead, all placid and sunny on the surface, but seething with dark passions and unhappiness underneath” (Knepper, “Marple’s St. Mary Mead,” 49). Agatha Christie did not portray her characters simply as her spokespersons, but as complex references to her own life, the social situation, and the changing values and thoughts of society. BEYOND THE FEMALE DETECTIVE: FEMININITY IN AGATHA CHRISTIE’S BODIES OF WORK Among the many proposed reasons for the sensational long-term popularity of Christie’s detective fiction is the way it successfully draws the readers into the fictional space, and conduct the investigation with the detective(s). By nature, investigation—the science of uncovering the mystery—may feel like a masculine task, and the artificiality of the setting as well as the formulaic plot development of this genre do not engage the readers personally. Christie has managed to include the readers personally because “she did not tire of her central method of identifying a betrayer by close observation: in her best novels the procedures by which she invited the reader to identify this figure were both detailed and clever” (Knight, 92). In most of her fictions, the cause of disorder is personal betrayal, thus interpersonal relationships—considered by many as a feminine domain—are given center stage in the unfolding of the mysteries, something that every reader can understand, follow, and even identify with.

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Besides her strategically feminine engagement with readers through focusing on relationships in the stories, her deployment of a female detective storywriter, Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, in some of her (Hercule Poirot) stories is also artistically and biographically interesting. The presence of a female detective storywriter in the works of one naturally invites comparison, and discussions as to whether Mrs. Oliver was to be considered as a spokesperson for Christie herself, or just another character she created. However, this may not be the most fruitful reading of the fictional counterpart of Christie. “Faced with this binary model for reading Mrs. Oliver, one may be tempted to look beyond this desire to compare two representations of the “author”: one fictional and the other real” (Grauby, 116). Grauby proposed an interesting, and in my view highly suggestive reading of the relationship between Agatha Christie the real-life author, and Ariadne Oliver the fictional storywriter who inhabits Christie’s fiction. It involves the way a fiction writer creates a fiction which in turn foretells the life of that same fiction writer, in her words, how “fictional works prefigure future events” (Grauby, 117). Grauby was proposing a reading to determine “to what extent Mrs. Oliver created Christie” (Grauby, 117). Mrs. Oliver was a friend of Hercule Poirot’s, but she was portrayed as someone with very different, almost opposite qualities to the renowned Belgian detective (more about him later), despite her being a famous detective storywriter. While Poirot would not hesitate to pretend or to lie shamelessly just to extract information from suspects and witnesses, Mrs. Oliver was awkward and did not know what to say when she was not with friends. Creativity and imagination were her forte as a detective storywriter, but in the actual practice of detection her ideas were often irrelevant. On the other hand, as she was a fictional character (whose job was to produce fiction), “reality serves her no purpose; she is not fit for deduction, something that she and those around her willingly admit” (Grauby, 120). Unlike Hercule Poirot, Mrs. Oliver did not need to be logical, for her domain was the domain of fantasy. Therefore, one can see that Mrs. Christie had skillfully constructed an interesting paradox, although both Mrs. Oliver and Hercule Poirot were fictional, she had made the female storywriter (arguably based on her own self) more of an illusory existence than the Belgian detective, who was not based on any real people she knew at all. Mrs. Oliver felt like an “illusory” existence because she had never shared any details of the science of detection that she inscribed in her books. While her reputation as a famous storywriter of crime was repeatedly stated in Christie’s mysteries, ironically it was Poirot who supplied to readers all the details of the investigation process, and finally even presenting the cases from the criminals’ perspectives. If Mrs. Oliver is the image of the iconic creative writer in the stories, “[Poirot] is indeed the missing link in the creative process: the period of development, of selection and structuring, where critical

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review is fully exercised” (Grauby, 121). The fictional female writer was only the creative icon, functioning almost like the cover of a magazine, leaving the contents to the actual practitioner of crime detection—Poirot practically “wrote” the crime in place of the perpetrators. I agree with Grauby’s proposal that “Mrs. Oliver would appear to contain the early beginnings of the destiny of Christie. It cannot be entirely ruled out that the character’s lessons played a role in the author’s accession to literary fame and that Mrs. Oliver may well have created the possibility of Christie” (123); but this also means that Christie had assigned Poirot the role of the storyteller, just like herself. Christie’s status as the master-storyteller is undoubted, beyond the quantitative evidence in book sales, film and TV adaptations, new productions of her plays, there is also the non-stop critical discussion of her works—both her mysteries as well as her non-mystery fiction. The non-mystery books she published using the name Westmacott featured key themes that were “intensifications of concerns present in Christie’s mysteries” (Whitney, 37–38), such as “the importance of self-knowledge, amnesia and masquerade, the consequences of postwar trauma for masculinity, and the possibilities of post-maternal life” (Whitney, 37). Although Christie deliberately published her two different bodies of work under separate names, the shared concerns found in these two collections remind us that it was the voice of the same person, a person who looked at the world in a particular way, and who disclosed only so much of herself in her creative works. The Westmacott novels came after her successful mystery fictions, in fact, they came after Christie’s famous disappearance and the nation-wide search for her in 1926. The incident of Agatha Christie’s eleven-day disappearance was national news but had never really gave a clear account of her side of the story. She was found finally in a rural hotel, having checked in under the name of Teresa Neele. “The pseudonym is significant because of its resemblance to Nancy Neele, the name of the woman whom Archibald Christie was divorcing his wife to marry. To add insult to injury, Christie had asked his wife not to disclose Neele’s name in the adultery petition that would legally sever them” (Whitney, 43). The first novel published in Westmacott’s name, Giants’ Bread, came out in 1930, and was followed by five more, all of which were non-mystery stories depicting human relationships and personal experiences. It was only as late as 1950 that Christie publicly admitted to authorship of this semi-autobiographical body of work. Looking at the dates as well as the nature of the Westmacott novels, it is not unreasonable to imagine that the broken relationship with her first husband, which led probably to her dramatic disappearance in 1926, had created in her the need to voice her feelings and views in a separate channel. Her assumption of a pseudonym when checking into a rural hotel might well be a precursor to her adoption of a pen name to express her more personal ideas. The feminized representation of the

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science of detection through relationship-depiction continues in this branch of Christie’s feminine brand. To consider Christie’s two bodies of work as two routes that she had chosen to arrive at the same goals yields some interesting insight into the lesser discussed aspects of her mysteries. Although much of the critical attention on Christie’s mysteries had been on her detectives and their methods, it has also been pointed out that “[i]n her later mysteries, Christie intensifies her study of women victimized by emotional violence” (Whitney, 48). Whitney referred to examples such as Nemesis (1971), Elephants Can Remember (1972), and Endless Night (1967) which featured female characters who were emotionally exploited by members of their close family. In parallel with these emotionally traumatized female victims in her mysteries, there were the much shattered masculinity in her Westmacott novels, in the form of “war-mangled hands, nervous breakdowns, or paralysis” (Whitney, 45), an indirect but unmistakable reference to male impotence resulted from the wars. As Christie herself had served as a pharmacy nurse during both world wars, she was witness to the physical and subsequently psychological and emotional damage on humankind. While Miss Marple is the most visible element of Agatha Christie’s addition of femininity to detective fiction, “not only because of her gender but also the kind of elderly, traditional femininity that she embodies” (Whitney, 47), a careful look into Christie’s repertoire yields more than just the creation of a female detective. The consistent underlying anxiety about being betrayed by members of the family and close friends is present not only in the detective stories, but extends to the non-mystery novels she wrote. The six novels published under Westmacott, “strong and deep in tone, amplify Christie’s concerns about self-knowledge, memory, the instability of identity, and crises of gender” (Whitney, 48), which was the standard components of detective fiction. Viewed together, the two bodies of Christie’s fiction are but two sides of her brand of feminine concerns. Finally, in her design of the non-deductive crime fiction writer Mrs. Oliver, she prepared a fitting stage for the real storyteller: the private detective who was a foreigner, a small man, and a dandy. THE EGG-SHAPED HEAD, THE MOUSTACHE, AND THE OBSESSION WITH ORDER: HERCULE POIROT AS THE NEMESIS Agatha Christie wrote an article “How I Created Hercule Poirot” for Daily Mail’s serialization of Appointment with Death on January 19, 1938 (Curran, 182). Christie remembered that when she was writing the first of her detective fictions, The Mysterious Affairs at Styles, she had the plot ready, and

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needed a detective: “Now what kind of detective? It was in the early autumn of 1914—Belgian refugees were in most country places. Why not have a Belgian refugee, a former shining light of the Belgian Police force?” (Curran, 183–184). After nationality, next she had to decide his personality and habits: “What kind of man should he be? A little man perhaps, with a somewhat grandiloquent name. Hercule—something—Hercule Poirot—yes, that would do. What else about him? He should be very neat—very orderly (Is that because I was a wildly untidy person myself?)” (Curran, 184). This was how Christie described the birth of Hercule Poirot—a development in response to the plot, his nationality a convenient suggestion from the environment, and his stature a funny contradiction to his name. The conceited personality, the meticulous care to his appearance, especially the “handsome moustache” have now become well-known features all over the world. But that was all that Christie claimed responsibility for, she wrote that afterward “he took charge, as it were, of his own personality” (Curran, 184). Hercule Poirot made his entrance and took over the stage to tell his stories of crime detection. In Christie’s words, “[t]here was more in this little man than I had ever suspected. There was, for instance, his intense interest in the psychology of every case” (Curran, 184). This “intense interest in the psychology of every case” later came to be Hercule Poirot’s signature approach to crime investigation, although some critics felt that his repeated reference to using the “little grey cells” was an exaggeration. “Poirot’s claim on rational and psychological mastery is a Holmes-like front for a simpler method; but here it is not male clerical-style observation, but the types of knowledge that are classically, and stereotypically, female” (Knight, 91). Here, Knight has made an interesting comparison between Poirot and the iconic Holmes—not only was the plump and fussy Poirot the opposite of the strong masculine Englishman, but even his methods of investigation were gendered. For all the talk about little gray cells, Poirot was seen to employ “a heightened version of female domestic knowledge as a weapon against fictional disorder” (Knight, 109–10). On the surface, the two detectives created by Christie could not be more unlike, one being an aged spinster living in a traditional English village, while the other a retired Belgian police officer who had traveled around the world. Yet both of them, in their ways, had known human nature, especially the disastrous results of emotions getting out of control. That was their common path into the secrets of crime and the minds of the perpetrators. In fact, the “femininity” of Hercule Poirot lies not only in his “intuition, [his] ability to know a type of person” (Ewers, 114), which ability he shared with Miss Marple, but also in his uniquely comic features (Roy, 138). It was no secret that Christie had wanted to kill him off a number of times because she was fed up with his idiosyncrasies: “Why, why, did I ever invent this

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detestable, bombastic tiresome little creature? Eternally straightening things, forever boasting, always twirling his moustaches and tilting his ‘egg-shaped head.’ Anyway, what is an egg-shaped head? Have I ever seen an egg-shaped head?” (Curran, 186). Readers will not forget that in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Dr. Sheppard (the narrator and ultimately revealed to be the murderer) even imagined him to be “a retired hairdresser” and repeated this a few times. Despite his international fame, Hercule Poirot was not treated seriously by people who met him for the first time: “[h]is quirks are meant to project him as a harmless figure of fun: his obsessive orderliness, vanity over his appearance, and comic English” (Ksiezopolska, 35). Although Poirot sometimes exaggerated his non-English identity in order to lower people’s guard against him, his foreignness also undermined people’s respect for him, especially when he was at the crime scene trying to take control of the investigation. Besides the generally comic effects of characters’ reaction to Poirot’s foreignness, there were also some situations when racism was visibly present. The A.B.C. Murders (1936) was one of those cases when xenophobia was very much part of the setting, probably reflecting the current thoughts and opinions of the time. In this case, Poirot’s presence elicited more than the usual harmless mockery. “When he presents his solution to the crime at the end of the novel, Poirot states, when talking about the anonymous letters that he has received, ‘there was, discernible in the letter, a slight anti-foreign bias.’ He then states that the murderer was taunting him with the letters because he ‘enjoyed scoring off a foreigner’” (Brown, 74). Although Poirot himself was proud of his “international” background, as can be seen in his announcement to the passengers of the Orient Express: “I belong to the world” (Christie, Orient Express, 91), to a certain extent, Poirot’s being a foreigner (and a small dandyish man who was obsessed with neatness) has rendered him less masculine than his position called for. When Agatha Christie created Hercule Poirot to take charge of the case in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, she had no idea that he would become one of the most well-known names in the history of detective fiction. In fact, she wrote Poirot’s last case Curtain (1975) in the early 1940s, and put it aside to be published later. This shows her good business sense, but perhaps also confirms her own claim that she got tired of Poirot after a time. In this final case they did together, his life-long friend Hastings “grieves once again for the little man with the big moustaches and the little gray cells who believed in friendship, justice, and romance” (Knepper, 76). Although it is not unusual that one of Hercule Poirot’s legacies was his belief in justice, for after all he was one of the greatest detectives of all time, yet his justice was very personal. In The Murder on the Orient Express, he discovered that all the passengers (and the conductor) of the compartment were in collusion, to take revenge on Ratchett, who was responsible for the death of little Daisy Armstrong years

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ago. Ratchett’s crime caused not only the death of one girl, but also started a chain of events that damaged a lot of people’s lives. At the conclusion of this heinous affair, Poirot offered two possible solutions: “an official one tailored for the authorities (the law of the father) and the correct one to be shared as a secret by the domestic community of passengers” (Ewers, 109). His justice was not the same as that stated by the law, for he considered the qualitative destruction to hopes, happiness and love as well. Agatha Christie highlighted this personal sense of justice by “leaving the train suspended between Eastern and Western time zones, . . . to interrogate its ambiguous status as marker of the rational, on the one hand, and symbol of the exotic, mysterious, and destined, on the other” (Ewers, 110). The usual denouement scene, where Poirot revealed the murderer and sent him/her to justice, took place in a symbolic no man’s land. In this crossroads between the two kinds of law, Poirot chose to stand with the emotionally traumatized revengers and offered them a story that would set them free. This same personal sense of justice was also seen in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). He identified the murderer as the Dr. Sheppard (who ironically was taking up Hastings’s position as the narrator of Poirot’s investigation), and after sharing his version of the story, he gave Sheppard a choice about how the case ended. “As Poirot allows Sheppard to commit suicide, it ensures that the doctor’s good reputation will stay intact while it would not affect the norms and traditions of the social world of King’s Abbot” (Roy, 138). He as the Nemesis was more understanding and personal than the law. CONCLUSION: AGATHA CHRISTIE’S CONTRIBUTION TO FEMINIZATION OF THE SCIENCE OF DETECTION It is now a century since the publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), which was the beginning of Agatha Christie’s rise as the queen of detective fiction. Popular, as well as scholarly discussions have been plenty on the plotting, characterization, murder methods, and even the craft of writing in her fiction. Her long, successful career and the reach of her readers (and audience) have created a huge fan base for her two brilliant creations— Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Poirot’s popularity is such that his health condition has been discussed in an article in a medical journal (Ferretti et. al., 273) as if he were a real person, and Miss Marple attracts a lot of attention to the issue of gender in her works. While it is easy to refer to Miss Marple’s creation as evidence of Christie’s feminism, one should also be aware of the many traditional values she embodied. On the other hand, Christie had paid special attention to the presentation of characters’ feelings and thoughts, showing the psychological and emotional landscapes of victims and culprits

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alike. Even in the rendition of Mrs. Oliver the crime fiction writer in the text, Christie had deliberately drawn our attention to the craft of writing, and guided our attention to the one who was really telling these personal stories—Hercule Poirot. In this retired Belgian police officer, who seemed laughable because of his obsession with his clothes and his moustache, we find the ultimate feminine touch to the process of crime investigation and the completion of justice. WORKS CITED Beek, Suzanne van der. 2016. “Agatha Christie and the Fantastic Detective Story.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 22–30. Brown, Shane. 2020. “‘Scoring Off a Foreigner?’ Xenophobia, Antisemitism, and Racism in the Works of Agatha Christie.” Clues 38.1 (2020): 70–80. Christie, Agatha. 1921. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: Collins. ———. 1926. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. London: Collins. ———. 1930. The Murder at the Vicarage. London: Collins. ———. 1930. “A Christmas Tragedy.” in Christie, Agatha. A Christmas Family Tragedy. ———. 1936. The A.B. C. Murders. London: Collins. ———. 1938. Appointment with Death. London: Collins. ———. 1939. Ten Little Indians. (US title: And Then There Were None.) London: Collins. ———. 1962. Murder on the Orient Express. London: Collins. ———. 1967. Endless Night. London: Collins. ———. 1971. Nemesis. London: Collins. ———. 1972. Elephants Can Remember. London: Collins. ———. 1973. Postern of Fate. London: Collins. ———. 1975. Curtain. London: Collins. ———. 1976. Sleeping Murder. London: Collins. Curran, John. 2011. Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Hammersmith: Harper. Ewers, Chris. 2016. “Genres in Transit: Agatha Christie, Trains, and the Whodunit.” Journal of Narrative Theory 46.1 (2016): 97–120. Ferretti, Cecilia, et. al. 2018. “Coronary Heart Disease and the Ischemic Demis of a Beloved Ficitonal Hero: Hercule Poirot of Agatha Christie Fame.” The American Journal of Cardiology 121 (2018): 273–274. Gildersleeve, Jessica. 2016. “Nowadays: Trauma and Modernity in Agatha Christie’s Late Poirot Novels.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 96–104. Grauby, Francoise. 2016. “‘This Isn’t a Detective Story, Mrs. Oliver’: The Case of the Fictitious Author.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 116–125. Gutkowski, Emanuela. 2011. “An ‘Investigation in Pragmatics’: Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” Clues 29.1 (2011): 51–60. Hannah, Sophie. 2014. The Monogram Murders. London: Harper Collins.

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Kinugawa, Shosuke. 2018. “Agatha Christie’s Secret Fair Play.” Narrative 26.2 (2018): 163–180. Knepper, Marty S. 2007. “Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead: A Geogrpahical Mystery Solved?” Clues 25.4 (2007): 37–51. ———. 2005. “The Curtain Falls: Agatha Christie’s Last Novels.” Clues 23.4 (2005): 69–84. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction 1800-2000. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Ksiezopolska, Irena. 2016. “Metafictional Agatha Christie: Self-Parody as the Perfect Crime.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 31–40. Makinen, Merja. 2006. Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity. Houndmills: Palgave. Maslin, Kimberly. 2016. “The Paradox of Miss Marple: Agatha Christie’s Epistemology.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 105–115. Rolls, Alistair and Jesper Gulddal. 2016. “Reappropriating Agatha Christie: An Introduction.” Clues 34.1 (2016): 5–10. Roy, Zenith. 2019. “Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Murder She Invented.” Middle Flight: SSM Journal of English Literature and Culture 8.1 (2019): 130–140. Westmacott, Mary. 1930. Giants’ Bread. London: Collins. Whitney, Sarah E. 2011. “A Hidden Body in the Library: Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie, and Emotional Violence.” Clues 29.1 (2011): 37–50.

Chapter 6

Locating The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in the Tradition of Detective Fictions Sourav Banerjee

I The history of detective fiction is more than half a century old, yet it is one of the most popular and influential of all literary forms in the contemporary world. Its appeal has gone beyond literature to grip other media of mass entertainment. The roots for this appeal far transcend iconography and involve the deep human fascination with mystery and intrigue. To begin with, detective fictions were not spun out of nothing. Crime and mystery were not exclusive to any particular age. Every human society and age had its share of mysteries, crimes, and criminals. And theories about predecessors of detective fiction range from the classical plays or biblical stories, to stating that nothing that predates the existence of professional detectives could truly be a detective story. Many of the classical texts, like Sophocles’ Oedipus, or the Old Testament story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, the Gothic novels, such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and Browning’s “My Last Duchess” are texts that involve a lot of mystery. But they involve no detection and do not have a detective. Or in other words, in stories such as these the process of detection and the presence of a detective, who unfolds the mystery to find the culprit, is absent. Thus, they do not fall under the genre of detective fiction.

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In its simplest form, genre may be understood as a particular type of works which is distinguished by a unique structure or style, or function. Jacques Derrida, in “The Law of Genre,” puts this definition into practice, saying that there are marks in a text that designates it as a certain type, as belonging to a certain genre. Going further Derrida states that those marks are “necessary for and constitutive of what we call art, poetry, or literature” (1992, 229). Again Todorov while listing the differences between different genres illustrates that “sonnets differ from ballads in their phonology, tragedy is opposed to comedy by virtue of thematic elements, the suspense narrative differs from the classic detective story by the way its plot is structured” (2000, 199). Recognizing these marks or forms within a text allows the reader to decipher it as being a part of a particular genre. And Todorov points out that the difference between suspense narratives and detective stories is in the structuring of the plot. So in the broadest and most simplified definition, a story of the genre of detective fiction must have a detective, who throughout the story seeks out the criminal/s of the crime that has been brought to the detective’s attention. The police detective had been a French innovation. The Surete of Paris was the first institutionalized detective force. It was headed by the famous Eugène François Vidocq between 1812 and 1827. Also the rise of the highwaymen led to the establishment of pockets of police presence called the Bow Street Runners. And they become the prototype of the later Scotland Yard. The success of the Surete and Scotland Yard helped to create public confidence in law enforcement agencies which went a long way in the establishment of the credibility of the detective in fiction. Although there is disagreement surrounding the theories of the origins of detective fiction, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is generally credited with writing the first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” published in 1841. Given the success of the Surete, it’s not surprising that Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, was a Frenchman and his adventures were set in Paris. In addition to “Rue Morgue,” Poe wrote two more Dupin stories, “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842–1843) and “The Purloined Letter” (1845). He also wrote a non-Dupin story, “The Gold Bug,” and called these “tales of ratiocination” to distance them from his other famous tales of gothic suspense and horror. The detective of the other contemporary writers, like the Frenchman Émile Gaboriau’s (1832 – 1873) Monsieur Lecoq was a policeman and Eugène François Vidocq had served as the model for both Poe and Gaboriau. Then Lecoq first appeared in L’Affaire Lerouge (1866), featuring Monsieur Tabaret, and eventually became very popular in the serialized novel Monsieur Lecoq (1868). Arsène Lupin, was a French criminal, antihero, and part-time detective, created by Maurice Leblanc (1864–1941) toward the beginning of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, it was the features of some of the stories of Poe that influenced subsequent detective fiction. They were



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the detective as a brilliant yet somewhat eccentric figure, a friend of lesser intelligence as the narrator, an inept policeman whose solutions are invariably wrong, an assortment of bogus leads and perceptible anomalies and a grand climactic scene where the detective gives away the criminal and his method. During almost the same time, certain novelists in Great Britain were writing what were called “sensation novels” Examples would include Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859) and The Moonstone (1868) and Charles Dickens’s unfinished and posthumously published The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). These works were not really detective stories, but had some relation to the new form. It is actually with Arthur Conan Doyle’s (1859–1930) Sherlock Holmes stories that detective fiction really took off among the English readers. Doyle published four Holmes novels, beginning with A Study in Scarlet (1887), and fifty-six short stories. Yet, such was the craze of these Holmes stories, that Conan Doyle was compelled to restore the detective after having “killed off” Holmes in “The Final Problem” (1894). Comparison shows that though Doyle drew much from Poe’s Dupin stories, yet he greatly enhanced and improved upon Poe. The more prominent changes were seen in the figure of a more fully developed Dr. Watson, compared to Poe’s narrator, a sharpened Inspector Lestrade as the inept policeman and a much more formidable antagonist in Professor Moriarty. But the most prominent improvement was in the character of the detective, Holmes himself, with his appearance and personal habits, manner of speaking, his abstruse learning and his “scientific” method of reasoning. It is also interesting to note that it was not Holmes, but his assistant, Dr. Watson who resembled the creator as an Edwardian gentleman and trained medical doctor. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the detective stories expanded in two directions. On the one hand, the detective novel merged with the crime thriller to produce the “hard-boiled” genre. While Doyle continued to write Holmes stories until the mid-1920s, with Holmes bearing no aversion to physical action, the pulps began to be dominated by action-oriented fiction. Characters such as Rex Stout’s (1886–1975) Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, Raymond Chandler’s (1888–1959) Philip Marlowe, Erle Stanley Gardner’s (1889–1970) Perry Mason, Dashiell Hammett’s (1894–1961) Sam Spade, and Georges Simenon’s (1903–1989) Inspector Maigret, were inspired by Holmes but were very different in character. They introduced the toughened modernity, sexuality, and energy of American and European crime fiction into the Victorianism of Holmes. On the other hand, Sherlock Holmes and his imitators like Austin Freeman, Jacques Futrelle and S. S. Van Dine continued with the super-rational sleuth. Another strain that developed was in reaction to this. People like G. K. Chesterton, E. C. Bentley, and Dorothy L. Sayers began to experiment with the formula and introduced different kinds of variations that paved the way for the high standards of the

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formal detective novel known as the Golden Age in England, which for this particular study refers to British detective fiction written between 1918 and 1945. Among them the most important variation was the detective story of Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton (1874–1938). Chesterton produced more than one-hundred books, and he used an amateur detective who was a cleric. Another innovation was his leaning towards romance in addition to realism in his fictions. In the words of Ian Ousby Chesterton’s Father Brown stories have been noted for “embed[ding] the detective puzzle in a metaphysical-cum-theological fable without making it any less satisfying as a puzzle”(2000, 61). Like Chesterton, E. C. Bentley (1875–1956) wrote a detective story avoiding the excesses of the “Baker Street Irregulars” who pursued Conan Doyle. His idea of a detective was an ordinary man, neither distant nor peculiar like Holmes. He would neither be disrespectful toward the policemen, nor have an aversion to ordinary human emotions, including romantic love. Thus Bentley’s detective, Philip Trent, is a gentleman with social grace. Also Bentley avoided the first-person narrator with a favor of a flexible third-person narrator. These influenced the subsequent detective fiction writer tremendously. But despite his great achievements Bentley’s output was conspicuously small: only three volumes of detective fiction in addition to Trent’s Own Case (1936) and Trent Intervenes (1938) published almost twenty five years after his first great work. In terms of literary output, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was quite different from Bentley. Between 1923 and 1939, Sayers published eleven novels and some twenty-one short stories featuring her famous detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers intended to write something less like a conventional detective story and more like something called as the comedy of manners. Also, she introduced a love interest into her work beginning with Strong Poison (1930). Her detective, Lord Peter is not a formidable logician, and has no elaborate “method” on which he discourses. It is also to be noted that the reason that Bentley and Sayers were inclined to seek ways of complicating the detective formula was that they produced their best work in the longer form of the novel. The size of the novel permitted the inclusion of a larger variety of characters, the exploration of such character and incident in greater details. II After these writers came arguably one of the best detective writers of all times, Agatha Christie. But before we discuss Agatha Christie and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it must be remembered that the two most important reasons for the development of the detective fiction are the philosophy



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of Enlightenment and the rise of the realistic novel. It is noteworthy that the detective fiction has to depend on clues, which have to be rationally analyzed in order to solve the crime. The process had to be based solely on logic and reason that could rationally explain every tenet of the crime in unmasking the criminal. The philosophy of Descartes on logic and rationality that he espouses in his book, Discourse on Method shows us how we must solve a problem. First of all, the problem must be broken up into its constituent parts, as the detective does. Then the motive of the crime, how was it committed, who had the opportunity has to be determined. Secondly, solutions must be created that could have no alternatives. Also another concept that became very important for the detective fiction was Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotype in realistic novels. The chronotype referred to the time and place-two very important things in the detective fiction. The city generally was the setting, because in the countryside or a village, crime would be largely revenge/passion or petty thievery, as economy was small and the criminals had very limited opportunities. But, in the booming economies of cities with a massive influx of all kinds of people crime would naturally be more complex, varied, intriguing and difficult to detect. It also talks about teleology and a plot, very important aspects in the detective fiction. So all the codes on which the detective fiction will be built were being laid during the Enlightenment. It was the preparatory time. As industrialization and massive influx of people into the society starts, society became apprehensive of chaos and crime, and the detective became the hero of the Enlightenment. Although there is no detective fiction during the Enlightenment, yet there was no doubt that the detective is the child of the Enlightenment. Undoubtedly Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is the most popular detective writer of all time, and her books have sold more than those of any other writer in English, exceeding four hundred million copies worldwide. In fact, she is one of the few authors who have only been outsold by the Bible and Shakespeare (Walter 1977). She was born in a wealthy middle class family on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon. Her maiden name was Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. She grew up on children’s literature of the time, and had begun writing short stories herself by the time she turned eighteen. In 1912, she met Archie Christie, an aviator and they married on Christmas Eve 1914. Christie had started writing detective fiction during the war years, and had written the first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles during 1916. Christie had published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926. But her conjugal life was not a happy one. She got divorced with Archie in December 1926, and Christie mysteriously disappeared for ten days and was eventually found at a hydropathy hotel under a pseudonym. In September 1930, Christie married Max Mallowan, the British archaeologist and fourteen years her junior. Her second marriage was a happy one and lasted until her death. In 1928,

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she had also adopted the pseudonym Mary Westmacott for the novel Giant’s Bread, and she continued writing romances under this pseudonym until 1956. Christie’s writing style is rather flat and undistinguished, unlike that of Sayers and Bentley. There is only nominal attention to setting or atmosphere in her novels, and there is only the slightest consideration of moral or social issues. It is also true that Christie’s settings are mechanical: usually middle-class or aristocratic English country houses, where the unconventional only reinforce the transparency of the social norms that are still firmly in place. This was very much in keeping with her traditional outlook in real life, which made her describe herself as a housewife despite being a commercially successful writer. Her characters tend to be insipid and shallow, and consist of familiar stereotypes out of English drawing-room comedy of the 1920s, like the tyrannical aunt or mother, the weak but handsome young man, the lovely young girl with a shady past. So, the critics have been somewhat perplexed by the popularity of her stories. To account for that, we must begin with her plot. Christie is a master storyteller and her plots are exciting, suspenseful, and more importantly full of surprises. And to add to that her detectives are also a bit unconventional, Poirot, for example, is undoubtedly a comic character (his name in French means “wart”), with his petite build, egg-shaped head, an absurd appearance, and pride in his “little grey cells.” Yet, despite his absurd figure appearance, Poirot doesn’t miss much in any of his case. We must do well to remember that she was writing during the Golden Age of Detective (GAD) Fiction, which was a period between the two traumatic World Wars in Europe. So, during this period people were living with the horrors of the First World War and under the fear of the possibility of a Second World War. So under those situations the GAD Fictions with their proper beginning, discovery of the crime, and its investigation in the middle, discovery of the criminal at the end, and emphasis on bringing the criminal to justice became anesthetic to the trauma of the World Wars. It helped all the more that in the GAD Fictions, no violent crimes committed while the reader was reading the story and no harm happened to the detective. All the violence that happened in the shadows and the reader could take the pleasure of reading and solving the clues in the violent times. Again her fictions are like “puzzles,” usually focusing on the question of “Whodunnit,” and usually playing on the “least likely suspect” motif. Also Christie’s characters interest the reader as pieces in a bigger puzzle. Yet unlike Poe’s, her puzzles are not so much “ratiocinative” as surprising. The readers are intrigued because her puzzles are not generally something that they are able to solve, even though all the clues are given; and most of her endings are not only surprising but also genuinely shocking. An important thing to note is that along with the rise of the GAD Fictions, the crossword



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puzzles in newspapers had become very popular. Like solving these crossword puzzles, the detective fictions too, created a competition of solving the mystery, they became a battle of wits between the writer and the reader. It became a game to the reader to figure out the criminal before the detective offered his or her solution. The readers would wonder if the solution could possibly account for all of the evidence that had been made available. Would the readers feel that she had given them a fair chance to solve the mystery independently, before her? And most importantly, would the readers feel that she had resorted to some kind of “dirty trick” that made the reader’s ability to solve the case impossible? With regard to this, John Cawelti had spelled out the six basic ways in which readers may be misled about a crime in detective fiction. According to Cawelti: they could be “deceived as to the person, the motive, the means of the crime, the time at which it is committed, the place where it occurs, and, finally, whether it is a crime or not” (1969, 114). Given the existence and codification of the means of deception, there was the need for a set of rules for the sake of fair play. These rules were codified into the famous “Decalogue” or Ten Commandments of the detective fictions by Monsignor Ronald Knox. Among the more important ones were the ruling out of any luck or chance factor in solving the case, the detective not being the criminal, the narrator sharing every thought that passes through his mind, and the detective not concealing any clues upon which he discovers. The very fact that these “rules of fair play” (Ousby 1997, 67) could be drawn up indicates that the principles of detective fictions of the Golden Age were common knowledge and universally followed. Again during the GAD fiction, murder was seen as the triumph of chaos and lawlessness, the exposure of the murderer and the ensuing punishment symbolized a reinstatement of order. Or to put it in simple words, the detective’s victory to unfailingly expose and negate the criminal signified the repression of the anarchic desires by logical reasoning. So, even Hercule Poirot, who is seen as a soft old man and endearingly called Papa Poirot, says that murder must never go unpunished. It was so because it was believed that if people were able to get away with the greatest crime, the rule of law would fail and society would fall apart, even in the world of Agatha Christie’s fictions. The philosophy of the detection fiction never talked about the reformation of the criminal, the transformation was not a part of it. So it became imminent for the detective to identify the criminal and stop him from perpetrating his crimes. The detective was neither the redeemer nor the agent of transformation. He simply stepped in where the police failed, as the ultimate agent of punishment. One of the most important principles of the Golden Age was to maintain convention. Willard Huntington Wright (otherwise known as S. S. Van Dine) had published a list of twenty (actually extending to around twenty four)

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which Ronald Knox compressed to ten rules as discussed earlier. There was also the formation of the Detection Club, which composed of some of the biggest names of the Golden Age, such as Chesterton, Christie, and Sayers. Another interesting fact was that soon after the formulation of the ten rules, by Ronald Knox, The Detection Club asked all its members to take an oath proclaiming that they would “well and truly detect the crimes presented to them” without reliance on “Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God” (Symons 1972, 10). The very existence of this oath, however ridiculous, revealed beyond any doubt that the members took the rules of the Golden Age very seriously and attempted to be fair with their readers. Yet, despite this and the fact that Christie’s works were significant in creating the conventions of the Golden Age, many felt that she had cheated in her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But a closer examination of that text reveals what set her apart and accounted for her popularity was not cheating, but the clever discrepancies in her style and her ability to stretch the boundaries of the conventions in creating new surprises for the readers. We will discuss two such examples in this chapter that account for the popularity of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, they being narrative perspectives, and the use of paralipsis. The narrator is generally homodiegetic and internally focalized under the conventions of the GAD fictions, but Christie stretches this convention by the use of a variety of narrative focalization. The story begins with a very conventional formula and a traditional narrator: Mrs. Ferrars died on the night of the 16th–17th September—a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday the 17th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours. It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with my latchkey, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. (1974, 65)

This sets up the homodiegetic narration that is focalized internally on the account of Dr. Sheppard as he is experiencing the events, in contrast to the Dr. Sheppard at the moment of writing. The pertinent question that arises is how Dr Sheppard is able to murder Roger Ackroyd and keep it hidden from the readers, especially when the murder takes place in the course of his narration. In Genette’s Narrative Discourse, he has discussed two particular types of changes, or “momentary infractions” in focalization, which are paralipsis “[consisting..] of giving less information than is necessary in principle, [ . . .and paralipsis which consists] of giving more than is authorized in principle in the code of focalization governing the whole” (1997, 195). In the



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final chapter of the novel, Dr. Sheppard singled out two different instances in his “manuscript” where he simply omitted his murderous actions: I am rather pleased with myself as a writer. What could be neater, for instance, than the following: 'The letters were brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone.' All true, you see. But suppose I put a row of stars after the first sentence! Would somebody then have wondered what exactly happened in the blank ten minutes? When I looked round the room from the door, I was quite satisfied. Nothing had been left undone. [ . . .] Then later, when the body was discovered, and I had sent Parker to telephone for the police, what a judicious use of words: 'I did what little had to be done!’(1974, 220)

The instance of paralipsis quoted prior to the last quotation, leads the reader to believe the above style of narration from Dr. Sheppard as his practice. Therefore, his saying “I did what little had to be done,” in reference to the examination of the dead Roger Ackroyd, makes it simply seem like the style of Dr. Sheppard’s narration, and not him cleverly hiding his murder behind too little information. On the other hand, the creative use of paralipsis adds to the false impression that Dr. Sheppard would not be obscuring information. In the second chapter of the book, entitled “Who’s Who in King’s Abbot,” Dr. Sheppard digresses from narrating the events of the story to give a sudden abundance of information about the town and its populace. Another instance of paralipsis in the text occurs on the night of the murder, when Dr. Sheppard relates to the readers in some details about his routine of winding the clocks, and particularly of doing it on “that” Friday night. It is undoubtedly excess information, but it is also a ploy to cunningly use excess information as an alibi for Dr. Sheppard for the time of death. Also in addition to providing an alibi for Dr. Sheppard, this example of paralipsis indicates that he is not particularly perturbed by the magnitude of his misdeed and is able to follow his regular routine around the house. When The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published in 1926, although it was unanimously acclaimed, many reviews claimed that Christie had in fact cheated. This apparent accusation of cheating is due to the fact that the end of the story reveals Dr. James Sheppard to be the murderer despite being the conventional narrator. So, in conclusion we can say that in plotting to make the narrator the murderer while giving enough clues to the readers to solve the puzzle before she reveals it, Christie had taken the convention of the narrator of GAD fiction form and stretched it. Whether or not Christie can be convicted of cheating in doing so will remain a contentiousness issue, but there can be no denying the fact that she opened up the convention and therefore

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added new layers to the art of concealing the murderer, which accounted for her immense popularity. WORKS CITED Bakhtin, M. M. 1990. “The Epic and the Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study in the Novels’ in The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Cawelti, John G. 1969. “The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature.” The Journal of Popular Culture. Vol. III, Issue 3: 381–390. Christie, Agatha. 1974. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Glasgow: Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. Derrida, Jacques. 1992. “The Law of Genre.” In Acts of Literature, edited by Derek Attridge, 221–252. New York and London: Routledge. Descartes, Rene. 1986. Discourse on Method. New York: London: Macmillan. Genette, Gerard. 1988. Narrative Discourse Revisited. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Ian, Ousby. 1997. Guilty Parties: A Mystery Lover’s Companion. New York: Thames & Hudson. Symons, Julian, 1972. Bloody Murder: from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History. London: Faber and Faber. Todorov, Tzvetan. 2000. “The Origin of Genres.” In Modern Genre Theory, edited by David Duff, New York: Longman. Walter, Elizabeth. 1977. “The Case of the Escalating Sales.” In Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime, edited by H. R. F. Keating, 22. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd.

Chapter 7

A Place for Campion, Campion in his Place Reading Margery Allingham’s Novels Jonathan Wilkins

What makes Margery Allingham such a wonderful writer is that she has such an acute sense of place. To me, it is no surprise that the official journal of the Margery Allingham Society is called the Bottle Street Gazette. No mention of our hero Albert Campion in the title. It is all about a place. The place that is synonymous with the hero and the stories. Albert Campion lives at Bottle Street. It personifies the man. This is the center-point of his life. There are too many instances in the novels to exemplify this, save it be said that the flat he lives in is a safe place, it is his safe space, albeit above a police station. It is comfortable and welcoming; adjectives abound besides the above, it is warm, peaceful, it is all a bachelor like Campion could desire. The only odd thing is that we are not introduced to it in the very first novel, Crime at Black Dudley. In Look to the Lady, Val Gyrth finds his way there, oddly given what we are to find out about the place, it is an inauspicious description: “ . . . he turned from dark corner to lighted thoroughfare and came at last to the cul-de-sac off Piccadilly which is Bottle Street. The single blue lamp of the Police Station was hardly inviting, but the door of Number Seventeen, immediately upon the left, stood ajar. He pushed it open gingerly” (Look to the Lady, 11). But a short sentence in Mystery Mile explains all we need to know about the haven that is his home: “He was sitting forward in the big chair, before one of the first of autumn’s fires, in the flat at Bottle Street” (Mystery Mile, 174). We can feel the comfort of his chair and the warmth of the fire and in its context this tells us all we need to know about Bottle Street. Crime at Black Dudley introduces us to Albert Campion, but first it introduces the mansion, 81

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Black Dudley and we can see immediately that Place is a key character in the novel. The opening lines are: The view from the narrow window was dreary and inexpressibly lonely. Miles of neglected park-land stretched in an unbroken plain to the horizon and the sea beyond. On all sides it was the same. The grey-green stretches were hayed once a year, perhaps, but otherwise uncropped save by the herd of heavy-shouldered black cattle who wandered about them, their huge forms immense and grotesque in the fast-thickening twilight. In the center of this desolation, standing in a thousand acres of its own land, was the mansion, Black Dudley; a great grey building, bare and ugly as a fortress. No creepers hid its nakedness, and the long narrow windows were dark-curtained and uninviting. (Crime at Black Dudley, 1)

And on the next page we are shown more, as we see the dismal view of the house, full of foreboding with its allusion to ghosts: However bleak and forbidding was Black Dudley’s exterior, the rooms within were none the less magnificent. Even here there were the same signs of neglect that were so evident in the Park, but there was a certain dusty majesty about the dark-panelled walls with the oil-paintings hanging in their fast-blackening frames, and in the heavy, dark-oak furniture, elaborately carved and utterly devoid of polish, that was very impressive and pleasing. The Place had not been modernized at all. There were still candles in the iron sconces in the hall, and the soft light sent great shadows, like enormous ghostly hands, creeping up to the oak-beamed ceiling (Crime at Black Dudley, 2)

We have the sense of foreboding. We know without being explicitly told that evil will come. At the precise moment in the novel, we don’t know where from, but the threat is clearly there through this description. The scene is set up beautifully for the adventures to come. The old house a backdrop to machinations and mystery. It plays a perfect role, a house slightly dotty, at odds with the real world, just as the family are. It has become integral to their lives and to the plot. Without Black Dudley, we would have no mystery. We also meet our hero for the first time: ‘His name is Albert Campion,’ she said. ‘He came down in Anne Edgeware’s car, and the first thing he did when he was introduced to me was to show me a conjuring trick with a two-headed penny—he’s quite inoffensive, just a silly ass.’



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Abbershaw nodded and stared covertly at the fresh-faced young man with the tow-colored hair and the foolish, pale-blue eyes behind tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and wondered where he had seen him before. The slightly receding chin and mouth so unnecessarily full of teeth was distinctly familiar. ‘Albert Campion?’ he repeated under his breath. ‘Albert Campion? Campion? Campion?’ But still his memory would not serve him, and he gave up calling on it and once more his inquisitive glance flickered round the table. (Crime at Black Dudley, 6)

A non-descript chap. What offense could he give to anyone? Indeed would anyone remember him from that description? He doesn’t look like a threat, indeed he looks “foolish,” he is a “silly ass.” He is an “everyman.” Just as he would wish. He can escape into the shadows and do his work. What we see in Tiger in the Smoke, the last of the nineteen novels Allingham wrote, is a London of lightness and darkness in so many senses. This is perhaps the greatest of her novels and shows her development as a writer over twenty-three years. It is perhaps the most explicit of her books in every sense where we see the horror of the serial killer and the destructiveness that surrounds him. We travel from place to place in a whirlwind of discord. We see both the good and evil of men and women, their inner-souls are examined, and their deeds, are reflected by the two opposite faces of the city. Whilst Canon Avril’s vicarage is a reassuringly, comfortable, and comforting Place, a warm haven of disorganization but essentially a home to a happy extended family. It is also the place where church mingles with family life and is the homely background to the vicar’s own, slightly nonconformist brand of holiness and piousness. We can delight in the comfort of his home, as a place where we could feel comfortable and at ease. A place where all are welcome, even Havoc. Old Canon Avril had lived so long in the square that changing times had altered his domestic arrangements without haste or upheaval. He lived on the ground floor very comfortably while his old verger, William Talisman, made his home in the basement and Mrs. Talisman looked after them both. In the fine rooms above Meg had her self-contained apartment, and the attics had been converted into a pleasant cottagey dwelling for tenants of whom everybody was fond. It had all come about quietly and easily, and he knew very well how lucky he was. In his early days, the living had been a fashionable one and he had been glad of the glebe cottages to house the overflow of his servants, but he had not enjoyed it and the newer arrangements seemed to him infinitely more luxurious. At the moment he was standing where he always had stood, on the rug before the living-room fire. It was the room he had brought his bride to thirty years before,

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and since then, if only for reasons more financial than sentimental, nothing in it had ever been changed. It had become a little worn in the interim, but the good things in it, the walnut bookcase with the ivory chessmen displayed, the bureau with thirteen panes in each glass door, the Queen Anne chair with the seven-foot back, the Persian rug which had been a wedding present from his younger sister, Mr. Campion’s mother, had all mellowed just as he had with care and use and quiet living. (Tiger in the Smoke, 21)

And then there is the other, darker London, where a violently aggressive rag-tag street gang of ex-soldiers and vagrants live in a bleak cellar, when they are not wandering the streets playing a dissonance of instruments and where they go live in fear of their leader, the albino Tiddy Doll and the darkest of all souls, Jack Havoc. The knot of men who were playing were half in the gutter and half on the pavement. They were moving along steadily, as the law insists, and the rattle of their collecting boxes was as noisy as their tune. They were some little way away and it was not possible to distinguish individuals, but there was a ruthless urgency in their movements and the stream of foot passengers narrowed as it flowed past the bunch. (Tiger in the Smoke, 29) It is appropriate that they are in the gutter. A place where evil lies and is just out of our step as a pedestrian or a follower of crime. We visit the threatening dark alleys where a man can be trapped and murdered, we enter the soulless sleazy, dirty public houses where people meet briefly and secretly. We haunt the great London railway stations, filled with the noise and steam of trains with hundreds of passengers spilling from them, and where we find a small-time criminal masquerading as a dead army officer for purposes which are unclear—not least to him, but is explained later. The fog was thickening and the glass-and-iron roof was lost in its greasy drapery. The yellow lights achieved but a shabby brilliance and only the occasional plumes of steam from the locomotives were clean in the gloom. That tremendous air of suppressed excitement which is peculiar to all great railway stations was intensified by the mist and all the noises were muffled by it and made more hollow-sounding even than usual. From where they stood they could see all the main-line gates and over on the left the great entrance with its four twenty-foot doors and the bright bookstall just beside it. (Tiger in the Smoke, 12)

But above all, for mood and sense of place, there is the fog; we see a typically Dickensian “London Particular,” spreading like a filthy stain, insinuating itself into every fissure and cleft, dampening and muffling, disguising, and blinding and above all, confusing; making the work of the police hunting the serial killer Havoc, twice as difficult, if not impossible as he fades into the background. “The fog had crept into the taxi where it crouched panting in a



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traffic jam. It oozed in ungenially, to smear sooty fingers over the two elegant young people who sat inside” (Tiger in the Smoke, 1). This fog is sinister and disheartening. Anything can happen under its auspices and be hidden, secrets covered, evil deeds camouflaged, any cunning movements concealed. The fog gets into the readers nostrils and lungs and eyes and in some strange way, into our hearts and minds, too, such is the descriptive power of Allingham: “This morning the fog was thicker than ever. Twenty-four hours of city vapors had given it body and bouquet, and its chill was spiteful” (Tiger in the Smoke, 143). It is not just her characters who suffer in this cloud of darkness and damp. It is more, far more, than merely a just a representation of winter weather in the great city of London: “The fog slopped over its low houses like a bucketful of cold soup over a row of dirty stoves” (Tiger in the Smoke, 17). Fog is described throughout the novel Tiger in the Smoke. It is a constant in the city of London. Invading and infecting everyone and everything. It is the personification of crime, hiding the evil that stalks the streets of the metropolis. The fog was now at its worst, rolling up from the river dense as a feather bed. It hung between street lamp and street lamp in blinding and abominable folds, and since in that area the architecture is all much alike, and the streets are arranged in a series of graceful curves in which it is easy to walk in a circle in sunlight, the mile from the rectory to Crumb Street might well have been a maze. (Tiger in the Smoke, 36)

We travel to France to see what exactly Jack Havoc has been working towards. Away from the smog of London and its oppressive blanket to a France that seems to be clean and bright. “The hill rose steeply between high hedges, golden in the sun, and the air was clear and peaceful save for the buzzing of a little silver scout plane which sailed low across the sky, swooped, and turned back again” (Tiger in the Smoke, 199). Almost idyllic, safe, and free from danger, but then to the final destination: They turned out of the road into a lane which ran up across a broad bank of meadow, bare and desolate. The sparse grass grew in tufts on the poor soil and was grey rather than green. There was no cover anywhere, no tree to break the arc of earth against the sky. The house appeared suddenly . . . it looked as neat and circumspect as ever it had done, but as they passed under the arch leading to the forecourt they saw it was deserted and in bad repair. There was no glass in the windows, and grass had grown through the crack which split the stone before the nail-studded door. (Tiger in the Smoke, 200)

The place of Havoc’s death is eloquently described, and once again we could be there, it is so vivid and clear:

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As he emerged, lifting his head wearily amid the weeds, he discovered that the cover continued. He was in a disused waterway, a deep narrow fold in the open plain, with the house to his left. He could stand in it, even, without his head showing above the dry grass on its edges. Behind him the noise and commotion, the shouting, and the signals from cliff to beach, were all receding, and as he stumbled painfully on they grew fainter. He could not tell where he was going, and the curve in the hollow was so gradual that he was never aware of it. He moved blindly and emptily, asking no questions, going nowhere save away. The ditch wound round towards the cliff edge, where the coast was deeply indented, as if the sea had one day taken a single bite out of the rocky wall. The tiny bay thus made was now almost three parts of a circle, and long before falling water draining off the land had worn deep sides to a pool two hundred feet below. Havoc paused. The great beam which had been let into the bank on either side to save any unfortunate animal swept away by the rains supported him at breast height, and he hung there for some minutes looking down. Beyond the bay the sea was restless, scarred by long shadows and pitted with bright flecks where the last of the winter sun had caught it. But the pool was quiet and very still. It looked dark. A man could creep in there and sleep soft and long. It seemed to him that he had no decision to make and, now that he knew himself to be fallible, no one to question. Presently he let his feet slide gently forward. The body was never found. (Tiger in the Smoke, 213)

This is a very full and articulate account and completes the novel. We are in no doubts about his fate. As a mystery man, Havoc would have enjoyed that, a mystery to the last. But it is the sense of Place that captures us as a reader. Full lavish descriptions of the ditch and its workings and surroundings. We can feel his despair: “He moved blindly and emptily, asking no questions, going nowhere save away” (Tiger in the Smoke, 213). But we feel no pity. He has made his bed and must now face the consequences as he dies pointlessly and unmorned. It is as if he is being drawn into death and cannot escape which is indeed the case. A pitiless death for a pitiless man. In its context a well-deserved ending to Allinghams finest novel. Many of her Campion stories are love songs to London itself, where she lived on and off throughout her life. She could describe Mayfair when



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she wanted to, yet she was also sharply observant of London’s run-down working-class areas, which to her were not mean streets by any sense, but were teeming with complicated lives. As she became wealthier, she moved out to an old house in a small Essex village, Tolleshunt d’ Arcy, though she maintained a pied-à-terre in Great Russell Street where she lived at regular intervals. We read of these new places here: Tethering was hardly en fête. If you consider three square miles of osier swamp surrounding a ploughed hill on which five cottages, a largish house, and an ancient church crowd on each other’s toes in order to keep out of a river’s uncertain bed you have Tethering pretty accurately in your mind. The churchyard is overgrown and pathetic and when we saw it in late winter it was a sodden mass of dead cow-parsley. It was difficult not to feel sorry for Pig. He always had grand ideas, I remember, but there was nothing of pomp in his obsequies. (The Case of the Late Pig, 3)

Her two homes thus gave her two areas of focus: East Anglia and London. All the books are set in one or the other. As an aside, in an interesting short story, she wrote about a “lady of the manor” who had a well-organized life that included a monthly weekend in London. Her family did not enquire what she did there; but she was, in fact, meeting a lover. Allingham of course, did no such thing, but as her character entered her little flat, arranged entirely without reference to the whims or conveniences of her or anyone else, she becomes, in an elemental sense, a completely different person. This story implies that even if Allingham’s love affair was with London in general rather than someone in particular, her two lives were very separate in her mind and are described to the reader as such. (See “Queen of Crime” by Jane Stevenson in the Guardian news paper, Saturday 19 August, 2006.) She is unusual among all detective novelists in that she has a true understanding of the way the countryside works. Allingham knows how the minds of country folk work and she recognizes the importance of place to bring this to the fore. Country life and city life are entangled in completely different ways; she understands a lot about both and describes them so well: Throughout the myriad collection of plots, which covered the vicarious worlds of art, fashion, the theatre, espionage, smuggling, and buried and stolen treasure there is always a sense of Place. Perhaps her most famous setting was the mixture of Suffolk countryside and Essex coastal salt marsh which first appeared in Mystery Mile and which became quite simply known among her close circle of friends as ‘Margeland.’

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On the grey marshy coast of Suffolk, fifteen miles from a railway station, and joined to the mainland by the Stroud only, a narrow road of hard land, the village of Mystery Mile lay surrounded by impassable mud flats and grey-white saltings. The name was derived from the belt of ground mist which summer and winter hung in the little valleys round the small hill on which the village stood. Like many Suffolk hamlets, the Place was more of an estate than a village. The half-dozen cottages, the post office, and the Rectory were very much outbuildings of the Manor House, the dwelling of the owner of the Mile. In olden times, when the land had been more profitable, the squire had had no difficulty in supporting his large family of retainers, and, apart from the witch burnings in James I’s reign, when well-nigh a third of the population had suffered execution for practices more peculiar than necromantic, the little Place had a long history of peaceful if gradually decaying times. (Mystery Mile, 31)

SHE LOVINGLY DESCRIBES THE VILLAGES OF PONTISBRIGHT IN SWEET DANGER: It was eight o’clock in the evening when Lugg, who seemed to have developed a beer-divining gift, steered the ancient Bentley slowly down the hill into the wide valley in which the village of Pontisbright lay. The main bulk of the Place was built round two sides of a square heath comprising some twenty acres of gorse and heather, interspersed with short wiry grass. The principal road, down which they came, skirted one side of the heath, and dipped suddenly, to swerve at right angles at the base of the valley and struggle off northward, leaving upon its left a small winding river by the side of which was an old white mill with a largish house attached. (Sweet Danger, 26)

Many of her locations survive in recognizable form to this day, notably Kersey in Suffolk and Osea and Mersea Islands off the Essex coast. She was equally good at describing Cambridge, fog-bound London, and closed family communities such as the one in More Work for the Undertaker, a book which, according to the Agatha Christie expert, Robert Barnard, exhibited “ . . .a marvelous sense of place . . .,” and he goes on to say that: “ . . . her portrayal of a family of decaying intellectuals is both alarming and touching.”(strandmag) In Mystery Mile, I love the descriptions of the various Places of entertainment. The build up to the visit to the maze is one such piece, we are clearly led into the maze. But we cannot get out, neither can the characters. There is again a sense of foreboding, but we cannot quite grasp it. The participants are expecting an hour or two of entertainment. We the readers expect more:



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They trooped off over the lawn to the narrow paved walk which, enclosed by low hedges, led through the parkland to a second and larger orchard and kitchen garden on the east side. At the far end of a wide strip of grass in which fruit trees stood they saw the maze before they reached it—a great square of yew, the dense bushes, which had once been trimmed as square as a marble block, now overgrown and uneven. (Mystery Mile, 62) Perfect! We know something is about to happen in this Place. We can almost predict it, but what? Then of course the Judge does not reappear. A faintly scared expression flickered into Isopel’s eyes. ‘I suppose he’s all right?’ she said. Her alarm passed from one to the other of them. The smile left Campion’s face, and he hurried forward to the opening in the yew hedge. ‘Mr Lobbett,’ he shouted, ‘answer us, please. You’re scaring us.’ They listened with more anxiety now, a growing presentiment of danger becoming more and more firmly fixed in their minds. (Mystery Mile, 66)

The party retreat to the house, Giles returns to search once more. He stepped into the dark bushes and found his way along the narrow paths, going over and over ground that he had already searched. At length, pausing in a cul-de-sac on the west side, he remained for some time regarding the hedge before him speculatively. One of the yew trees was dead and there was a decided hole near the ground, leading into the ditch that skirted the hay field which flanked the garden. He scrambled through it himself: it was a comparatively simple matter. The discovery relieved him to a certain extent, it eliminated that element which Biddy had called ‘magic’ and which had been so abhorrent to his prosaic mind. (Mystery Mile, 68)

Perfection. Description of place. Sense of foreboding. Disappearance. All conveyed to us in sparse, exact terms. Not a word wasted. Carefully thought out and described in such a way that once again we are there. Present in the maze, outside the maze. We feel anxious for the judge, we feel fear and desperation. All moods so convincingly displayed in three paragraphs. The ditch in which he found himself was dry and had recently been cleared. He could see up and down it unimpeded, on his left as far as the road and on his right to the end of the field, some two hundred yards distant. The hay was ready for cutting, and as he stood in the ditch it waved above him higher than his head. It would be perfectly possible for a small army to have hidden in the wide dry

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ditch without being seen from the road, but there was no evidence of a struggle of any sort. (Mystery Mile, 70)

Lugg, it seems, is out of Place in any environment and is a useful comic tool. In Look to the Lady he has been to the wood and into Pharisees’ Clearing and seen something that has shocked him to the core. This place is not to be visited by anyone, especially at night we discover. After Lugg’s escapades, Campion returns to the servants’ quarters at Sanctuary to find that, The room was darkened, and there was a muffled wail from a bed in the far corner. He walked across the room, pulled up the blind, and let a flood of sunshine into the apartment. Then he turned to face the cowering object who peered at him wildly from beneath the bed quilt. ‘Now, what the hell?’ said Mr. Campion. Mr. Lugg pulled himself together. The sight of his master seemed to revive those sparks of truculence still left in his nature. ‘I’ve resigned,’ he said at length. ‘I should hope so,’ said Campion bitterly. ‘The sooner you clear out and stop disgracing me the better I shall like it.’ Mr. Lugg sat up in bed. ‘Gawd, I ’ave ’ad a night,’ he said weakly. ‘I nearly lost me reason for yer, and this is ’ow yer treat me.’” (Look to the Lady, 99)

Lugg knows that the monster he has seen also occupies the tower: “‘Nojokin’ with the supernatural,’ he said. ‘You may laugh now, but you won’t later on. What I saw down in that wood last night was a monster. And what’s more, it’s the monster that chap in the pub was tellin’ me about. The one they keep in the secret room.” (Look to the Lady, 100) Look to the Lady is full of description of place, each vital to the story to set up the challenges of the plot. In these cases without place, we have no plot as there are so many different images described by Allingham. The tower at Sanctuary managed to be beautiful in spite of itself. It stood at the top of the hill almost hidden in great clumps of oak and cedar trees with half a mile of park surrounding it in all directions. It was a mass of survivals, consisting of excellent examples of almost every period in English architecture. Its center was Tudor with a Georgian front; the west wing was Queen Anne; but the oldest part, and by far the most important, was the east wing, from which the house got its name. This was a great pile of old Saxon stone and Roman brick, circular in shape, rising up to a turreted tower a good sixty feet above the rest of the building. The enormously thick walls were decorated with a much later



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stone tracery near the top, and were studded with little windows, behind one of which, it was whispered, lay the room to which there was no door. In spite of the odd conglomeration of periods, there was something peculiarly attractive and even majestic in the old pile. To start with, its size was prodigious, even for a country mansion. Every age had enlarged it. (Look to the Lady, 41)

Obviously, the place is critical because it is where the world is thrown into disorder. As W. H. Auden told us, in his definitive piece on detective fiction: “The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse, but also for a corpse it is shockingly out of Place . . .” (Auden 1928). This place must be real and must help the reader in their understanding of much of what follows in the plot and the search for the criminal. Of course this becomes the domain of the reader as they interpret what is put before them by the writer, but it is their understanding and interpretation of the writer that is key. Description of place must be reliable and believable. We are, as authors, not trying to deceive the reader when it comes to our description of place. This is the very bedrock of any story, particularly in the crime and mystery genres. All the practical things like the physical setting, what type of legal system they are working under, the many different types of people involved, as well as the accessibility of the place of the crime, and many other characteristics are vital to the story and important in order to understand what is transpiring. Place characteristics must be explicit or implicit for the reader to understand just what is going on and to have some idea of how this writer’s world works. In the very best mysteries, the place is an essential piece in the story and can play so many different roles in the search for the criminal and the search for justice, indeed in the very best writing, the place is as much a character as any hero. The attempt upon the chalice in the tower in Look to the Lady when we reach the denouement is described in such detail: He crept up the steps, the wood creaking terrifyingly beneath his weight. It was a long climb in the darkness. The stairs wound up the whole height of the Tower. At last they began to narrow and presently he felt the cool night air upon his face. Suddenly the faint light from the open doorway above his head warned him that he was reaching the roof. He paused to listen. There was no sound in the house. All was quiet and ghostly in the gloom. He moved silently up the last half-dozen stairs, and emerged at last from the little central turret on the flat stone roof of the Tower.

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For a moment he looked about him, prepared for instant attack. As far as he could see the Place was deserted. Keeping his back to the wall he worked his way round the turret. Then a chill feeling of horror crept over him. He was quite alone. A movement almost like the passing of a shadow just in front of him made him start forward, and in doing so his thigh brushed against something stretched tightly from the central flagstaff and disappearing over the edge of the battlements. He touched it with his hand. It was a rope with knots in it. In that moment he realized that the one eventuality which he had never foreseen had taken Place. Whoever was undertaking the theft of the Chalice was doing it alone. (Look to the Lady, 173)

Place in fiction, as in any literature, is not two dimensional where only the action takes place. We know that in the real world there are many types of different settings and they can be very complex. The writer Eudora Welty expressed the significance of place well: “Besides furnishing a plausible abode for the novel’s world of feeling, Place has a good deal to do with making the characters real, that is, themselves and keeping them so” (Welty, 121). In Allingham’s works this is clear. I have written already that without place we have no story; no plot can disguise a lack of order in any description of place. Even more to the point, Welty writes, “Place . . .never really stops informing us, for it is forever astir, alive, changing, reflecting, like the mind of man itself. One place comprehended can make us understand other places better. Sense of place gives equilibrium; extended, it is sense of direction too” (Welty, 123). It is clear that Welty understands both the importance and convolution of place in fiction—an understanding that has been rarely, if ever, fully explained by any other writer or scholar. We have to understand this as well. If we lack this fundamental knowledge, then what is there left of the story, the plot, and the denouement? They cannot be explained away in isolation. They must be fixed to something tangible and that is where place comes in. without it we have nothing, a skin without a skeleton. The idea of place also being dynamic is another vital issue. In the real world, places are changing all the time in so many different ways. The atmosphere can change at any time and what effect does this have? A perfectly described place in a story is an important piece of the plot and contribute to the story as well as any dialogue or plot device. Finally a thought from Eudora Welty: “The moment the place in which the novel happens is accepted as true, through it will begin to glow, in a kind of recognizable glory, the feeling and thought that inhabited the novel in the author’s head and animated the whole of his work” (Welty, 121). It is place in the Campion oeuvre which inspires devotion from the reader rather than Campion’s stature as one of the great detectives in the vein of a Poirot or a Holmes. Though it is impossible not to like Albert



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Campion. He is certainly a believable character, but it is place that exemplifies his fame, as shown by one of Allingham’s most treasured fan letters sent from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1943 which was addressed simply to: “Mr. Albert Campion, 17A Bottle Street, London” (Auden, 1948 strandmag). The local postman knew the exact place where he lived, and that says it all. WORKS CITED Allingham, Margery. (1929) 2004. Crime at Black Dudley. New York. Vintage. ———. (1930) 2004. Mystery Mile. New York. Vintage. ———. (1931) 2004. Look to the Lady. New York. Vintage. ———. (1933). 2004. Sweet Danger. New York. Vintage. ———. (1937) 2004. The Case of the Late Pig. New York. Vintage. ———. (1938) 2004. Fashion in Shrouds. New York. Vintage. ———. (1948) 2004. More Work for the Undertaker. New York. Vintage. ———. (1952) 2004.. Tiger in the Smoke. New York. Vintage. Welty, Eudora. (1977) 1990. The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews. New York. Vintage International. Auden, W H. 1948. “The Guilty Vicarage.” Harper’s Magazine. https://bit.ly/3qY8hGe http://strandmag.com/the-magazine/articles/the-great-detectives-albert-campion https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/19/fiction.shopping1.

Chapter 8

Following Cordelia Gray Gender “Suitability” and Detective Fiction Medha Bhadra Chowdhury

The talented Cordelia Gray appears in two novels by P. D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982). The female detective had earlier received popular attention through Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, (first published in 1930), and since then detective fiction had expanded in variety and scope, accommodating the presence of the female sleuth. While both Christie and James attempted to develop a new type of detective hero, the archetypal male detective dominated the literary canon with the extraordinary success of their own creation, Hercule Poirot and Adam Dalgliesh. Apart from acquiring a new gender identity, the figure of the amateur detective did not change drastically. Miss Marple continued, much like Poirot to solve murder mysteries from the secluded comfort of her rural life, employing her wits and largely avoiding any possibility of physical danger involved in the process of detection. The conventionally bourgeois detective persona, which had proliferated since Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation of the famous Mr. Sherlock Holmes, persisted in England, as did recognizable formulas creating the structure and meaning of the narrative. In a radical departure from her well-known and brilliant male detective, Adam Dalgliesh, P. D. James made a brave attempt to refashion the central protagonist in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), by introducing the young Miss Cordelia Gray. The novel immediately informs the readers that Cordelia, an orphan, had been raised in foster care and “Gradually out of a childhood of deprivation she had evolved a philosophy of compensation” (James 2005, 18). She had only recently been employed by Bernie Pryde, the 95

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owner of a fledgling detective agency in London named, Pryde’s Detective Agency—“We take a Pride in our Work” and had come to tolerate his patronizing attitude by recognizing her own lack of alternative. The detective agency was a source of livelihood for Cordelia, and she is beset with concerns about the rent book, and the dwindling credit balance when confronted with the hard reality of running their “business” after Bernie’s untimely death. Naturally, the character of Cordelia Gray is not aligned to her more elite, upper-class predecessors and represents working-class interests and a thoroughly professional inclination. Unlike her able male counterparts, Cordelia has no qualities to recommend her for the job. “Cordelia had brought no qualifications, or relevant past experience to the partnership and indeed no capital, except her slight but tough twenty-two year old body, a considerable intelligence which Bernie, she suspected, had occasionally found more disconcerting than admirable” (James 2005, 3). Upon Bernie’s death, she inherits the detective agency with “nothing in the cash box but a few coins for the gas meter.” As she mulls over Bernie’s suicide and the decrepitude that surrounds his office, she wonders “whether in accepting his offer of a partnership in a fit of depression or of perverse masochism, she [had] voluntarily embraced his ill-luck” (James 2005, 9). A slow process of demystification is initiated through the dismal representation of Miss Cordelia Gray, who seems to have accidentally and reluctantly landed in her position as the sole proprietor of the detective agency. Cordelia disturbs the regular expectations built among readers of a largely male-oriented detective fiction of a tweed-suited, respectable detective having “a cold, precise but admirably balanced mind” (Doyle 1994, 3). Though intelligent, Cordelia is naïve, having never seen of a gun as a lethal weapon but as a “child’s toy.” She claims to be a “creditable shot” by practicing her aim; shooting a “fixed target” on a tree with blank bullets loaded in Bernie’s unlicensed gun (James 2005, 10).When she finally stumbles upon a case, Cordelia Gray, interestingly, tries to reconcile Miss Marple’s gossipy and unofficial strategies with authoritative police methods in order to uncover the murder. She makes discreet inquiries among acquaintances following the formulaic interrogation techniques she has learned from Bernie, a disgraced officer of Scotland Yard. These fixed methods tend to stifle the effective working of the imagination. Cordelia asks prosaic questions that considerably reduce the pleasures of deduction that readers of P. D. James had come to appreciate in her Adam Dalgliesh novels. Katherine Gregory Klein in the introduction to her book, Woman Detective: Gender and Genre (1995) suggests that “Women might be successful amateur detectives so long as they employed the more stereotypically feminine talents of gossip and intuition” (Klein 1995, 3). This is evident in Cordelia’s innocuous and sympathetic questions towards Isabelle, the victim’s girlfriend,

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who was the last person to see him alive before his alleged suicide. While it is effective, it is hardly as entertaining as Holmes’ conversational style. Cordelia’s sleuthing is limited to drawing confessions through fair questioning rather than psychological deduction or any other precarious methods such as disguise or evidence collection. Even when she traces the most critical evidence in the case, the Book of Common Prayers, which reveals the secret that Lady Evelyn Callender was not the victim’s mother, she discovers the book only after being told about it by a useful informer. It does not appear in her primary investigation of the cottage. Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan in The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction (1986), remark that, “Curiosity, too, becomes a valuable attribute when it is attached to a proper objective; it sheds the connotations of poking and prying which otherwise inform it” (Craig, and Cardogan 1986, 160). Unfortunately, Cordelia’s interviews do not reveal any dark secrets, although it does demonstrate a degree of common sense. The criminal act in the novel does not gesture of the imagination as well. Unlike the psychologically complex villains of earlier detective novels, James Moriarty being a prime example, Sir Ronald Callender’s motive for murdering his son is as straightforward as protecting his fortune. He is hardly an artist or the elusive criminal, but a man led by passion. It is ironic that Sir Ronald is identified as a scientist. When Cordelia asks if he is a good scientist, she is told “R.C isn’t so hot himself, but then you can’t expect much original science from the over fifties” (James 2005, 132). When he realizes the danger of his son discovering his mother’s true identity, Sir Ronald behaves impulsively. He decides to murder his son, Mark and grasp his wife’s fortune: a thinly veiled secret which is known by Miss Elizabeth Leaming, Sir Ronald’s assistant and Mark’s biological mother. Cordelia’s adversary is predictable and his supreme confidence in recruiting Cordelia indicates a foolish belief that he can play the role of a grieving father and an innocent man convincingly. Sir Ronald feels entirely unthreatened by Cordelia, her intelligence does not intimidate him and the female detective is expected to fail even when his plot is thin to transparency. The novel’s antagonist elicits neither horror nor fascination, in many ways undermining Cordelia’s capability as a detective and her intellect as a woman. Further, P. D. James does not care to provide alternatives. There are no suspects in the case and none with adequate motive. The routine interrogation of Cordelia does not reveal a shred of information which may be of significance to the crime: there are no secret rivalries or personal conflicts. Indeed, there are no rational problems in the novel apart from the murder itself. Yet, it takes Cordelia an inordinately long period of time to reason the identity of the criminal as she doggedly pursues Mark’s life and career in the small town of Cambridge. The contemplation of evil is largely supplanted by a brisk and

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basic sleuthing. The case also indulges the emotional facet of her character as Cordelia identifies with the young victim, who like her, had been deprived of motherly affection since his childhood. She wonders momentarily about the money which Mark is likely to inherit and who stands to benefit from his death, but carelessly dismisses the urgency of consulting the will, by thinking, “But that would mean a trip to London. Was it really worth it?” (James 2005, 135) As the title of the novel indicates, it is impossible to believe that the job of a detective is “suitable” for her. The barmaid tells Cordelia, “You can hardly keep the Agency going on your own. It isn’t a suitable job for a woman” (James 2005, 152) and at the Cambridge party, Cordelia is confronted with a similar incredulousness. Her position as a female detective raises doubts and her capability is repeatedly questioned. It also causes legitimate concerns about her safety and future prospects. As a woman, she is expected to perform pre-determined gender roles, including that of a wife and mother, and sleuthing is considered entirely “unsuitable,” even for the working-class woman. Overall, Cordelia’s “suitability” for the task is mildly compromised by her general negligence to details. While she doesn’t commit any serious errors, her style of detection is neither thrilling nor sensational. After a staggered investigation, Cordelia manages to solve the case, which arguably testifies to her suitability for the job. Yet, the intervention of Adam Dalgliesh only intensifies the vulnerability and limitations of Cordelia, instead of providing a neat ending to the heroic feat of the female detective. The conclusion of the novel resolves the complications of the plot. Sir Ronald and Lady Evelyn Callender had conspired with Ronald’s secretary and mistress, Miss Elizabeth Leaming, to defraud Evelyn’s wealthy father into believing that Ronald’s illegitimate child was his grandson and heir. When Mark learned of his true identity, his father, Sir Ronald murdered him to prevent the disclosure of the secret. He had dressed his son in a black bra and lace panties, painting his lips purple, in order to make him appear as a sexual deviant who had hung himself in desperation. Miss Leaming had later rearranged his clothes and written the suicide note. Overcome with guilt and rage at her son’s death, Miss Leaming ultimately murders Sir Ronald, and Cordelia helps her cover up the crime by disguising it as suicide. Richard B. Gidez interprets the final action of the novel as an assertion of their power. He quotes: There is also a certain degree of solidarity in Cordelia’s action. She and Leaming have struck a blow against male dominance and superiority. As they await the police Leaming asks, “What is there to be frightened of? We shall be dealing only with men.” (180) All that she and Leaming have in common are their

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feelings for Mark and their sex. In the days following their cover up, Cordelia begins to appreciate “the strength of that female allegiance”(Gidez 1986, 61).

Unlike Dalgliesh, who refuses to suppress evidence and upholds the cause of justice in Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), Cordelia is led by an abstract sense of moral duty and her decision to compromise with the truth may suggest feminine weakness in the professional world she inhabits. Dalgliesh, who makes an appearance at the end of the novel, reasons that Cordelia’s lie is prompted by “love, fear, or a sense of justice” (James 2005, 311). While Cordelia’s idealism is admirable and sets her apart from the unsentimental Scotland Yard sleuth, her art of concealment as a detective is entirely transparent to Dalgliesh. When Cordelia realizes that her involvement in the crime has been discovered by Dalgliesh, she fears not the loss of her license or professional status but the stench of the prison and that her clothes would be taken away from her. P. D. James’s tough, independent female detective disintegrates into a nervous young girl as she is interviewed by Dalgliesh about the circumstances of Sir Ronald’s suicide. When the news of Miss Leaming’s car accident arrives in the middle of their interview, Dalgliesh decides to let Cordelia off the hook, since divine justice prevails in punishing the criminal, and Miss Leaming is pronounced dead. Cordelia bursts into tears as she leaves the “horrible place,” promising herself never to get embroiled in such a “messy affair” (James 2005, 313). She is overcome by a sense of relief mingled with a misplaced gratitude for Dalgliesh. Although her reputation is unharmed, her defenselessness against Dalgliesh’s superior intelligence and her meek submission to his higher authority deprives the readers of a first-rate female detective. Katherine Gregory Klein argues that “Like the criminal, she [the female detective] is a member of society who does not conform to the status quo. Her presence pushes off-center the whole male/female, public/private, intellect/emotion, physical strength/weakness dichotomy . . . If she is shown as an incompetent detective or an inadequate woman, readers’ reactionary preferences are satisfied; their second catharsis is achieved” (Klein 1995, 5). Klein’s argument could possibly explain the unsatisfactory representation of the female detective in the early years of detective fiction writing, but it is certainly unexpected in a female-authored detective novel of the 1970s. From the given perspective, the incompetence of the female detective may be understood as a way of fulfilling dominant cultural expectations and the demands of popular consumption. Readers would have been uneasy accepting an alternative tradition which spotlighted a female detective. The popular practices of writing detective fiction had assigned value to the omniscient male detective and marginalized women to roles of victims, allies, or accomplices. While James attempts to revise the canonical approach through the

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figure of Cordelia Gray, her detective ironically falls into the trappings of a masculinist paradigm by appearing weak and ineffectual in her final duty. P. D. James does not entirely succeed in removing male authority from the novel and Cordelia’s lesser abilities as compared to Dalgliesh may correspond to the customary belief that women cannot be successful detectives. As a woman writer, P. D. James is unable to overlook the generic conventions, and in spite of her best efforts, creates a female detective who raises more anxiety than confidence. Cordelia desperately tries to “fit in” to the masculine operations of detection. At the beginning of her career, she follows in the footsteps of Bernie, who plays the absent father figure, and after his suicide, Cordelia is drawn to the influence of Adam Dalgliesh, who takes over from the dead Bernie, the role of the substitute father. Though she had considered Dalgliesh to be “supercilious, superior and sarcastic” (James 2005, 16), she soon revises her opinion of him. “His face was sensitive without being weak and she liked his voice and the way she could see the structure of his bones under the skin” (James 2005, 309). Adam Dalgliesh is ever present in her thoughts, and Cordelia is struck by “the dichotomy between her private imaginings and reality” (James 2005, 308), as she gazes at him with a child-like wonder mixed with a faint fascination. When a female protagonist has to operate in a fictional world organized by male authority and criminality, gender conflict becomes inevitable. However, the institutional politics of gender relations remains consistent in the narrative and Cordelia’s self-assertion as a female private detective is inevitably overshadowed by Dalgliesh’s patriarchal presence. The potential for gender conflict or rivalry is entirely dismissed. Sue Ellen Campbell in her chapter, “The Detective Heroine and the Death of Her Hero: Dorothy Sayers to P.D. James” explains: But if Dalgliesh does not seem to be in a position of any real authority in this book, he still exercises considerable indirect control over Cordelia. For one thing, she learned all she knows about being a detective from her late partner, Bernie Pryde, and Bernie had learned what he knew from Dalgliesh, whom he had worked under at Scotland Yard. Consequently, she goes through her investigations remembering what Bernie had told her his “Super” always said, and at crucial moments (as when she makes Sir Ronald’s murder look like suicide) she acts according to Dalgliesh’s advice. Throughout the novel, then, Dalgliesh is present as a sort of transcendental authority. Furthermore, although at the end of the novel Cordelia does refuse to cooperate with him, he is nevertheless in a position of power over her. He summons her to his office to be interrogated; and more important, he already knows—but does not tell her that he knows—most of the information she is keeping hidden. (Campbell 1995, 18)

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By the 1970s, there was a conscious articulation of social changes in women’s writing and an exploration of female subjectivities through fiction. Sexist assumptions and gender norms were fiercely challenged and the manifestation of these radical changes was noticeable in the discursive practices of gender representation. Female authors were attempting to negotiate with the political conservatism which was still prevalent in certain quarters and writing a new kind of fiction that was reforming perspectives on women’s domesticity, education and employment. Popular notions about the subordinate position of middle class women and their stereotypically feminine preoccupations were widely debated and patriarchal codes of behavior were met with resistance. Women’s crime fiction was also undergoing significant revisions in the 1970’s as compared to the early years between 1930 and 1940, through the emergence of the “hard-boiled” and the contribution of writers such as Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, Linda Barnes, and Sara Paretsky, who provided examples of “The New Woman” in action. The frequent characterization of the detective as female positively denoted a need to adapt the genre to the developments in cultural practices and gender systems. The feminist impetus of these novels both in their content and their portrayal of an empowered female subject potentially confronted the patriarchal power structures of contemporary society. The image of the female detective that had been undervalued by a male dominated literary genre and considered “unsuitable” by readers for a long period was becoming more conspicuous and gaining due recognition. Glenwood Irons in the introduction to Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction (1995) suggests that “Women detectives created in the last thirty years are outgoing, aggressive, and self sufficient who have transcended generic codes and virtually rewritten the archetypal male detective from a female perspective” (Irons 1995, 1). Thus, the broader cultural context within which the Cordelia Gray novels of P. D. James may be located provides a critical framework to their analysis. Cordelia operates outside domestic circles and admirably takes to the career of a detective. She is both sensible and gifted, with a penchant for investigation (if not experience), but her opportunity for professional success is limited. The development of a gritty, unorthodox, “feminist” detective is obstructed by James’s derivative story-telling and clichéd characterization. Despite the period’s social tensions with regard to women’s shifting roles in Western society and the significant ideological achievements of feminism, P. D. James’s Cordelia Gray series does not portray any serious reworking of traditional formulas and lends itself to a problematic gendered reading. Instead of exploring the changing social world of women and issues related to mechanisms of power and female identity, James’s novel rearticulates the conventional values of the masculine literary tradition.

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Patricia Craig and Mary Cadogan in The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction (1986) argue in favor of James’s construction of the female detective: Cordelia Gray is exceptionally clear-eyed and courageous . . . she is strikingly devoid of hesitation or squeamishness or the power to dissemble. Her toughness of mind is never a formidable or an unlikeable quality. She has no preconceptions about the job or her own suitability for it: just a determination to do her best. She is capable of acting on her own judgment and lies to safeguard a more fundamental kind of truth, moral order or concept of justice—call it what you will. Her assets in the business lie simply in intelligence and a character not subject to vacillation and caprice. She is twenty-two years old and truly remarkable, steadfast as Gerda in ‘The Snow Queen’ and resourceful as Hop o’ My Thumb. (Craig, and Cardogan 1986, 242)

While Craig and Cadogan regard Cordelia as a woman detective of real efficacy and substance, more recent works of literary criticism have generated an important counter-discourse. Priscilla L. Walton and Manina Jones in their work, Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition (1999) have commented that “Cordelia is something of an unwilling convert to the profession, and her character owes much to the disingenuous amateur sleuth who, however clever she may be, tends to solve her cases by intuition and luck, rarely using the active physical intervention so frequently resorted to by the male heroes of hard boiled stories” (Walton, and Jones 1999, 16). Taking into consideration both perspectives, one may agree that P. D. James challenges the male hegemony associated with the profession and provides Cordelia equal access to the status of a detective, but her “suitability” is not proved with satisfaction. The conventional plot limits the success of the detective by scarcely supplying any fulfillment of her feminine potential. Her only brush with danger predictably occurs when she gets closer to the truth. Lunn, the lab assistant working under Sir Ronald’s supervision, attacks and throws her into an abandoned well after her visit to Mark’s cottage. He catches her by surprise, but Cordelia is saved by her strength and more than a little luck, as a friendly neighbor rushes to her rescue. James attempted to portray Cordelia as a modern young woman and a romanticized symbol of liberation, but without any real possibility of risk, conflict, or aggression that accompanies the work routine of a detective. Therefore, she appears more alike to the British “cozy” or “country house” murder mystery tradition than the new age. P. D. James, who was hailed as Christie’s successor, creates Cordelia Gray but makes her act like a bewildered maiden, though she heads a London detective agency.

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She is reminiscent of the earliest female detectives, who had gained literary prestige in the “Golden Age” of detective fiction. P. D. James was familiar with the works of her predecessors and was indeed inspired by them. Richard B. Gidez states that, “[ . . .] she writes in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers. Nowhere is this better seen than in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Cordelia Gray at Cambridge cannot but help to bring to mind Harriet Vane at Oxford in Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1932)” (Gidez 1986, 64).Thus, P. D. James fails to observe the phenomenon of feminist activism which was gradually transforming the “woman’s place” in the early 1970’s and the changes in society and gender roles occurring during the period, which made possible shifts in the perception of an unconventional female detective hero of credibility and significance. Cordelia’s professional status is further diminished in James’s later novel, The Skull beneath the Skin (1982), where she adopts a distinctly domestic function. Nicola Nixon argues that this was indeed a political maneuver on the part of the author, in keeping with the conservative Tory doctrine which had caused a political shift in England during the 1980s: First, she eschews conventional feminine roles and works as a private detective, and then she embraces domesticity and dedicates herself to re-establishing domestic harmony. This trajectory, this transition of the model of femininity from equal opportunity worker to upholder of domestic family values, is the very transformation that [Margaret] Thatcher advocated every time she spoke to the female electorate or every time she gave interviews to women’s magazines. (Nixon 1995, 43)

Despite the deficiencies in the characterization of a “feminist” detective, the plot happens to be the greatest impediment to the development of a radical detective persona in the novel. It struggles to overcome the whodunit formula of English detective fiction and is circumscribed by a formal rigidity and homogeneity. P. D. James in Talking About Fiction (2009) wrote: Although the detective story at its highest can also operate on the dangerous edge of things, it is differentiated both from mainstream fiction and from the generality of crime novels by a highly organized structure and recognized conventions. What we can expect is a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of suspects, each with motive, means and opportunity for the crime; a detective, either amateur or professional, who comes in like an avenging deity to solve it; and, by the end of the book, a solution which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness. (James 2009, 5)

As a popular literary genre, detective fiction consistently provided paradigmatic situations and motives that gave continuity to the form. The “new

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type” of female detective was meant to challenge the gender bias and masculinized practices of representation that circumscribed the literary genre. However, the subversive presence of a female detective does not cause any critical modification in the gender politics of the novel. P. D. James contributes all the necessary ingredients for a “suitable” detective story, but An Unsuitable Job for a Woman only manifests a mimetic possibility instead of reclaiming the self agency of the female detective. Ultimately, Cordelia’s bourgeois conventionality and inability to relate to complex sexual and social anxieties questions the progressivism of women-centered detective fiction. While P. D. James attempts to re-envision the female detective in her novel, the narrative strategies prevent the radical deconstruction of the masculine ideology, which had a profound influence in the writing of detective fiction. WORKS CITED Campbell, Sue Ellen. 1995. “The Detective Heroine and the Death of Her Hero: Dorothy Sayers to P.D. James.” In Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons, 12–28. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Conan Doyle, Arthur. 1994. “A Scandal in Bohemia.” In The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London: Penguin Books. Craig, Patricia, and Mary Cardogan. 1986. The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press. Gidez, Richard B. 1986. P.  D. James: The New Queen of Crime. Boston: Twayne Publishers. Gregory Klein, Katherine. 1995. Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Irons, Glenwood. 1995. Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. James, P.D. 2005. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Toronto: Seal Books. ———. 2009. Talking About Fiction. New York: Knopf. Nixon, Nicola. 1995. “Gray Area: P. D. James’s Unsuiting of Cordelia.” In Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons, 29–45. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Walton, Priscilla L., and Manina Jones. 1999. Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chapter 9

P. D. James Narratives Bubbling to the Surface Anne K. B. Erickson

Detective novels are often considered light entertainments, providing escapist enjoyment and some applications of logic. Innovative murder mystery writers consider psychological implications of the victim and the murderer, explore the “why,” and uncover layers of identity, representing and reinventing characters and narratives as investigations ensue. Exploration of victimhood and the murderer’s mind provide rich character studies for authors like P. D. James, and these mysteries resonate with tensions relating to social position, gender, community, and political frictions which concurrently push against the genre expectations. Not least of these is the debate between popular literature and the literary masterpieces. In fact, several key criteria to determine mystery subgenres involve the usual division between popular literature and the literary, enacting an anti-populist agenda that discounts anything popular as inherently devalued. From this, it is easy to see how the hegemonic system of literary evaluation reinforces the status quo, including privilege vested in the academic elite. Additional issues stem from the key terms used to divide and classify mystery fiction, terms that are no less likely to reinforce the status quo. For this reason, unresolved history resurfaces as the writers attempt to relitigate the challenges. One such challenge is inherent in the morbid fascination with the gory overlapping with the light, pleasure reading. For example, in The Murder Room (2003), P. D. James sets the story in museum dedicated to the Interwar years, with a whole room specifically dedicated to sensational murders, complete with the trunk that one victim was found in. Throughout the book, the number of people tempted to look inside the trunk, to see if her blood is evident, is raised, suggesting the absolute morbid fascination that 105

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people have in sudden and dramatic death (James 2003, 23). Thus, this gawking is popular, but also potentially offensive or too gory for a mystery novel. Characters in the mystery genre search and inquire to discover deeper truths, which seems contraindicated by a need to affirm the status quo, which intentionally obscures such knowledge. Sabine Vanacker (2011) considers the idea that the mystery narrative inherently expresses an existential curiosity about origins; while the detective is searching for the murderer, ultimately she/he finds only her/himself. In this manner, the implications of the murder must be limited, and the implications of the discovery of the murderer might be more relevant to the detective than to the society. In P. D. James’s first mystery, Cover Her Face (1962), the epilogue focuses on a chance meeting between Inspector Adam Dalgliesh and Deborah Riscoe, whose murderous mother Dalgliesh identified and helped convict. The exchange is pleasant, leading to a potential romance between the two. The no-longer relevant victim is erased, and the emphasis is on the detective’s personal growth. Likewise, in both The Murder Room (2003) and The Lighthouse (2005), Inspector Dalgliesh moves forward in his relationship with Emma, partly because the events in the books have convinced him to stop living in the past and move ahead with their future. Thus, the murder mystery changes the lead detective, particularly if he is in a series, but little else. Part of the narrative tension stems from what Tzvetan Todorov (1966) describes as the classical plot structure whereby the two stories overlap, echo, and compete: a story about a crime that results in the absence of a character (the victim), and a story about an investigation which is only important as it uncovers the other story. Through these structural and narrative contradictions, the author creates a delicate intertextual nest. Temporal inversions also jar the narrative as the forward motion toward discovery is a non-linear recovery of the past (Todorov 1966, 44–46). In The Murder Room (2003), the eldest Dupayne son leaves his office for the final time as he retires. The description details his stop on the walk over the lake to enjoy the view of Whitehall (James 2003, 32), and then he recalls back to lunchtime walks twenty years ago. Then he skips to a week ago, when on the same walk, he’d encountered Tally Clutton, a museum employee, whom he had failed to recognize. In this brief reflective narrative, James presents three different time periods, demonstrating Marcus Dupayne’s career, feelings toward Tally, and lack of recognition or true knowledge of other main characters. This novel clearly signals the end of an era. Characters and family lines draw to a close. Opportunists like Caroline Dupayne, with their modern sexual inclinations, will alter and appropriate institutions from folks like the Swathlings. Vanacker (2011) argues that in The Murder Room, the family melodrama becomes very important, echoing throughout, like a mimic, increasing and diluting the storyline of the murder investigation. Bloating the family story



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leads to a delay in the whodunit and yields a melodrama, with a palimpsest nature of plot lines (Vanacker 2011, 20–26). New to the crime scene, detective Kate Miskin recalls her own personal family tragedy, and then Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh recalls an earlier murder investigation into Father Sebastian, and then recollects his father (James 2003, 138). These are examples of the meandering asides, which do not resolve crimes, although they may speak to the reader’s satisfaction with the series, affirming how well they know the recurring characters and acknowledging that familiarity. Peter Brooks (1984) focuses on the idea that there are two different objectives and two different narratives—the story of the detection, and the story of the death. Thus, detective fiction is “the narrative of narratives” (Brooks 1984, 25), where the detective stories tantalizingly postpone the mystery’s resolution. One such means of delay is repetition; repetitions as a plot feature (echoes of the past) complicate and strengthen the reader’s desire to get from the beginning to the final scene (Brooks 1984, 25). Leitch (2020) actually builds on this by discussing the range of pasts, such as those of crime, community, criminal, detective, public, history, etc. (Leitch 2020, 160). Many of P. D. James’s novels do not actually open with murder, but instead defer until portraying several characters’ stories. The series of delays is ritualized by the investigators’ behaviors, such as the nightly round up meeting where the investigators repeat and review the day’s discoveries and redirect the investigation, putting themselves or others at greater risk due to the delays. In A Taste for Death (1986) and in The Lighthouse (2005), for example, priests who know too much become second victims, and even the team is put at risk when Dalgliesh contracts SARS in Lighthouse (2005), and possibly exposes the team in their nightly meetings. Dalgliesh’s approach to questioning is consistently referenced as being patient, often stating that the suspect is not yet ready to share information they are withholding (James 2003, 192–93; Vanacker 2011). Although this is presented as an asset to Dalgliesh’s investigative style, these delays increase potential risks of subsequent deaths. In The Murder Room (2003), for example, the delay is sufficient that the third murder is prevented only due to resuscitation (James 2003, 305). The tension created by the resonances of the two mystery narratives is similar to the one described by Felixe Guattari and Gilles Deleuze (1986) in their seminal work to define a “Minor Literature” in which they describe several conditions of a literature written by a minority in the language of the majority. They discuss how the language resonates with an effort to be less confining and biased, how individual minorities are always forced to be a representative for the whole group, and how political and policy issues resonate as critical points providing a context that makes everything political. We can see how these stories of the minor (whether defined by class, race, or gender) bubble into the narratives of the major, how the history, particularly the pains

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of the conflicts, resurface, and how history is very much part of the present. In The Lighthouse (2005), for example, both the history of Dr. Spiedel and his family during the war and the history of murder victim Nathan Oliver, including some questions of lineage and parenting prove essential to the mystery, and the secondary victim is killed due to his knowledge of the history (James 2005, 345). Characters cannot escape their history nor their future as the two function in an asynchronous manner. The world wars were certainly two of the biggest historical moments to occur and shape this genre, although the role of war in a light-hearted pleasure read may seem a contradiction at first blush, and yet references to the war consistently arise. At times, these are convenient backstory elements, such as in The Lighthouse (2005), but in others, such as The Murder Room (2002), it seems a curious fixation. James Calder Hale, the curator of the Dupayne Museum featured in The Murder Room (2002), is facing terminal cancer, and his main objective, rather than helping to solve the murder, is to complete his history of the interwar years. His secret story complicates the investigation. His obsessive desire for access to his notes to complete this project before his life ends makes him seem suspicious, and interjects his story and the history, into the investigation as he continues to push for access to the murder site. History resurfaces and disrupts the narrative and the quest for justice. This echoes as well the plot of The Black Tower (1975), focusing on a representation of the atrocities of World War II, resurfacing. Rowland (2001) draws attention to a phrase in which James compares the idea of a killer driving a van to a gas chamber transport in An Unsuitable Job (Rowland, 2001, 137). Rowland describes “Biblical, historical and political constructions converge in the Gothic terrors engendered by the multiple killings, which blur distinctions of innocence and guilt, love and exploitation, sin and revenge” (Rowland 2001, 139). This disjointed approach is aligned to the tension and challenges of a minor literature. In telling the stories of the victimized who potentially later become villains, James presents characters and plotlines where minority views, often those downtrodden due to race, class, or gender, resurface to seek justice. Often the society is reaffirmed, but also sterile and moving towards extinction, so the ambivalence is clear and there is a loss of meaning. Rowland (2001) argues that “Gothic villainy marks the limits of both secular modernity and of literary representation” as no law or court can contain the horrors of the Gothic sublime (Rowland 2001, 140). While the Gothic sublime offered the Romantics a powerful potential for justice, it conflicts with the requirement for the whodunit to be pleasant and resolved in a manner that restores stability. Thus, the classic whodunit does not achieve the level of justice that brings equity in an unjust system that benefits the status quo. Truths may be revealed, but the oppressed typically remain underserved.



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James’s Dalgliesh realizes the investigation is an affront to the status quo, challenging the suspects to reveal their secrets. The disruption Deleuze and Guattari (1986) describe becomes more pronounced when the detectives are women. P. D. James has been noted for two substantial contributions in the field of women detectives, most notably for her Cordelia Gray detective, but also for Kate Miskin, who is a supporting investigator in the Adam Dalgliesh series. Gray is a twenty-two-year-old Cambridge student afraid that her personal relationships will ruin her as a detective. Heilbrun (2002) discusses the wave of women detectives in the 1970s literature as revolutionary, presenting new roles for women, who were as equally driven by their profession as the professional male detective who was committed to the job and unable to invest fully in relationships (a necessary component if the mystery isn’t going to stray into the field of romance) (Heilbrun 2002, 420). Heilbrun traces the progress of the woman detective, who has finally escaped the previous restrictions and is not ready to submit or settle for romance, entering the field of “men’s work” and taking the “same risks and dangers as men,” and engaging in sex as desired (Heilbrun 2002, 420). Nicola Nixon (1995) highlights how Dalgliesh underestimates Gray, but she triumphs, having improved over the performance of Bernie Pyle, her mentor, and Gray is not looking for another father figure. Campbell (1995) also finds James’s young women protagonists push the boundary of characterization. In this initial work, James created a character reflecting many of the feminist issues, and demonstrating progress, shifting the field of mysteries to incorporate more women and speak to a more women-dominated readership. Still, Heilbrun (2002) traces the disappointment of Cordelia Gray’s fans in the eventual sequel, in which Gray is a more subservient and incapable detective. Nixon (1995) points out that Gray, in The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), admits Dalgliesh was the one man she could imagine in her bed, and faults her for not suspecting Gorringe and putting herself at risk. Ultimately, Gray embraces the domestic and dedicates herself to re-establishing domestic harmony (Nixon 1995). So, with this effort, James retreats from her character that appealed to her many female readers, offering only Kate Miskin as Dalgliesh’s second. Heilbrun (2002) explores Kate Miskin’s role, as she uses the police force as an opportunity for professional growth, works to achieve justice and find truths, and enjoy financial security. She neglects to analyze the ongoing Oedipal attraction Miskin has for Dalgliesh which is somewhat dampered by Dalgliesh’s marriage (James 2005, 383), and her discussion of the relationship with former co-worker Piers Tarrant only in terms of her choice not to follow him. Miskin’s concern is to preserve her current status (often by avoiding relationships with male co-workers) and reflect on how far she’s come from her own origins. Being content with class distinctions and

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ever vigilant about personal relations which professional colleagues is the most James does to disrupt the gender limitations. Kate’s solitary representation of her gender and social origins is clear. Deleuze and Guattari (1986) raise the issue of the marginalized character having to represent the entire group. So too must Kate represent the hope for women and the diverse classes in detective fiction. Demonstrating the path by which one may ascend, James perpetuates the notion that such ascension is possible, but constantly in peril if the woman detective resorts to her innate desire to bed her boss. Moreover, rather than observe or denounce her lack of compatriots, she should consider herself fortunate. This result thereby preserves the status quo. James raises other aspects which are challenging to gender’s status quo, such as in Shroud for Nightingale (1971), the nurses lamenting the changing times and their reluctance to miss out on marriage. Nicola Nixon (1995) describes their approach as a quasi-lesbian relationship among the nurses. Eventually, murder, suicide, and emigration empty the facility of its middle-aged spinsters and the building is demolished to build a new modern school. Once again, the marginalized rise up but are exiled. Priestman (2002) describes James’s novels as a “gruff take on the varieties of human sexuality” with their various exchanges of gratification, including “unmarried motherhood, homosexuals, incest, and exhibitionism,” most often with a quiet toleration (Priestman 2002, 236). For example, “A Certain Justice” (1997) centers on a young psychopath, who has been forced to have sex with an alcoholic prostitute who also forces him to photograph her having sex with others. This degree of kink is more often associated with the thriller than the whodunit. Additionally, P. D. James does not present very many happy couples, neither detectives nor suspects. Those that last seem to reflect a negotiated satisfaction, often in terms of sexual needs as something that men need to have regularly satisfied, whether by prostitute or other arrangement. Caroline Dupayne runs a rather seedy anonymous sex club and has no qualms that one of her recent students has joined it, in The Murder Room (2003), and she plans to unabashedly continue. While detectives Dalgliesh and Miskin debate whether they should signal to Tally the immoral aspects of her future position in a swingers organization, they opt not to, a tacit approval of the concept that ignorance is bliss. James’s presentation focuses not on whether such practice is immoral nor unnatural, just whether the moral should be informed. James answers no. Few of the critics note the apparently feminine aspects of her recurring lead detective, Adam Dalgliesh. He is at once a sympathetic character, with a dead wife and son, but their representation is so flat, it avoids being tragic. Instead, it allows him to carry on unfettered by romances and avoid being suspected as asexual. It allows him to appear the object of desire and avoid



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entanglements. Eventually and laboriously, Dalgliesh sufficiently overcomes his fears and commits. Still, Dalgliesh’s obsesses until he awkwardly delivers a written proposal by hand that is so ambiguous, that both parties debate its meaning throughout The Lighthouse (2005). Given his acclaim as a poet, this is curious. James’s relationships do not convey much warmth or effective communication, despite Dalgliesh’s revered interviewing skills. Dalgliesh being a very “private” person, yet praised as an amazing poet who never publicly discusses his poems. Emma contemplates whether he can be known in The Murder Room: “He was intimate with those dark crevices of the human mind where horrors lurked with she couldn’t begin to comprehend . . . She knew about those horrors from literature; he explored them daily in his work” (James 2003, 45). She continues to question what role his job occupies in his life. Armed with a need to keep his own counsel and a private nature, James is able to avoid full exploration of his romantic side, and thereby navigate the conflict between the healthy progression of a character in a series and the genre limits on the detective’s romance plotline to dominate. By suppressing the minor story reverberating in the text, James manages to retain control of her genre. Readers of The Murder Room (2003) find Emma discusses their relationship with Adam more with Clara than Adam. After a lengthy debate about mating rituals, Clara indicates that marriage is one more “successful skirmish against moral and social chaos” and the system of old and then is “brutal” but at least contemporary women have agency (James 2003, 48). Bound by genre conventions and her own desire to affirm the status quo, ultimately, James offers a limited escape for women. The setting for most of James’s novels aligns with the requirement of the whodunit including a limited field of suspects, which lends itself to a somewhat confined sense of community. In Cover Her Face (1962), the murder at the Big House is only investigated in terms of those who have actual intimacy with the family. The family, meanwhile, keeps suggesting that there are potential murderers in the village or possibly strangers (after all, they did have the church festival on site the day of the murder), and a large number of casual acquaintances show for the funeral service, but the investigation focuses pretty exclusively on the victim’s life before this position and the family themselves, and not without justification (James 1962). Their ability to pass, to hide among the innocent, is both the challenge to the status quo and also a requirement for the mystery. When a small town is not used for setting, James often will substitute an institution or facility. The medical institutions are generally not healthy (Priestman 2002, 250), and the churches not safe sanctuaries, and the generous homes for the unwed are not managed with a true non-profit fiscal approach. This community is better if set apart, to create an appearance of a

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closed community, which might be determined by geography, occupations, or family, but it is an often eccentric and interesting setting where murder does not happen, and so the law must come in and take over (Auden 1948). In this manner, the suspects are limited, and the readers and detectives are able to focus on solving the story. Just as with the Emma-Adam relationship, the characters within these communities question each other and develop suspicions and awareness as well. Tally reflects on young Ryan, whom she fosters and tries to support: “we work together, we see each other frequently, sometimes every day, we talk, we confer, we have a common purpose. And at the heart of each of us is the unknowable self” (James 2003, 71). This is in response to learning that many of his stories are in conflict, but ultimately she decides he’s just trying to protect his privacy, echoing her own concern for privacy which eventually causes her to kick him out of her two-bedroom cottage as well as the ongoing concerns for privacy which continually challenge Dalgliesh from James’s first mystery, when Stephen Maxie says of Dalgliesh who is investigating Maxie’s fiance’s death: “or else he’s been snooping round the house. This is the end of privacy” (James 1962, 86). The conflict between the need to serve justice for society and victim and the need to preserve the common citizen’s privacy becomes an inherent tension that Dalgliesh finds discomforting, another tension surfacing. One other critical prerequisite of the mystery is the victim, a necessary component for the murder mystery. W. H. Auden (1948) discusses the discord that this victimization produces: “The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse, but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on the drawing room carpet” (Auden 1948). Further, this victim needs to manage the intricate duality of being appealing enough to make people feel guilty for the death, but also, justified in the suspects’ desire to kill the victim. Auden (1948) suggests that a neglectful parent often makes a good victim. If additional victims pile up, each subsequent victim must be increasingly good, according to Auden’s analysis (1948). Thus the voice of disruption needs to be discovered and the threat neutralized in an increasingly anxious environment. The presence of the murderer is an anomaly to the very sense of place. However, women are often the victims, often women of lower class, sacrificed sometimes by women of higher classes who are keeping their families together. James presents that, in Cover Her Face (1962), the suspects disliked the attractive, self-absorbed, forceful, and presumptuous woman from the lower class (Priestman 2002, 237–28), and yet, these characteristics are not negatives when possessed by men or women of class. Thus, James’s presentation reaffirms the status quo, even if the class system of the country gentry is fading and unsustainable. Dalgliesh, in this first book, reflects back



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on his first big case, that of a murdered prostitute, thereby comparing her to this novel’s unwed mother who is found murdered. In The Murder Room (2003), there is a whole room in the museum dedicated to the prostitute and the tramp who were dramatically murdered. Still, the society who likely paid little attention nor offered much comfort avenge him with the full weight of the law. There is greater interest in these characters from the fringe of society in their gruesome murders than there likely was in their lives. Ultimately, nothing is restored. The victims are dead, and the criminals serve time. Insensitive and callous men from the higher classes enjoy careers as surgeons, and their women stay in the big houses that are no longer sustainable as they decay, possibly attracting the interest of a detective whose need to invade their class is occasioned by their servant’s murder, and whose poetry and professionalism might prove interesting enough to retain as an associate. Ultimately, James’s novels reinforce the ideology of a white society reflecting white anxiety. Detective Francis Benton-Smith is introduced in The Murder Room (2003), and Miskin adjusts warily to him (in fact, she does not come to accept him until well into The Lighthouse (2005), after he helps to grease her body and push her through a narrow window to prevent another murder). Colleague Piers Tarrant describes him as “too good-looking—Dad’s English, Mum’s Indian, hence the glamour . . . He’s ambitious. Clever, but a bit too obviously on the make . . .” and ultimately, he concludes that he’s taken a job beneath him to be able to shine more brightly a strategy Kate reminds him is his own (James 2003, 131). This expresses the insecurity regarding the challenge of the subaltern. Kate is exempted from this insecurity because her own starting point was clearly far from where she is, and so she does not identify. Benton is too like Tarrant, but Benton’s exoticism makes him more attractive, and his ambition and obvious drive are faults, rather than assets, in Tarrant’s eyes. As a prolific author, James tests genre limits and explores many nuances in the tensions of the genre, plot, and characterization. Her success leads her to do as she pleases. James’s exploration of these limits has moved the genre towards increasing literary valuation. Vanacker (2008) highlights many ways that James has achieved “crossover status” that leads to as a transcendent writer in terms of the age-old popular versus literary debate. Exploring the boundaries of the genre, and through using women detectives and exploring potential controversies, James is able to expand the detective novel into a new form, moving beyond mere entertainments, and achieving more “feminine” sleuths, committed to justice and healing those who’ve been trampled. In this manner, melancholy over gun violence, consumerism, the environment, Watergate, drugs, and the economy become opportunities to raise issues and express concerns, while still maintaining the status quo to preserve the

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whodunit’s appeal. Due to the genre, the opportunities for critique are limited, but P. D. James demonstrates that the mystery novel is capable of reflecting the anxieties and developments of a society and an aesthetics as the boundaries of the genre are tested. WORKS CITED Auden, W. H. 1948. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict.” Harper’s Magazine. (May): https://harpers.org/archive/1948/05/ the-guilty-vicarage/. Brooks, Peter. 1984. Reading for Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Campbell, Sue Ellen. 1995. “The Detective Heroine and the Death of her Hero.” In Dorothy Sayers to P.D. James, edited by Glenwood Irons, 12-28. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by Dana Polan, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Heilbrun, Carolyn G. 2002. “The New Female Detective.” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 14 (2): 419–428. James, P. D. 1962. Cover Her Face. New York: Scribner. ———. 1971. Shroud for a Nightingale. New York: Scribner. ———. 1972. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. New York: Scribner. ———. 1975. Black Tower. New York: Scribner. ———. 1982. The Skull Beneath the Skin. New York: Scribner. ———. 1986. Taste for Death. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 2003. The Murder Room. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 2005. The Lighthouse. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 2009. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Leitch, Thomas. 2020. “The Many Pasts of Detective Fiction.” Crime Fiction Studies 1 (2): 157–172. Www.euppublishing.com/cfs. Nixon, Nicola. 1995. “Gray Areas: P.D. James’s Unsuiting of Cordelia.” In Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons, 12–28. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Priestman, Martin. 2002. “P.D. James and the Distinguished Thing.” In On Modern British Fiction, edited by Zachary Leader, 234–257. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Rowland, Susan Rowland. 2001. “The Horror of Modernity and the Utopian Sublime: Gothic Villainy in P.D. James and Ruth Rendell.” In The Devil Himself: Villainy in Detective Fiction and Film, edited by Philippa Gates and Stacy Gillis, 135–146. Santa Barbara: Praeger. ABC-CLIO eBook Collection. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1966. “The Typology of Detective Fiction.” The Poetics of Prose, translated by Richard Howard, 42–52. Ithaca: Cornell UP.



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Vanacker, Sabine. 2008. “The Family Plot in Recent Novels by P.D. James and Reginald Hill.” Critical Survey 20 (1): 17–28, http://search.proquest.com. ———. 2011. “‘A Visitor for the Dead’: Adam Dalgliesh as a Serial Detective.” In The Millennial Detective: Essays on Trends in Crime Fiction, Film and Television, 1990–2010, Jefferson, NC: McFarland: https://go-gale-com.

Chapter 10

Time Past and Time Present Reading Kate Atkinson’s Novels Purnima Chakraborti

In History and Value, Frank Kermode, while discussing the experience of assessing an ancient text speaks about “a manageable discrepancy between the work as it was and the work as it is now,” he states that the work can only be approached from the reader’s “own historical situation, without seeking an impossible identification with the prejudices and expectations of an original audience” (Kermode 1987, 108). This makes it possible to argue that readers may revalue crimes that (like ancient texts) belong to the past from perspectives of the present. As Kermode points out values and concepts belong to a period only to make history manageable: It appears, then, that concepts of a period not only make history manageable but inevitably involve valuation; so that the characteristics thought to confer value (or its opposite) can be sought anywhere, with the object of making further valuations based upon a period archetype. (Kermode 1987, 121)

Thus, archetypical treatments of crimes as understood in the past may gain other meanings when revisited and revalued from the concepts and values prioritized at the present. Retrospective vision is an integral part of the detective story where the story of a crime is reconstructed by the detective. Kate Atkinson extends this convention to reviewing and sounding out the past. Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels deal with crimes located far back in time that are resolved by bringing the past up against the present. They focus on women who face gender hostility in various forms and degrees. The personal histories of her characters is projected against the backdrop of a social history. Her women 117

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detectives working in police departments feel the unfairness of hierarchical, patriarchal and authoritative attitudes which they have to confront. They also feel trapped by such norms enshrined in their homes as traditions. Atkinson’s novels accommodate detectives both within and outside the police. Jackson who comes from a poor Irish family of miners is presented to the reader as an ex-army man and an ex-policeman who has taken to being a detective after the breakup of his first marriage in Case Histories (2004); his world is a highly unstable one, and in the course of this novel his house is burnt down, he is badly beaten up and finally a legacy from a client makes him a millionaire. Hence we have a detective who has left the rigidly authoritarian institutions behind him. In When Will There Be Good News? (2008) Jackson almost dies in a train crash while he is married to the thief Tessa and he loses all his money because his wife steals all the money he has and runs away. Jackson now becomes the detective who is literally married to crime as he goes about trying to find his missing thief wife in Started Early, Took my Dog (2010). Thus, we have detective and victim of crime rolled into one person. Through the series of novels time moves on for Jackson as he drifts through life and the readers watch his children growing up as he moves through different relationships. The novels are based in different cities: Oxford, Edinburgh, and Leeds, and finally he is on the Yorkshire coast near the town of Whitby in Big Sky (2019). Journeys by car and train spread his adventures over a wide geographical canvas including France where he buys a house when briefly rich. In Atkinson’s detective novels experiences of the past which affect the minds of the detectives and victims open up a space for looking at the trauma they have been subjected to. This was out of bounds for the classic stories of Sherlock Holmes or the Golden Age detective novels. Speaking of such conventional crime stories, Colin Watson comments: Ivy Compton-Burnett managed to write brilliant if somewhat disconcerting books that gave virtually no hint that their characters had any corporeal relation with an outside world. What would have become of Sherlock Holmes in her hands, or for that matter, in those of Virginia Woolf? Neither would have permitted him to hail another hansom, send one more telegram or ever again to heat a test tube. All he could have expected of Miss Compton-Burnett was an infinitely subtle embroilment with brother Mycroft and possibly some incestuous cousins over a legacy and perhaps an interior monologue (certainly not a monograph) on one hundred and forty kinds of tobacco ash. (Watson 1971, 207)

Detective novels today are happy to accommodate the detective’s interior monologue: The psychic as well as the social is claimed by the contemporary detective novel. Memories become the historic sites to be explored and



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revisited to locate crimes. Jackson’s highly vulnerable existence is haunted by the unsolved rape and murder of his sister. This teenage memory is indelible. It is revisited repeatedly through all the novels. The past internalized fits out the memory of every character making him or her what s/he is in Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels. The reader shares Jackson’s inner thoughts as he travels, comes to terms with his broken marriage with Josie, spends time with his daughter Marlee, speaks to his different clients, interviews criminals or learns about the families of victims. Narrative time in the novels is located with precision in the story of crime and in the story of detection. But this precise charting of time is made flexible and expanded through the journeys to the past within the narrative. Memory lends an added dimension as spaces visited as well as objects and people encountered in the present narrative time evoke specters of the past. The omniscient narrator explores the minds of several characters in the novels. In Case Histories (the first novel of the series) Jackson is drawn to the actor Julia whose sister was murdered. Tragedies of murder and suicide among siblings are shared by the two families: of the detective and of the victimized family of the client. The victim is not only a woman or a child killed but all the people in the family who have suffered as a result of a past crime. In Case Histories, Michelle, Amelia Land, and Theo are all victims of past crimes in their families. Their pasts are ever present within themselves, just as Jackson’s own past is and this past is ever impinging on the present shattering and fragmenting it. The self as constructed by the narrative is a pastiche of this past and the present. The clue to the crime lies within the minds of the characters. It is as if the past holds a key to the crime, the key which must be found through reviewing the past again and again. In the two novels One Good Turn (2006) and When Will There Be Good News? which follow Case Histories the reader meets Detective Inspector Louise Monroe. In One Good Turn, she is a single mother bringing up her adolescent son Archie who is caught for shoplifting and at this point the narrative draws up from the past Jackson’s shoplifting escapades to comfort her; offering her hope that her son Archie too shall grow out of this habit as Jackson did. Such movements in the narrative between the past and the present constantly frame and re-frame perspectives, as if this very tendency of the human mind to reflect on the past can yield solutions for present problems. In When Will There Be Good News? the title and the subsections of the novel refer pointedly to time as waiting. Part I (is subtitled): In the Past,” Part II: “Today,” Part III: “Tomorrow,” Part IV: “And Tomorrow” and Part V: “And Tomorrow” conveying the long reach of the crime and the painful efforts of the sufferers to come to terms with it. The childhood, girlhood, and womanhood of Joanna Mason in When Will There Be Good News? are scarred by the deaths of her mother and siblings. Her present actions are explained by

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the fact that she does not want to let her child experience the trauma she went through. Understanding victim psychology within the police is an important aspect of this novel. Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe does not want to probe. Over the years she has internalized the cases dealing with violence against women. In the course of her present investigations, she loses her trusted colleague Marcus and his mother who cannot bear the loss, commits suicide. For Louise, the norms of heroism are different and she would give medals to all women who feel threatened. She would like to give medals to Aunt Debbie and to Gabrielle Mason who were killed while they were protecting children. Louise, the police detective, an embodiment of the law feels the need for changing the norms for distributing medals: rather than giving it to the policeman shot in action she thinks of giving it to his mother who commits suicide after turning off her comatose son’s life support. Atkinson’s reading of crime is from the margins. Almost every important character in her detective novels is marginalized in some way or the other. Reggie or Regina, the girl detective in When Will There Be Good News? (2008) is an orphan who has to cope with her mother’s death in suspicious circumstances and a brother who is a drug dealer. The sad and terrifying experiences to which she is exposed within her own home help her negotiate the larger world of crime. She is the young girl with the mind of an old woman. Reggie like Julia is well versed in literature and both often quote well known lines of poetry and drama bringing into the novels a literary past which is at times recent and at times centuries old. Reggie is threatened by criminals who beat her up and set fire to her home. Her life and adventures make her the famous Reggie who becomes a police detective later in the series. In Started Early, Took my Dog facts recorded by the media and the police are contradicted by memories. Jackson’s client, Hope McMaster, is trapped in a false identity created for her by the police and the social service. This has been cleverly done to hide crimes committed in the past. Jackson can identify with Hope’s suffering: “You and me both, Jackson thought. Hope McMaster’s past was all echoes and shadows, like looking into a box of fog” (Atkinson 2011, 201). Started Early, Took my Dog reopens a crime committed and covered up in Leeds in 1975. The crime had puzzled Tracy Waterhouse. Tracy’s life shows a firm turning down of many of the conventional norms a woman is expected to conform to. Exploring this crime is intertwined with exploring Tracy’s life. The plot involves two acquisitions: one of a child bought by an ex-policewoman from the detective department and the other of a dog that is taken from the owner by Jackson. Both the acquisitions are illegal. Both the child and the dog were being abused in public places where the onlookers commented that someone should do something. Yet all the shoppers in the supermarket where Kelly was mistreating her child like all the people in the



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park who watched the dog being abused were powerless to help out. Jackson Brodie knocked the dog owner senseless and took away the dog in a parking lot and Tracy paid Kelly, a sex worker, money for Courtney, a girl, about four years old at the bus stop. Thus, both the child and the dog were released from abuse but their rescuers were on the wrong side of the law. Tracy chose to wipe out her own identity and forge new ones for herself and the child and enter a new country to avoid being traced. The reason why Tracy, who had been detective superintendent steps beyond the law to save the child, is explained through her experiences as a woman police detective: Linda had worked in Child Services all her life, she must have seen the worst that people could offer. Tracy had seen the worst and then some. She felt soiled by everything that she had witnessed. Filth, pure and simple. Massage parlors and lap-dancing clubs at the soft end and at the other the hard-core DVDs of people doing repugnant things to each other. The unclassified stuff that scrambled your synapses with its depravity. The young girls trading their souls along with their bodies, the bargain-basement brothels and saunas, sleaziness beyond belief, girls on crack who would do anything for a tenner. Anything. Arresting girls for soliciting, and seeing them go straight back on the streets; foreign girls who thought they were coming to work as waitresses and nannies found themselves locked in sordid rooms, servicing one man after another all day; students working in ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ (ha!) to pay their fees. Free speech, liberal do-gooders, the right of the individual - as long as its not harming anyone else. Blah, blah, blah. This was where it got you. Rome under Nero. No end to evil really. What could you do? You could start with one small kid. (Atkinson 2011, 142)

The past considered to be “the good old days” by most of the men in the police department is considered by Tracy as “rubbish.” All the novels featuring Jackson Brodie bring out the vulnerability of women and children. They focus on women and children who are victims of crime, who mourn deaths of their loved ones or live under the threat of being killed if they are not killed. Their degree of awareness of this vulnerability differs as does the level of anxiety associated with it. In Started Early, Took my Dog, it is the awareness of the child’s extreme vulnerability that make Tracy and Tilly want to save her at any cost. The present which carries the weight of past injustice, crime, and deception also contains symbolic acts of righting past wrongs like Tracy fighting the goons, Courtney fighting criminal policemen with her fairy wand, and Tilly managing to kill a murderer at the cost of her life. The price to be paid for trying to escape from the clutches of crime is often the annihilation of one’s former self. Michelle and Caroline in Case Histories, Gloria in

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One Good Turn and Tracy in Started Early, Took my Dog show how women who are victims or are trying to help potential victims may need to change one vulnerable self for another. None of them fit neatly into the ready-made definitions of victim, detective, or criminal. In Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie novels, the different characters make assessments about themselves and their pasts as they come to terms with crime. The final outcomes of these efforts may often be outside the scope of law or social acceptance. Often there are no arrests, yet this is not a convention alien to classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes, who occupy a neutral middle ground between the law and the crime. Such a position is a well-established convention in Poe, Conan Doyle, and the American hard-boiled tradition. For example one may consider The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton where Dr. Watson tells the reader Holmes means to burgle the house of Charles Milverton. Dr. Watson, the narrator, seems to be deliberately focusing on the detective playing a role at variance with the law: With our black silk face-coverings, which turned us into two of the most truculent figures in London, we stole up to the silent, gloomy house. . . .The place was locked, but Holmes removed a circle of glass and turned the key from the inside. An instant afterwards he had closed the door behind us, and we became felons in the eyes of the law. (Conan Doyle 2009, 577) [Emphasis mine] And further on we see Dr. Watson definitely enjoying the new role he is playing: “My first feeling of fear had passed away, and I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers.” (Conan Doyle 2009, 578) [Emphasis mine]

The next morning, Holmes is shielding the killer and withholding evidence from the police. The reader’s sympathies are on the detective’s side as his actions are “technically criminal, but morally justifiable” (Conan Doyle 2009, 576). And this is often the option taken by Atkinson’s detectives. Only unlike Holmes she/he may not always come through as neatly as Holmes. At the end of the story both Watson and Holmes regain their positions of respectability with the police. This intactness is not possible for the characters in the fictional world Atkinson builds up. In When Will There Be Good News? Jackson is at odds with the police because he shields the killer, gets rid of the murder weapon and destroys the entire crime scene by setting fire to it. The bodies of the kidnappers who intended to kill Joanna and her baby are burnt in this fire. Jackson’s degree of variance from the law is greater than Holmes’s, and this is in keeping with Atkinson’s fictional world, which is not the stable world found in formula fiction but an ever changing and ever shifting one eroded by time and always fiercely replacing older values and perspectives with newer



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ones. So, Jackson cannot play at being the infallible detective. He is the vulnerable, marginalized detective, ever grieving with the memory of his sister locked in the secret chamber of his heart. WORKS CITED Atkinson, Kate. (2010) 2011. Started Early, Took My Dog. London: Transworld Publishers. Reprint, Black Swan. Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2009. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. London: Vintage. Kermode, Frank.(1987) 1990. History and Value. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Reprint. Watson, Colin. 1971. Snobbery with Violence. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode.

Chapter 11

Interrogating the Agency of the “Partner in Crime” The Sidekick as the Reader in Popular Crime Fiction Barnali Saha

The perpetrators of criminal transgressions despite having long fascinated academics and non-academics alike, popular understanding of crime as a “separate form of behavior” (Falks 1966, 1) that “that merits community condemnation and punishment” (law handbook) appropriates crime with a distinctiveness that demerits its appraisal in pedestrian terms. Recent scholarly investigation of crime (organized and deliberated), however, as a vertex of psychoanalytical debate concentrates on the “presumption that socially adjusted, law abiding citizens share with criminals the impulse to murder steal and so on,” (Falks 1966, 1) thus diluting the exclusivity commonly ascribed to crime in general. In this context, it is important to note that despite the varied and equivocal understanding of crime in academic and non-academic social circles, the ubiquity of crime as a fundamental characteristic of our human civilization cannot be ignored. In fact, the earliest known murder in human history which has recently been brought to light has a victim with “injuries to the skull [representing] direct evidence of homicide,” (“World’s Oldest Murder Mystery Was 430,000 Years in the Making,” 2015) according to scientists and is roughly 430,000 years old. Although Freud in his famous “Criminals from a Sense of Guilt” highlighted the “motivational priority of unconscious psychosexual conflict” (Fitzpatrick 1976, “Abstract”), he failed to take into account the “important role played by the environment in the criminal’s life” (ibid.) and, by extension, the contextual effect of a criminal’s 125

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crime on the society and its people. More exactly, how an antisocial behavior affects popular psyche. The role of the media or the printing press in feeding the public demand for criminal reportage laced with lurid details of the crime and criminal can probably be regarded early instances of crime narration leading to the establishment of the popular genre of crime fiction. In this instance, The Newgate Calendar, subtitled The Malefactors’ Bloody Register, was a widespread work of refining nonfiction highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and may have influenced the publication of Edgar Allen Poe’s “tales of ratiocination” (Scaggs 2010, 1) and the first Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1892. Despite the garish detailing of crime in the penny dreadful publications of early Victorian era, the fact that these publications, which were often not “acceptable to readers,” (Pelham 1891, Preface vii), actively led to the rise of crime fiction as a genre cannot be ignored. One may appraise the final issues of the New Newgate Calendar which ran the series titled “The Diary of a Bow Street Runner,” named after the detective agency of eighteenth century London, founded by Henry and John Fielding in the 1750s. By this time, the shift from the popularity of dreadful true-crime narratives to diluted fictional accounts of the same helmed by not a criminal but a detective, the binary opposite of the criminal, is apparent. The role of a detective in accosting and ascertaining the contextual variety of criminal behavior and his subsequent vivisection of the “etiological significance of character development, the adaptational function of the ego and the important role played by the environment in the criminal life,” (Fitzpatrick 1976, “Abstract”) casts him as a strategic scholar of crime. Elementary to his profession is the incisiveness working of his mind—Poirot’s “little grey cells,” Feluda’s “Magojastro” (Mind as the weapon)—capable of extracting fact from fiction and ultimately understanding crime like the populace never can. It is in this ambiguity latent in crime and the detective’s ability to unravel for the reading public through the act of “ratiocination” that makes crime fiction a thrilling read, an escapist strategy for readers. Further, the nature of a crime narrative with a puzzle at a center actively invites readers to join in in combining the tessellating pieces of the puzzle along with the detective, with whom communication as to the process of resolution till the final scene when the mystery has already been unravelled is impossible if not improbable for the sake of the narrative. The contingency of mystery laced with hidden and apparent clues thus attracts the readers to participate in the narrative and play the hero’s role of correcting the aberration of social decorum entailed by the crime and the criminal by making sure the culprit is caught and penalized. Here, the readers need an active agent on their behalf to participate within the dynamics of the narrative structure, hence the character of the sidekick, as the



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detective’s assistant, partner or colleague is essential. The sidekick, therefore, “becomes the eyes and ears of the reader, providing them with all the clues necessary to solve the mystery” (Scaggs 2010, 39). Although crime fiction as a genre is newly begotten genre, crime has featured in literature in archaic times. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, a scrupulous investigation is conducted by the eponymous protagonist to convict the murderer of his predecessor King Laius. The unearthing of a sleeping murder can be seen as a precursor to Agatha Christie’s famous Miss Marple mystery, Sleeping Murder. In the Mahabharata too the Yaksha Prashna episode that includes question-and-answer dialogue between Yudhishthira and a yaksha in the Vana Parva is problematic. The question mark, the puzzle that deliberated the proceedings of the dialogue between the Yaksha and Yudhishthira predates the cryptographic narrative structure of a detective novel where the plot revolves around “the construction of a puzzle” (Scaggs 2010, 35). While in Sherlock Holmes’s “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” and in Satyajit Ray’s Royal Bengal Rohosyo (Ray 1975, The Royal Bengal Mystery) or for that matter, the Miss Marple mystery titled Nemesis, we have a puzzle literally arbitrating the course of the narrative. One may remember Feluda’s inductive process when he solved the following puzzle “Muro hoi burogach/ Hath e gon bhat panch/ Dik pao thik thik jobabe/ Falgun e taal jor/ Dui majhe bhui phor” (“The head of the old-tree/count to five and strive/ the answer right to a direction will drive/ Pair Spring with Palm/ Betwixt the two you dig and affirm”) [Translation mine]. Therefore, what sets apart narratives of crime is this puzzle, their figurative and in some cases, literal presence. According to Dennis Porter, a detective novel “prefigures at the outset the form of its denouement by virtue of the highly visible question mark hung over its opening” (Porter 1999, 86). It is the contingency of this “question mark” that “encourages readers to imitate the detective, to retrace the causative steps from effects back to causes, and in doing so attempt to answer the question at the heart of all stories of mystery and detection: Who did it” (Scaggs 2010, 35). The readers’ process to answer the question requires a “reading approach that parallels the investigative process” (Porter 1999, 86) of a detective. This prospect of active participation on the part of the reader in a whodunnit reverberates Roland Barthes’ approach to ‘writerly text’ wherein the goal of the text “is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text” (Barthes 1974, 4) and contest her to “participate in the construction of meaning,” (Fiske 2010, 103). It is in the emphasis of reading a problem or problematizing a seemingly lucid puzzle that makes the role of the sidekick, who according to Ronald Knox’s “Detective Story Decalogue” “must not conceal any thoughts that pass through his mind” (Knox 1929, 6), indelibly important for the success

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of a detective story as a “kind of intellectual game” whose “clue-puzzle structure” (Scaggs 2010, 37) invite and empower “the careful reader to solve the problem along with the detective” (Knight 107). In fact, Sherlock Holmes’ addressing Dr. Watson emphasizes this discourse between the detective and the reader when he says in the Sign of Four “You know my methods. Apply them” (Doyle 1890, The Sign of Four) thereby inviting the sidekick and by extension the reader, whose eyes and ears the sidekick is to the heart of the conundrum. The role of the sidekick as a narrator and observer in the formulaic equation underlining the paradigm of detective story places the sidekick as a character as important as the detective. As a participant in any detective story, the sidekick, therefore, often acting as the narrator, performs the following functions: as a binary to the detective, the sidekick is a contrast to his ability of methodological detection. This function and the standard implication of the relationship between the sidekick and the detective can be observed in Conan Doyle’s Dr. Watson, Swaradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Ajit Bandyopadhyay, the Watson-like writer and narrator of Byomkesh Bakshi’s escapades, Agatha Christie’s Hastings in her Hercule Poirot mysteries, Detective Sergeant Robert “Robbie” Lewis in Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse crime novels, and DI Kate Miskin in P. D. James’ Adam Dalgleish mysteries. Secondly, as a sound-board to the detective, the sidekick is a constant companion, a refracted shadow of the detective’s conscious recording and tallying the data. For example, in Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) written in 1971, we see Satyajit Ray’s famous fictional detective sharing his inner thoughts as to the baffling mystery at hand with his cousin and sidekick and confidante Topse: “Not removing his gaze from the rapidly revolving arms of the ceiling fan, Feluda said, as if to himself, ‘spider’s web . . . geometry . . . Now it’s all dark and invisible, soon there would be sunlight and the pattern of the web would glisten . . . then the web’s design would be apparent . . .now, we have to wait for the light’” (Ray 1971, Sonar Kella 448; Translation mine). Such recordings of the detective’s innermost thoughts spelled aloud for the readers makes the sidekick’s role as a detective’s friend like Ajit in Byomkesh stories or Watson in Holmes’ narratives indispensable in dispensing clues to a mystery that besets the detective and the reader at the same time. In this respect, the third and the most important role of the sidekick is as a foil to the detective’s abilities. Although the sidekicks often actively follow the thematic and formal elements of detection, their failure to solve the crime and their later affirmation of the detective’s solution suggests that in a tug of war between the reader and the detective, the detective with his “peculiar analytic ability,” as the unnamed narrator remarks in Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” remarks on Auguste Dupin, is the worthy intellectual. Dupin’s “eccentricity and reclusively,” as well as his “penetrating analytic ability” (Scaggs 2010,



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20) which he shares with his successor Sherlock Holmes is eventually emulated by a host of detective writers worldwide including Satyajit Ray and Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and P. D. James such that what seems uncomplicated to the detective can be baffling and incomprehensible to the sidekick and the reading public at large. In “The Crooked Man,” for instance, while discussing Dr. Watson’s daily habits, Holmes says: “‘Elementary . . . ’ ‘It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbor, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction’” (Doyle 1893,“The Crooked Man”). Throughout the genre of quintessential detective writing, there seems to be a quest of the detective for the perfect intellectual equal to him. This search is evident in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to the extent that Holmes forcing to recognize Dr. Moriarty’s evil genius says, ‘“You know my powers, my dear Watson, and yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess that I had at last met an antagonist who was my intellectual equal” (Doyle 1893, Sherlock Holmes, “The Final Problem”). Similarly, in Satyajit Ray’s Maganlal Meghraj in his Feluda stories and in Dr. Anukul Guha, who resembles Dr. Moriarty, in Swardindu Bandyopadhyay’s Truth-seeking (Satyanveshi) detective Byomkesh Bakshi stories. This proves that when it comes to solving the crime or being a force to reckon with in the narrative, the detective and by extension, the author trusts the antagonist, the transmogrified refraction of the detective as a fitting binary to his power and not the sidekick, who remains marginalized because of his “dull and lackluster mental faculties,” (Scaggs 2010, 19). This identifiable undermining of the sidekick’s ability, however, is necessary, if not imperative, to the functioning of an essentialist detective fiction, where the detective’s brilliance is accentuated by the sidekick’s narration (like in the case of Holmes) of the detective’s intellectual acumen as well as by display of his retrograde intellect in comparison with the detective: ‘“Has anything escaped me?” I asked with some self-importance. “I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?” “I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me, I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth.” (Doyle 1902, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 5)

Thus, the demonstration of the detective’s genius and method which usually opens the proceedings of many of the Sherlock Holmes’s stories and is ardently followed by later detectives like Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, who emulates Holmes and his master, and Hercule Poirot, is a pattern deliberately followed in methodical detective fiction to underscore the detective’s logical position

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as “apart from the mean represented by his narrator [and sidekick] which corresponds to that of an average reader” (Scaggs 2010, 39). And even though Watson catalogues Holmes’ panorama of knowledge in various fields like geology and philosophy in A Study in Scarlet, his interpretation of Holmes’ mentality remains as superficial as his own understanding of a crime as a problem he can never unravel independently. It is “little things” that “infinitely” become “the most important” (Doyle 1891, “A Case of Identity,” 194) that escapes Watson and his readers, who despite the efforts of the detective to induct them into his reasoning method remain incapable as average populace as a binary emphasizing the detective’s genius. Further, most of the sidekicks from detective fiction, including Hastings, Ajit, Dr. Watson personify the social and ideological norms of a period. For example, Watson and his middle-class virtues and Hastings as a man of the world, a war hero, Ajit as a Bengali intellectual, and so on, whose accentuated normalcy underscores the tortured nature of the “Genius Detective” (Scaggs 2010, 39). Most of the famous detectives we encounter starting from Poe’s Dupin to Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike figure are depicted as tortured geniuses, lonely, reclusive, and seldom married. Holmes features in his stories as a depressed, drug addict, a foil to Watson’s domesticity; further, Poirot faced xenophobia and racism, experiences alien to his sidekick, the respectable Colonel Hastings, Adam Dalgleish as embodied psychological trauma and Lord Peter Wimsey as a failed lover direct our attention to the inability of fictional detectives to be a part of mainstream culture enjoyed and embodied by their sidekicks and associates. The inability of the sidekick to understand the tortured nature of the detective’s mind which haunts him is evident in Watson’s censuring of Holmes’ smoking and drug addiction as well as his chronic untidiness. Nevertheless, it is the order of his mind that compensates for his literal disarray and sets him apart from the tidy sidekick, the average reader. In this context, it is interesting to problematize the gendered nature of detective fiction. Popular detective fiction, with patriarchal protagonists like Holmes, Auguste Dupin, and Feluda, seldom features female characters—indeed, apart from Irene Adler, who for Holmes had “always the woman . . .[hardly ever] mention[ed] under any other name” (Doyle 1891, “A Scandal in Bohemia”) with her lost agency diluted in the praxis of her sex, we hardly remember any notable female character in the Holmesian saga; the same is true for Satyajit Ray’s Feluda, where strong female characters are conspicuous by their absence. Although Swaradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Saytavati, the wife of Byomkesh Bakshi, and Harriet Vane, the scholar and writer, in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey saga, and, for that matter, Ariadne Oliver in Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories somewhat revive the genre of its gendered imbalance; nevertheless, their aura fades before the detective, the



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supreme protagonist, the acme of intellect. Further, in the last two instances, in Sayers and Christie, we must remember that we have women writers composing the narrative, who, in contrast to male writers like Ray, Doyle and Poe never problematized the female gender in their work. This fallacy is deliberately rectified by Agatha Christie, whose fictional detective Miss Marple with her inconspicuousness and fidgety manners transmogrifies the method of the patriarchal detective narrative once and for all. “Amelia Butterworth [as] the prototypical spinster detective, created by Anna Katharine Green in 1897” (Irons, Glenwood, and Joan Warthling Roberts 1995, 64) may have inspired Christie, who thirty years later begat her Marple. And “[t]hrough mutation and reinvention, the British spinster detective has come down to us—via Harriet Vane and Cordelia Gray—in the guise of Liza Cody’s modern hipster operative Anna Lee” (ibid). Nevertheless, as with Miss Marple or with Cordelia Gray and later female detectives like M. J. Arlidge’s DI Helen Grace, the lack of a sidekick is problematic. The conspicuous lack of a sidekick in female detective narratives leads to the following complications: in the absence of a sidekick acting accentuating the appeal and intellect of the detective, we have to rely on the detective’s bonhomie and efforts in communicating her incisiveness through action; second, the lack of a sidekick acting as the eyes and the ears of the reader renders any insight into the detective’s unconscious and her mind as impossible such that we have to rely on minor characters and narrators (like Leonard Clement in Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage) as to an insight into the detective’s method. Finally, the nonappearance of a sidekick in female driven detective narratives suggests that detection is a job that is, like many other employs, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), as the title of P. D. James’ famous Cordelia Gray mystery suggests. Crime stories form a site of lasting discourse of literary historiography. The devices, codes, and conventions of established crime fiction influence later works in the genre. As such, sidekicks as an indelible part of a crime chronicle, act as a narrative lens communicating the erroneous solving of the crime by an average reader. Therefore, their presence and the lack thereof are problematic and must be debated. We know that crime stories act as cautionary tales and are structured around a society porous to criminal invasion from all sides and the sidekick embodies the everyman who finds himself in the thick of a crime. The eyes and ears of a reader, the sidekick, is the ultimate representative communicating the narrative to the reader from the unique angle and associating with the reading public by virtue of his intellect, which is equivalent to an average reader, in decoding the crime along with the detective.

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WORKS CITED Bailey, Brian. 2002. Burke and Hare: The Year of the Ghouls. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing. Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z: An Essay. New York: Hill and Wang. Bradford, Richard. 2015. Crime Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. N.p: Oxford. Pelham, Camden, and Hablot Knight Browne. 1891. The chronicles of crime; or, The new Newgate calendar. London: T. Miles. Campbell, Sue Ellen. 1995. “The Detective Heroine and the Death of Her Hero: Dorothy Sayers to P.D. James.” Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons, 12–28. University of Toronto Press. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/ stable/10.3138/j.ctt1287pdb.6. Accessed 20 Dec. 2020. Falks, G. 1966. “The Psychoanalytic Theories of Crime Causation.” Criminology 4: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1966.tb00134.x Fiske, John. 2010. Understanding Popular Culture. London. New York: Routledge. Fitzpatrick, John J. “Psychoanalysis and Crime: A Critical Survey of Salient Trends in the Literature.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 423, no. 1 (January 1976): 67–74. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271627642300107. Irons, Glenwood, and Joan Warthling Roberts. 1995. “From Spinster to Hipster: The ‘Suitability’ of Miss Marple and Anna Lee.” Feminism in Women’s Detective Fiction, edited by Glenwood Irons., 64–73. University of Toronto Press. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1287pdb.9. Accessed 20 Dec. 2020. Knox, R. (1929) 1976. Introduction to The Best Detective Stories of 1928–29. Reprinted inHaycraft Howard. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, revised edition, New York: Biblio and Tannen. Porter, Dennis. 1999. The Pursuit of Crime: Art and Ideology in Detective Fiction. Ann Arbor, Mich: Books on Demand. Scaggs, John. 2010. Crime fiction. London: Routledge. Stowe, William W. 1989. “Critical Investigations: Convention and Ideology in Detective Fiction.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, vol. 31, no. 4: 570–591. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40754910. Accessed 19 Dec. 2020. “World’s Oldest Murder Mystery Was 430,000 Years in the Making.” 2015. Science. May 28, 2015. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/05/28/ worlds-oldest-murder-mystery-was-430000-years-in-the-making/.

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Chapter 12

Dashiell Hammett A Pinkerton Detective’s Fictional Sleuths Robert McParland

Dashiell Hammett, a Pinkerton detective and fiction writer, was arguably the most influential American detective fiction writer of the twentieth century. Raymond Chandler (1950) called Hammett “spare, frugal, hard-boiled.” Dashiell Hammett’s most memorable crime stories were written in the 1920s and 1930s. Red Harvest, The Thin Man, The Glass Key, and The Maltese Falcon are stories he is known best for. However, one may look at the period leading up to these stories, during which Hammett was working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency (1915–1922). What is most interesting during this period in Hammett’s life is the class-based work of the Pinkerton Agency, which he joined. Early in the twentieth century, the Pinkerton detectives were acting as strike breakers for capitalist owners of American mines. Hammett contributed to investigations of working-class efforts to oppose working conditions, wage limitations, and managerial aggression. This class-based, sociopolitical dimension to Hammett’s work as a detective may be set alongside his development of his hard-boiled detective characters and the villains of his fiction. Between 1915 and 1917, Hammett worked with the Pinkerton Agency. James Wright tutored him in detective work and became a model for his character the Continental Op. Hammett entered military service during the First World War. At Camp Meade, he succumbed to the 1918 flu epidemic. He caught pneumonia and contracted tuberculosis. This deeply affected his health. However, it also led to his meeting his wife, Josephine Dolan, at a Washington state hospital. Despite his health issues, he returned to work 135

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with the Pinkertons in Spokane in 1919. The Pinkerton’s Western supervisor, James McParland, died in May of that year. The famed detective, who had infiltrated the Molly Maguires, was Hammett’s regional boss in his first years with the Pinkerton Agency. The Pinkertons, at that time, were known for their efforts to maintain order at the Western mines. The Anaconda Mine Strike was precipitated when workers and union leaders called for a strike on April 18, 1920, at the Butte copper mines. Copper prices had fallen following the First World War due to decreased demand. Negotiations stalled at the mines. Guards were deputized on April 21 by the Silver Bows County Sheriff to keep order and control workers. This did not minimize the stress, however. More than four-hundred workers joined the strike. Dashiell Hammett was among the Pinkerton detectives called in to join the forces that sought to deal with the striking workers. Violence erupted and about fifteen workers were wounded, and one worker died in shooting incidents. Dashiell Hammett’s recollections of his experiences with the Pinkertons served as source for his story-writing. He completed more than thirty stories in the 1920s. In 1921, Hammett moved back to work in San Francisco. It has been suggested that his fragile health caused him to leave the agency, take a stenography class at Munsons in 1922, and then turn toward writing full-time. Hammett’s first publications were brief and what we today might call flash fiction. They were only about ten to thirteen lines each and they were not detective stories. His first published stories were “The Parthian Shot” in Smart Set (1922) and “Immortality” in Storybook (1922), a onepage first-person biography of Oscar Blichy. “The Road Home” (1922) was Hammett’s first Black Mask story. “Arson Plus” (1923) introduced the Continental Ops. The Continental Op appeared in the 1920s in thirty-six short stories and in two novels serialized in Black Mask. Between 1924 and 1925, Hammett wrote “The Tenth Clew,” “The House in Turk Street,” “The Whosis Kid,” “The Scorched Face,” and “Dead Yellow Women.” Black Mask editor Phil Cody (1926) emphasized the masculine character of the magazine and its tough-guy image: “Black Mask gives its reads more real honest-to-jasper he-man stuff . . . than any other magazine” (Cody 1926, 2). Hammett (1960) gave his readers “The Big Knock-Over” in February, the “106,000 Blood Money” in May, “The Main Death” in June. In the linked stories of “$106,000 Blood Money” and “The Big Knock-Over” the Continental Ops is assisted by Jack Counihan, a young, inexperienced detective. This likeable but “jingle-brained” detective who “drifted into the Continental Op’s employ” becomes a troubling trickster (Hammett 2001, 538). Red Harvest (1927), Hammett’s first novel, set the stage for the hard-boiled detective to investigate crime and corruption in the city. In Personville,



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sometimes called Poisonville, residents are murdered, and the Continental Op must track down the perpetrator. Red Harvest set the bar for the hard-boiled detective story and the hard-boiled style. Hammett wrote in short sentences. Along with this laconic style come twisted plots, cynicism, and urban grime. In Red Harvest, ‘Poisonville’ is gritty, “an ugly city” (Hammett 1960, 9). The city is caught up in power and criminality. Common workers appear subjugated in an industrial zone of cracked justice. There is anxiety about forms of economic and political power and their connection with corruption. Elihu Willssohn is a capitalist patriarch who exercises control. The Op will break open this city “from Adams apple to ankles” (Hammett 1950, 55). He engages in a double-cross and compromises his own integrity. The Dain Curse (1928) was also serialized in Black Mask. Hammett rewrote the story to provide some fluency of the narrative as the four sections were turned into a book. The Dain Curse was not made into a movie while Hammett was alive. His story was complex and seemingly too unwieldy for film. It had to wait until 1978 for a new medium: a TV mini-series on CBS. In an interview with The Brooklyn Eagle (1929), Hammett described work as “breadwinning.” He recalled that he was a messenger for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a clerk for an ad agency, timekeeper in a cannery and machine shop, a stockbroker, a stevedore. He answered an ad and became a detective in the Baltimore office of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. In the Brooklyn Eagle (August 21, 1929). Hammett recalls following a man from the city into the country. The man got lost, and Hammett had to give him directions so he could find his way back to the city. He recalled a detective taken into custody by the police and a forger who left his wife because she began smoking while he was in prison. “I know a man who once stole a Ferris wheel,” he told the newspaper (Brooklyn Eagle, 1929). The hard-boiled style of Hammett’s detective fiction writing had now become well-known. The Washington Evening Star (1930) reported: “New Fiction Detective Created by Young Man.” The writer announced that Hammett’s Ops now joined Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, Craig Kennedy. He pointed out that Hammett “was a real detective himself” (Washington Star, 1930, C-4). The Maltese Falcon (1929) was serialized in Black Mask. Black Mask, meanwhile, announced their publication of “a new type of detective fiction writing” (Cody 1926, 5). Black Mask editor Joseph Thompson Shaw (1933) wrote an editorial in which he identified the typical Black Mask reader as someone who “knows the song of a bullet.” He added that this reader also knew “The soft, slithering hiss of a swift-thrown knife, the feel of hard fists, the call of courage” (Shaw, 1933, 8). Dashiell Hammett gives us a slice of the 1930s in The Thin Man. Hammett began writing The Thin Man in 1930 but his novel was not published until 1934. With his satire of the silliness of the rich, Hammett brings humor to his

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depiction of his detective and his clients. The novel is itself a cynical comment upon the hard-boiled detective novel. The Thin Man is a different sort of detective novel, featuring a detective who does not have much business in being one. Nora is a wealthy person, and Nick spends most of his time getting drunk. Nora is silly, Nick is cynical, and the Wyanants are peculiar. It appears that Nick is drawn into the case against his own interests. He would rather take it easy. In The Thin Man, Nick and Nora tease each other. When Nick and Nora get involved in the murder mystery, they just do it for fun. They go back to the hotel room and order room service and have their drinks. It seems like Nick does not really care about the case. Nick prefers gin and parties. This is the opposite of Sam Spade. It is making fun of the detective character and the femme fatale figure, who in this case is Dorothy. Sam Spade would be more serious, talking with people in his murder investigation and showing more concern about them. In contrast, Nick says to Nora: “Listen darling, tomorrow I’ll bring a whole lot of detective stories. But don’t worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight” (Hammett, 2001, 21). Nick and Nora’s apartment is a bit too fancy for a seedy detective. Their interest in parties is nothing like the commitment we see in Sam Spade. In The Thin Man, the prose is choppy and fast paced. The detective is a reluctant detective. He would rather drink and lounge around than be drawn into other people’s problems. If it were not for events, the detective might have stayed retired. However, Nick is drawn by forces beyond his control—just like Depression era people were affected by economic forces beyond their control. Maybe Nick in The Thin Man is just running away. This makes for an ineffective documentary of the 1930s. Determined Americans did not run away. They worked hard. They dedicated themselves to something. In The New Republic, T. S. Matthews (1934) wrote in his review of The Thin Man: “Now that Dashiell Hammett is beginning to be taken seriously by the highbrows, my first-hand enthusiasm for him is beginning to cool a little” (Matthews 1935, 316). Soon afterward, The Thin Man began to receive film adaptations. In the first, “John Guild” was Hammett’s private detective. This character underwent a transformation. With a little more slapdash and charm, Nick Charles emerged as an ex-private eye who had retired so that he could manage his wife Nora’s family lumber business. Hammett’s new detective story was leavened with some quirky dark comedy and the personalities of Nick and Nora. Of course, Nick is persuaded to come out of retirement by Nora, and he investigates the murder mystery. It is easy for a reader to assume that Nick is the thin man of the story’s title. However, the thin man, Clyde Wynant, is dead, a thin corpse that can be pushed into a hiding spot in the cellar of his laboratory.



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On November 8, 1934, an article by Hammett appeared concerning his return to Hollywood (Brooklyn Eagle 1934, C-2). He wrote: “It’s a shame that a nice town and a lot of nice people should have gone so violently energetic.” He says that three years ago as he sat scribbling in his chair, “life was calm and peaceful.” Hammett worked on the screenplay for City Lights (1931) and a script for The Maltese Falcon. The Thin Man (1933) appeared in Redbook and then appeared both in book form and as a film in 1934. Hammett wrote the film script Woman in the Dark for MGM. He sold the rights of The Thin Man to MGM. Several sequels would follow. The Thin Man, The Glass Key, and The Maltese Falcon were stories ripe for adaptation. The Glass Key (1931) had become a film in 1935. The film rights for The Glass Key were obtained by Paramount for $25,000. This exceeded the $8,500 that Warner Brothers had paid for The Maltese Falcon. The first of the film adaptations of The Glass Key was created by Frank Tuttle in 1935. Paramount invested more money in the second version of The Glass Key (1942), a film with a noir atmosphere. In The Thin Man and in The Glass Key investigators become the protagonists. In The Glass Key, Ned Beaumont is the assistant to Paul Madvig, a political boss. When his friend, Madvig, is accused of murder Ned becomes a special investigator for the office of the District Attorney. Of course, Paul Madvig is a dishonest city politician, but Ned Beaumont cannot believe he would ever kill anyone. Hammett’s character Ned Beaumont looks a bit like Hammett. He wears a tweed jacket and pants, sports a mustache, and drinks too much. He is also doggedly persistent. He encounters an environment in which the atmosphere of corruption will not be easily dispelled. He seeks to get at the truth and to maintain a romantic relationship with Janet Henry. Janet dreams that they become lost in a forest and that they end up in a desolate house filled with snakes. The glass key breaks in Ned Beaumont’s hand when he has opened the door. Hammett entertained 1930s America. When Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal and began his fireside chats, the American nation was troubled by economic downslide and people were looking for some plain-spoken language. There was a sense of commitment, a desire for no-nonsense, a longing for someone to make some sense out of the chaos. The hard-boiled writing of Dashiell Hammett did just this. In straight-forward prose, he put the world in order. His character Sam Spade committed himself to solving a crime and to setting the world right again. Like Ernest Hemingway, Hammett provides concrete language that pins down things. In a world where the characters are shady and their behaviors are uncertain, Hammett’s writing is sturdy and no-nonsense, just like Sam Spade. The hard-boiled detective is an ethical, driven character. There is some

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cynicism to Sam Spade. He is a rough-edged character who sees through people. He knows that something is up with the girl who has enlisted his services as a detective. It is obvious that the Fat Man is up to something, even though he presents a sophisticated persona. The Fat Man talks in circles and Sam Spade is a straight talker. Sam is determined, even as he is suspected of wrongdoing by the police. We recognize that the police are bumbling and not quite on track, but that Sam is always on track with his case. Sam Spade is an antidote for the Great Depression because he overcomes chaos. He solves crime. He wipes out uncertainty. He clears the air—even as he contributes to the smoky atmosphere with his rolled-up cigarettes. Sam Spade is tough, just like Hammett’s writing. He works out of a shabby office, with a dedicated female assistant. He is driven by material need and the desire to make money as much as by his social ethics and his determination. While he is smart, he is also practical, and he does not spend a lot of time dwelling upon things. He is usually in motion-like a lot of American society. Spade is a doer who is willing to take risks to get the job done. Hammett’s style is about getting at the facts. The writer, like Sam Spade, has a commitment to set the world right. He must write this novel to entertain us and to remind us that there are people who feel driven to make this a better world. Sam Spade is tough, but not emotionless. Sam is a solitary investigator who is going to get to the bottom of things. He is like the prize-fighter who gets knocked down and gets up again. No wonder Joe Louis “the Brown Bomber”— was a boxing hero in the 1930s and 1940s. A country that had been knocked down was getting up again. At about the midpoint of this novel still the Maltese Falcon has not yet appeared. We see a few suspicious characters like Cairo and the Fat Man (Chapter 11). Questions arise: Are we to believe Bridget O’Shaughnessey, who once was Miss Wonderly? Who shot Thursby? Who killed Spade’s partner Miles? We the readers are led along into the mystery. We follow Sam Spade as he investigates. Even so, at this point, we are still in the smoke and the uncertainty. A reader can only believe—in the 1930s or now—that Sam Spade, with all his determination, will lead us beyond it. Just like the writer is assembling the pieces and putting things in order, so is Sam Spade. This gives an economically troubled and fragmented society some hope. Hammett, struggling with alcoholism, returned to the hospital in 1936. He read the writings of Karl Marx, and he lived in New York City and in Princeton. In 1937, Hammett became involved with the Communist Party and with social activism. He was engaged with the Committee for Elections Rights in 1940. During this time, The Maltese Falcon was adapted to film and directed by John Huston, in its most well-known version with actors Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Sidney Greenstreet.



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When war came, audiences at home were listening to radio serials with Hammett’s characters. In 1942, Hammett joined the military. Readers in Brooklyn, New York saw this announced in their local newspapers (Hammett 1942, 11). Hammett served as an Army private at Fort Monmouth and was sent to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. There he edited Arkadian, a military magazine, between 1944 and 1945. He had attained the rank of sergeant by the time he received an honorable discharge in 1945. Writing less for film after the war, he watched other screenwriters adapt his stories. The radio series continued with The Adventures of Sam Spade and The Fat Man. The Adventures of Sam Spade, in radio play format was aired for five years, 1946 to 1951, with Howard Duff in the role of the detective. “The old master never will be forgotten,” observed the Sunday Evening Star (1945) in Washington, D.C. on December 2, 1945 (Tracewell 1945, 10). Charles Tracewell of the newspaper mentioned that “Truman likes this type of fiction. The President reads whodunits for relaxation” (Tracewell 1945, 10). Charles Honce cited Raymond Chandler: “He considers the tales of Dashiell Hammett among the best that are to be found” (Honce 1945). In the Sunday newspaper of May 18, 1947, The Brooklyn Eagle (1947) observed of Hammett: “He can probably start a trend if he wants to.” (Brooklyn Eagle, 1947, 26)

The Thin Man became what we today would call a film franchise. The film of The Thin Man, directed by W. S. “Woody” Van Dyke, with actors Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy), is filled with witty repartee. The subsequent films were more gritty than witty. There were five sequels, including After the Thin Man (1936) and Another Thin Man (1939). Hammett wrote the scenario for After the Thin Man for screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Hammett sold his rights to his characters to MGM for $40,000. The Song of the Thin Man (1947) was the last film in the series. Hammett’s screen credit read: “based on characters created by Dashiell Hammett.” Thin Man characters appeared on a radio show that was broadcast from 1941 to 1950. A television series followed in the 1950s. Hammett returned to social justice activism in the late 1940s. He was named the New York Civil Rights President. Hammett’s activism included work on behalf of civil rights and communist party support. The Associated Press (1946) reported in July 1946 that “Dashiell Hammett, president of Civil Rights Congress of New York called upon Mayor O’ Dwyre” (Daily Bulletin, 1946, 1). There was an argument against police violence against African American people in the city, citing “three incidents in the past six weeks.” Hammett participated with the Freedom Lobby’s efforts toward civil rights legislation. Joining the effort were W. E. B. DuBois, Ring Lardner, Carey McWilliams, and other writers.

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Alcoholism continued to hinder Hammett, and he was again hospitalized. In 1951, he testified before the Congress Bail Fund. He would not reveal the sources of bail funds for communist sympathizers. He was jailed for contempt of court. Subsequent McCarthy hearings did not help the ailing detective fiction writer. He had a heart attack while at Martha’s Vineyard with Lillian Hellman in 1953. Hammett died in 1961. Raymond Chandler (1950), in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” recognized that Hammett wrote detective fiction with “style.” Chandler sought greater realism for detective fiction. British detective fiction from 1920 to 1937, he said, was lacking (Chandler, 1950, 20). Hammett offered a tougher, hard-boiled alternative. Hammett voiced an America of underworld slang spoken by rival gangs, street figures, and criminals. His fiction took aim at an audience of working-class readers. It was plain in speech and action driven. Complex plots appeared in short chapters. Hammett killed off characters in Red Harvest with alacrity. The Thin Man was the last of Hammett’s series of detective novels in 1934. Perhaps he wanted to write significant social novels rather than genre fiction, as his biographer William Nolan has suggested. Hammett’s drinking and carousing may have diminished his productivity, as Nolan also claims. However, he brought the crime novel from the realm of magazine pulp fiction into that of literature. The claim can be made that Hammett and Raymond Chandler, masters of the crime genre, were not only popular genre writers but made important contribution to literature. WORKS CITED Brooklyn Eagle. 1929. “Dashiell Hammett,” August 21, 1929: 1–2. ———. 1934. “Film City Too Energetic for Dashiell Hammett.” (November 8, 1934): C-2. ———. 1942. “Dashiell Hammett Joins Army on L.I. as Private” (September 20, 1942): 36. Chandler, Raymond. (1944) 1950. “The Simple Art of Murder,” Atlantic Monthly (1944). Reprint, The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage. Cody, Phil. 1926. Editorial. Black Mask 8, No. 11 (January 1926): 2. Daily Bulletin.1946. Dayton, Ohio (July 31, 1946): 1. Foster, Helen Herbert. 1929. “Home Burglary,” Brooklyn Eagle, October 6, 1929. Hammett, Dashiell. 2001. Hammett: Crime Stories and Other Writings. Edited by Steven Marcus. New York: Library of America. ———. (1922) 2005. “The Parthian Shot” Smart Set (October 1922), “Immortality,” Storybook (November 1922) 13 lines. Lost Stories by Dashiell Hammett. Edited by Vince Emery. Introduction Joe Gores. Vince Emery Productions, 2005.



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———. 1960. The Novels of Dashiell Hammett: Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Honce, Charles. 1945. “The Literary Guidepost.” Washington Morning Star. Wilmington, North Carolina. (Friday October 5, 1945). Layman, Richard. 1981. Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett. New York: Harcourt. Marling, William. 1983. Dashiell Hammett. Boston: Twayne, 44–46. Matthews, T. S. 1934. The New Republic (January 24, 1934): 316. Nolan, William.1990. Hammett: A Life at the Edge. New York: St. Martin’s. Pollock, Arthur. 1947. “Playthings” Brooklyn Eagle (May 18, 1947): 26. Shaw, Joseph Thompson. 1931. Black Mask XV, No. 5 (July 1931): 5. ———.1933. Black Mask XVIII (Spring 1933): 2. Smith, Erin. 2000. Hard-Boiled: Working-Class Readers and Pulp Magazines. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Tracewell, Charles. 1945. “Whodunits Hold Honored Place in Washington.” Washington Evening Star (December 2, 1945):10. Washington Evening Star. 1930. “New Fiction Detective Created by Young Man. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade Product of Real Operative’s Life Bowls Over Literati.” (March 9,1930): C-4.

Chapter 13

Conflict, Desire and the City Exploring Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep Neepa Sarkar

The twentieth century, apart from being defined by the world wars, also saw concomitantly the development of the city and its impact on the sociocultural fabric of nations as a whole. The city came to be viewed as a dark, contemplative place of lurking characters, crime scenes of drugs and violence, organized crime, pollution and decay, a sort of urban wasteland where alienation becomes a tour de force in itself. Both Charles Baudelaire and Georg Simmel expressed the alienation felt by the inhabitants of the city in their writings. Georg Simmel in his essay, “The metropolis and mental life” (Simmel, 15) much like Albert Camus, who said it regarding the existential philosophy, focuses on the freedom of the individual in the milieu of the city where the older closed bonds of the familiar rural community get replaced by the unfamiliar, strange and anonymous existence. The city underwent huge transformations in the decades before and after the World Wars and the rapid change was further hastened with the restructuring of economy post World War I. However, the transformation in the structure and design of the city had already begun post the Industrial Revolution which saw the rise of capitalism and the consequent emergence of large-scale unemployment. And the rise in crime coincided with the social and cultural turmoil present in the society. The security of familiar and conventional settings was gone and replaced by the urban mean streets, decayed and alone with its transient populations in which the criminal could not only go undetected but dwell in the inherent duality present and inevitable in the existence and essence of the city. A duality where boundaries could easily be 145

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transgressed and blurred and where criminals and police would keep company and where corruption was not restricted to the criminal groups only. Crime stories woven around such modern conurbation found explicit portrayal in Raymond Chandler’s writings where the city became a text in itself characterized by insatiability, intertextuality, materiality and desire. As a literary cartographer, Raymond Chandler gave expression to an authentic but rapidly changing urban space and his characters practiced the economy and social interactions of the city, Los Angeles in particular, and all were embroiled in the conflicting drive to make money in a world where much of the desires is driven by money. It is in such a milieu that crime fiction gained its popular appeal especially with the emergence of the hard-boiled crime fiction novels expressing and containing the contradictions and problems of the modern urban life of the twentieth century. The private eye or the modern detective also appeared transformed in this new version of the crime fiction genre, and almost was a substitute for the flaneur figure as extolled in the essay, “Myth of the Flaneur” by Walter Benjamin. Seen as a wandering observer, the flaneur as reveled in the works of Baudelaire and Balzac, not only observed and confronted but also deciphered the signifiers of the labyrinthine metropolitan alleys and negotiated on his own terms threatening dark urban spaces of crime and degeneration. Much like the flaneur figure, the detective of the hard-boiled crime fiction became a response to the world which had become chaotic, duplicitous and corrupt and the plot highlighted the anxieties of the contemporary social and political order. The flaneur seemed to exist between the imaginary and the real. However, in a post war society, the flaneur and his methods gained political significance as he became defined by the notion of desire in an increasingly transformed urban landscape. Desire, even while getting appropriated becomes a tool for comprehending and controlling the travesties of the American society of the early twentieth century. And no one seems to master this skill quite like the masculine detective figure of the hard-boiled crime fiction genre. For the American male detective, the hard-boiled crime fiction genre provides the city with a unifying vision—that of a spectacle (Guy Debord); enmeshing the spirit and soul of the city and its inhabitants and allowing an irresponsible autonomy to disrupt and spoil personal relationships. These hard-boiled crime fiction novels while celebrating the autonomy of the individual in a capitalist economy also warns of the dangers of rampant consumerism and commodification which embroils even personal relationships and is an impetus to crime. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe belongs to such a society where the professional private eye has to work to make a living through his investigative skills as he states in The Big Sleep “I get twenty-five (dollars) a day and expenses” (11). Los Angeles becomes Marlowe’s playground and as he works through its dangerous streets, Chandler presents his



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readers with a setting almost like a dreamscape, nightmarish in nature and where only the corrupt and perverse can survive. And, Marlowe appears almost like a knight-savior trying not only to discern the social order but also put it right. In fact, Chandler, while introducing Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1939) begins with the perception of Marlowe as he views the Sternwood mansion and remarks upon the stained-glass panel showing a knight rescuing a lady. And Marlowe states, “I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying” (The Big Sleep, 3). Marlowe as a private detective from the first page of the novel establishes himself as a professional whose deductive skills are superior than his common clientele which undoubtedly grants him a protective awareness regarding the world that he resides in. Marlowe, a stranger to the world yet aware of its flaws and dealings with crime, is reminiscent of the old-world order of virtue and faith, but with a prodigal side who cannot help but be immersed in a world polluted by self-interest, consumption, and chaos. Marlowe, a lost Byronic hero in a city of darkness and despair comprehends his world that knows no love or repentance and goes about sorting it out; maintaining his personal autonomy in the face of shadowy coercive forces of organized crime and ruthless corporations. Marlowe, despite all appears in control of situations and his sexuality; potent, confident, and masculine and unlike the pollution of the post-industrial city, both literal and metaphorical, prevailing in the urban landscape; does not lose his integrity nor his hold on the social order. A sense of melancholia and indifference seems to determine his being espousing Byronic undertones along with an insight into the modern American society. Philip Marlowe stands out as a detective who just doesn’t merely solve the puzzle but also is critical of the society he operates in. Marlowe seems to dwell in an existential angst and yet seems to go beyond it and provide a lucid commentary, becoming the flickering light in all the darkness and depravity he sees around him. Marlowe could be seen as a precursor to the “wisecrack” persona that often gets associated with the investigator; as one who sees through everything and hold an exceptional awareness and presents a stylized demonstration of that knowledge which not only showcases a sort of indifference towards authority but also implies that institutionalized power has not been able to capture his psyche and will. Contemporary illustrations of the wisecrack can be seen in the characterization and portrayal of Patrick Jane in the popular TV series The Mentalist (2008–2015) whose main protagonist indulges in mnemotechniques to solve crimes. Philip Marlowe plays this sort of role with panache, always articulate and disenchanted and often the connecting link between the legitimate and the illegitimate in his contemporary American society. Marlowe integrates the anxieties of an era in which individualist ideology of America could not solve the contemporary social

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and political conflicts and class problems. Marlowe, although while reaching out to the numerous segments of the society, maintains a possessive and guarded hold on his own self and identity which according to Ernest Mandel appears as a supreme desire in Marlowe; to focus on the individual rather than the communal (a deliberate avoidance to the threats that come from Wars and economic depressions). Philip Marlowe from the beginning itself sets his parameters as expressed in the negotiations with his client and believes in communication and cooperation. Earlier critical studies on Chandler’s writings had looked at Marlowe as a knight always on a quest to sort out the social order of his times. George Grella had seen in the hard-boiled crime fiction genre a tradition of the American novel replete in myths and legends and tied to the idea of a quest. However, scholars like Bethany Ogden have pointed out that Marlowe has no such quests of resolving social problems and instead is dangerous and self-centerd. Joyce Carol Oates also believes in this feminist view and finds Chandler’s portrayal of gender as contemptuous regarding women, who in his plots are always shown as depraved, dangerous and putrid. “She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth . . .” (The Big Sleep, 4). He shows a discomfort at excessive female sexuality and considers it a threatening space in which the male identity can get submerged. “She was worth a stare. She was trouble” (13). A fear perhaps expressed succinctly in Kristeva’s notion of the ‘abject,’ “The place of the abject is where meaning collapses, the place where I am not. The abject threatens life, it must be radically excluded from the place of the living subject, propelled away from the body and deposited on the other side of an imaginary border which separates the self from that which threatens the self” (Powers of Horror, 65). Through Philip Marlowe, Chandler sets about constructing a myth, perhaps a monomyth, on the American male-one who is able to journey into the darkest recesses of society, confront crime, corruption and violence and come out of it almost unscarred. Chandler states in his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder” that the detective novel is about investigating what it means to be a man. He (Marlowe) “talks as a man of his age talks—with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham and a contempt for pettiness” (18). In this direction The Big Sleep becomes significant as it aids in the propagation of the myth of the rugged, individualistic American man who is guided by nothing more than his own moral integrity. Marlowe becomes the man that the men after the World War wanted to become-able to forget the horrors of the world and come out unscathed. This sort of masculinity would soon find representation in many locations in American culture especially with the impending failure of the American Dream of individual success and happiness. Though a product of the modern consciousness, Marlowe tends to turn



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to old chivalric conventions to negotiate with the world as he brings together disparate elements of a centerless urban space. The Big Sleep, apart from being a whodunnit, also looks into the interactions of hegemonic masculinity with modern urban norms and expectations. The gender performances (Butler) change over time and sociologist Michael Kimmel in Manhood in America demonstrates that the sociocultural compositions of what masculinity is comprised of and what is required of men to keep performing these ideals are changeable and based on cultural attitudes. Kimmel sees masculinity as a cultural negotiation and performance in which power is deeply ingrained and is part of a hegemonic discourse. This hegemonic masculinity in some parts in reflected in Marlowe’s characterization as well. Traits of dominance, aggression, independence, emotional invulnerability, toughness, and a sort of ease in dealing with violence and crime is seen in Marlowe. As Marlowe states in the beginning of the novel that what he doesn’t like is insubordination and is willing to get fired from a job if he faces it. “I was fired. For insubordination. I test very high on insubordination, General” (The Big Sleep, 8). The urban space that Marlowe inhabits is transmuted beyond the confines of the traditional form of the genre and instead is a broad glance into the waste, decay and disease (mental) predominant in the post-industrial city. The genre also fostered a colloquial style of writing which was laconic, terse, fast paced and depicting the experience of living in such despicable paths. “He put a cigarette in his mouth . . . saw me watching him from the corner, and straightened up as if somebody had booted him from behind” (19). The interplay of language and meaning in the text brings up an uneasy feeling in the reader, evocative of the world of the characters. In his essay, “The Synoptic Chandler,” Frederic Jameson suggests that in this novel (The Big Sleep) the solution to the mystery becomes less primary than the characters and the events which lead or unravel the reason of the crime. Marlowe is not simply an observer but an important presence needed to uplift the city and remind it of its essence and bring in a new modern voice however, clasping on to the heroic ideals of the past age. “Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was” (164). Its no wonder, that given the plot line of a sharp detective, a femme fatale and crime on the dark streets of Los Angeles influenced the film noir genre with its occupation with the binaries of light and dark in both literal and metaphorical sense. Marlowe by often intruding and conducting his own investigations brings himself to risk and though the crime is solved the novel often ends in a sort of desultory note. Marlowe, almost but not entirely, reflects the existential angst of the human condition and the need to escape the uncaring ambience of the city which ironically can be achieved by having a superior awareness by living in it. One important fact that Raymond Chandler’s novels

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discuss is the role of ethics in both societal and professional conduct as he chooses to focus on how the detective works through while resolving the crime bringing to mind attention and diligence to one’s profession which was seen as a new age ethical code with the development and restructuring of the twentieth century American economy and society. Marlowe also showcases a personal autonomy and does not allow any interference with his work. Marlowe’s refusal to work for Eddie Mars also highlights his perceptive nature of understanding and gauging danger and even though he gets tested at all points of the novel whether in terms of money or sex, he never gives in and remains loyal to his client, General Sternwood. Though initially hired to sort a blackmail issue regarding the General’s daughter Carmen, which Marlowe solves, but he also investigates further to find the cause of Rusty Regan’s death. With the development of the city, there were, apart from restructuring of old economic and social relationships, new bonds that brought in a different code of conduct and ethics. Marlowe understands such a world very well and standing on his established sense of personal autonomy he knows how to demand what he deems as right in his dealings with his client in terms of freedom and compensation for his services. As he says to the General that he should have the autonomy to act on the case as he deems fit. But Marlowe brings up an important question—is it important to continue being compassionate to your client where murder is involved, as he chooses to be quiet about Rusty Regan’s death, for it can be seen as a moral failure on his part. Does this personal autonomy then come at a cost of ignoring the state? The ending of this novel does not change its society for better or bring any justice to its world. The criminals still remain and the readers are now aware that even turning them in to law would not bring any major change. It is a degeneration of a society due to the corruptive influence of the wealth that gets well documented in the novel and which also points to the fact that it has impacted the individual units of the American family as well. The Sternwood family becomes a prototype of an American family who cannot buy solace with their money. Ironically, General Sternwood seeks help to solve the imbalance and rescue his family from scandal through money itself by hiring a private eye but he has a clear knowledge regarding his daughters, Vivian and Carmen, and due to his age and ill health is unable to keep them away from disaster. As he tells Marlowe, “I need not add that a man who indulges in parenthood for the first time at the age of fifty-four deserves all he gets.” (10). Marlowe’s task ultimately becomes to control these willful women who have brought instability, mayhem, and disorder to the house. However, the end of the novel states that death is the greatest leveler of all and wealth cannot alter it. “You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell” (164).



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The hardboiled detective seems to tackle the disorder and corruption of the world of crime through a language and linguistic control practiced and embedded in his toughness. Almost a Tiresias-like character from T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the hard-boiled detective in general and Philip Marlowe in particular, becomes the figure of the modern isolated man viewing the spectacle of disorder and chaos of the world which has become barren and futile, providing no purpose and meaning to those who inhabit it and he the lone crusader who still continues to make or at least attempt to make sense of it all. One can detect existential strands even in The Big Sleep and Marlowe becomes a sort of modern knight who relentlessly attempts to make meaning of the human condition in a world which seems to have lost its sense and purpose. It is a world without any benevolent presence and episodic interventions where justice and lawlessness intermingle and disillusionment freely flows. The novel in many ways presents the anxieties and the insecurity in terms of gender and politics faced by the masculine order of that time. The shift from agrarian to industrialism had brought in major transformations in cultural attitudes and norms and with women entering the work force and becoming a conspicuous strength in the public sphere had given way to new anxieties in terms of distribution and performance of gender roles in the patriarchal society. And we find that reflected in the characterization of Marlowe who is shrewd and escapes at every turn the sexual temptations offered by Carmen Sternwood (who is the murderer in the plot). This gives him a sort of masculine triumph in his quest for the invincible masculine ideal. It is no wonder then that, at the beginning of the novel, he is so deeply captured by the image of the knight-savior, which seems to have a certain resonance in him. Ironically enough, none of the women in the novel need saving as such and are willing to negotiate a corrupt world on any terms. The interwar period saw the detectives whether in hard-boiled crime fiction or classical detective fiction as always male espousing masculinity in their actions and speeches. This novel presents us with a figure of the patriarchal father figure; decayed and dying, betrayed by his daughters who demean his paternal power and hold on the familial structure. Thus, if the novel has the intention of upholding and maintaining the male power, then Marlowe’s support of the father figure sees a justification for the continuance of patriarchy. Marlowe deciding to not bring Carmen’s crime to light is because of his sympathy toward General Sternwood. Hardiness both in speech and action becomes a sort of synonym for masculinity, particularly a masculinity entrenched in American domestic values of gender and family. It is a masculinity which doesn’t simply face threat from destabilization of gender norms but also from the political and cultural contexts as well; which has become dominated with hostility, anxiety, and polarization. However, Chandler doesn’t seem to provide much about his hero’s past history and he

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seems to be condemned to a certain sort of loneliness to which he has become adjusted. As an inhabitant of the modern complex world, Marlowe is prone to inner thoughts and deliberations within his psyche where his survival strategy is through the usage of cynicism. Marlowe’s purpose in such a world becomes more philosophical trying to sort out concepts of fear, alienation and disillusionment and what it means to be a man in such a world. A world depicted through the archetype of the city of Los Angeles which has been reduced to a place of grey despair and dark streets. In Chandler’s chiaroscuro pattern of depiction, the city is transformed into a place for violence and depravity. It is in such a world that concerns regarding moral and ethical values become significant and pertinent. Interestingly, it is quite noteworthy that the hard-boiled crime fiction got its name because of the detective-hero who envelops himself in a hard shell (metaphorically) as a protective measure against the violence, crime and brutality that he encounters in the city. The detectives of hard-boiled fiction, particularly Raymond Chandler’s, understand that a mystery might get temporarily solved but the question remains on how to address and resolve the deeper malaise that ails society and the human condition. In this regard they and their persona become a significant development in the crime fiction genre. The beginning of The Big Sleep sees Marlowe giving a spatial description of the Sternwood mansion to the readers which soon brings in the stark contrast as the residents of such a household are shown as debauched and disorderly. And Chandler brings in the meeting between the murderer and the detective in the first few pages itself. Carmen the younger of the Sternwood girls turns out to be the murderer but her agency is ultimately crushed and Marlowe’s demand of institutionalizing her or else face the wrath of the law becomes a sort of a disciplinary erasure of that which threatens his masculine order. The end does not provide much resolution in terms of the larger questions in terms of crises in society and culture but neatly wraps up the murder mystery with the world-weary detective leaving the Sternwood mansion and going forth into a world which offers no respite. Marlowe remains the outsider figure in this American society upholding an honor code which seems to be becoming gradually obsolete. Marlowe’s world is post Prohibition and Depression era hurtling towards the second world war and the colloquial style in which the plot is presented reveals the deep-seated politics that lie in the intermingling of class and gender.



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WORKS CITED Benjamin Walter. (1935) 1995. “Paris: capital of the nineteenth century.” In Metropolis: Centre and Symbol of Our Times, edited by Philip Kasinitiz, 46–47. London: Macmillan. Butler, Judith. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Chandler, Raymond. (1934) 1988. “The Simple Art of Murder.” New York: Vintage Crime. ———. (1939) 1992. The Big Sleep. New York: Vintage Crime. Heller, Bruno, Simon Baker, Robin Tunney, Tim Kang, Owain Yeoman, Amanda Righetti, David Nutter, et al. 2009.  The Mentalist: The Complete First Season. CBS, Amazon Prime. Hiney, Tom. 1997. Raymond Chandler: a biography. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. Horsley, Lee. 2005. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jameson, Fredric. 2016. Raymond Chandler: The Detections of Totality. New York: Verso. Kimmel, M. S. 1996. Manhood in America: A cultural history. New York: Free Press. Kristeva, J. 1982.  Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. New York: Columbia University Press. Simmel, Georg. 1976. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press.

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Chapter 14

Assertive Heroes and Male Heterotopia Revisiting Select Detective Fiction by Hemendra Kumar Roy Stella Chitralekha Biswas

I Bengal boasts of a wealth of captivating detective writings that have perpetually catered to the increasing appetite of literature lovers across generations. There are scholars who, in the course of their thorough research, have traced back the roots of detective fiction within the Indian scenario to the Vedic times. Arunima Sen, in her recent scholarly article, traces the lineage of an indigenous genre of detective fiction to the story of Sarama, a mythological dog in the Rigveda who solves the case of a missing cow for the gods. She even goes on to draw linkages between the modern detective fiction genre of the twentieth century and the witty, humorous stories centring around the prototypical characters of the judge or nobleman such as Birbal, Naseruddin, Gopal Bhnaar, and so on. (Sen 2017, 689–690). However, what is regarded now in critical considerations as the emergence of the first detective fiction proper is the series written by Priyonath Mukhopadhyay, a police official who had begun documenting his personal experiences of working with the government investigation bureau. In 1892 came out his well-known Darogar Daftar (The Office of a Police Inspector) which recounted his first-hand, biographical narratives of dealing, in a matter-of-fact manner, with crimes on 157

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a daily basis. Mukhopadhyay’s memoir-series proposed a model which was to be adapted, moulded and followed by writers of modern detective writing in Bengal in the years thereafter. Despite occupying such a prominent place in the literary history of Bengal, and in fact coinciding with the publication of the early stories of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle in the Strand magazine, Darogar Daftar appeared to lack the thrilling sensationalism and fictive charm that was to be dexterously incorporated by later writers. Over the course of years, stalwarts like Bhuban Chandra Mukhopadhyay, Khetromohan Ghosh, Surendramohan Bhattacharya, Panchkori Dey, Kaliprasanna Chatterjee, Saralabala Dasi, Nagendranath Gupta, Harishadhan Mukhopdhyay, Girishchandra Basu, Rajani Chandra Dutta, Dinendra Kumar Roy, Hemendra Kumar Roy, and others began to develop the genre in terms of both form and content to raise it to the peak of popularity for both lay readers and the elitist intelligentsia. What began as an objective, almost factual presentation of crime solving cases at the hands of Priyonath Mukhopadhyay went on to evolve as a distinct genre in its own right and indigenous flavor. Despite the tangible Western influences upon the Bengali goyendakahini (detective story) in its formative stages, the efforts of the writers were directed towards the development of a figure that would both complement and challenge the colonial implications of race, ethnicity, masculinity, and so on. The early writers had fleshed out from the model of the “popular, London-bred, Euro-centric detective” (Bag 2015, 3), the prototype of the Bengali detective or goenda who would be an extremely sharp, professionally independent and analytical-minded young man with a zest for solving mysteries or crimes as well as travel. There was also introduced the character of a sidekick or assistant following in the steps of the Sherlock-Watson tradition, while immense care was invested to render an indigenous Bengali appeal to such a popular literary practice. There have been evidences of these stories selling like hot cakes in their heyday despite the very apparent foreignness in some of the imitation techniques owing to numerous translations from English and frequent lack of originality (“The . . .” 2014, 2). Perhaps, the very first person who has arguably been credited with bringing home to the Bengali detective fiction proper a distinct Bengali flavor in both form and content, was Hemendra Kumar Roy. Roy’s innovative venture into this domain proved to be a game-changer for the genre, metamorphosing into an “imaginative leap” (“The . . .” 2014, 2) that not only altered the fate of Bengali goendakahini but also went on to include it within the paradigms of juvenile literature. This marked an important turn since the expansion of the target readership across age boundaries served to both abet the popularity of such writings and give it a fresh lease of life amidst the overwhelming literary influences of classical stalwarts of the age like Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bankim Chandra



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Chattopadhyay, and others. This chapter intends to deal with select writings from Hemendra Kumar Roy’s well-known series of detective writings, Jayanta Manik Samagra (Jayanta Manik Omnibus) in order to understand the nuances of Roy’s art that revolutionized Bengali detective fiction in the early twentieth century. II Hemendra Kumar Roy, in the early twentieth century, had already begun associating himself with the illustrious names of the Bengal Renaissance. After having actively been involved with regular contributions to Bharati, a periodical of the Tagore family, Roy went on to work with another juvenile periodical of the time, Nachghar. During this time, he increasingly began engaging with juvenile literature, specifically adventure writings, speculative fiction and important translations that enriched this domain significantly, while also inspiring contemporaries to follow league. His detective stories are a product of this conscious decision to make available to native children an area whose potentialities had remained hitherto partially explored. Just like his adventure fiction, at the outset of publishing which he had famously declared his conscious agenda to indigenize a literary tradition in order to enliven the young generation and inspire them in ideals of manliness, robustness, courage, and virility, his detective writings emerged upon the scene sharing a similar strain of thought. He perceived a genuine lack of such serious considerations among the contemporary practitioners of juvenile literature, which was to him quite inadequate in meeting the demands of an increasing nationalistic fervor. Hundreds of stories remain extant revolving around the Jayanta-Manik duo who is usually assisted by the policeman Sundarbabu, who is a foil to the assertive and often impulsive personalities of the former. Scholars have agreed upon the fact that it was Roy who initiated the cult of the perfectly “Bengali” detective within this prevailing mode of writing in the twentieth century, perceivably in both the attire and ideology of his protagonists even though there were certain obvious traces of Doyle’s or Poe’s influences in the investigative methods that they adopted. Roy’s imaginative stratagems bore the characteristic hallmark of a Bengali sociocultural ethos that appealed greatly to the tastes of native readers across a wide range of age-groups. Roy’s experimentations with the newly formulating genre of speculative fiction also found its way into some of the Jayanta-Manik detective stories, thereby expanding their horizons to accommodate crucial literary as well as subtle sociopolitical aspects pertaining to the anxieties surrounding colonial rule. Till then, the detective figures that had been presented to the native readers had a strong Westernized style but with the advent of Jayanta

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and Manik to the scene, there came about a gradual metamorphosis of the earlier imitative strain into an exclusively “Bengali” rendition. The “Bengaliness” of Roy’s creations was very obviously fraught with a conscious attempt to straddle the transition between tradition and modernity in an era rife with the urge to orient one’s mindset in scientific, rationalistic thought while also negotiating with one’s cultural roots. The demographic of his detective fiction is modelled upon the racial, cultural and communal preoccupations of colonial Bengal that was moored within the hegemony of a dominant bhadralok, a gentleman of the middle-class. Jayanta and Manik, in particular, are the quintessential Bengali detective-assistant duo who conform to the ideological underpinnings of a masculinist Hindu body politic that was celebrated within the nationalistic vision of self-government. It has to be kept in mind that Roy’s detective writings were largely aimed at a younger, juvenile readership which is why they were consciously embedded with certain discursively sanctioned ideals of agency, gender roles and identity. Coupling together tenets from adventure and travel stories, Roy’s detective fiction sought to hinge upon the cult of the brave, intelligent and physically competent Bengali sleuths who could traverse across spatial boundaries and challenge the stereotypical assumptions of Bengali “effeminacy” that had lingered long within the imperial imagination. His fiction was championing the cause of assertive Bengali masculinity through the figures of these two young sleuths firmly rooted to their traditional affiliations ranging from their dhoti-kurta attire to the sociocultural milieu of their activities. This meant significant implications upon the mindsets of the target readership in a period when the freedom struggle was gaining momentum and the younger generation was emphatically being indoctrinated into the ideology of active participation for proving their mettle in the emancipation of the motherland. The Jayanta-Manik duo thus emerged to become not only champions for the young minds to idealize but also worthy counterparts debunking the racist colonial stereotypes of native inefficacy and cultural backwardness through their nationalist orientation. III Bengali juvenile literature, to which Hemendra Kumar Roy had generously contributed, has predominantly remained a gendered domain since its development from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Popular periodicals and books meant for both didactic and leisure reading practices were based upon certain ideologically sanctioned discourses on gender roles and identity-formation. It is therefore not surprising that Bengali detective fiction too succumbed to a similar gendered pattern of thought, propagating



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differential notions of sociocultural performance and uneven bifurcation of agency. The vast corpus of Jayanta-Manik detective stories that Hemendra Kumar Roy composed conform to this tradition of celebrating assertive heroes in an exclusively male heterotopic space where women are relegated to a visibly marginal position with respect to the former or are often completely absent from the scene of action. Jayanta and Manik also serve as complete contrasts to the comical character of Sundarbabu, the policeman, who betrays his gluttonous, timid, often sentimental disposition in most critical situations. The vying notions of masculinity that are pitted against each other within the diegetic space of these fictional works serve to highlight the subtler nuances of pedagogical reformation that remained embedded within the consciousness of the bhadralok class in colonial Bengal. This was a time of rising nationalist fervor when more and more emphasis was laid upon the necessity for both strict bodily discipline and intellectual reform. Sports, games, outdoor activities, physical training, adventurous exploits, expeditions, a scientific upbringing, and the like were deemed as essential requisites for accommodating oneself within the race towards colonial modernity. Jayanta and Manik fulfil all of these discursive demands and even go on to integrate the spirit of wanderlust within themselves, traveling to distant places in a predominantly all-male company, often to as far away as Ceylon, Africa, Burma or Java. Proficient in the arts of self-defense, these men exist within carefully constructed heterotopic spaces where an all-male homosocial comradeship is celebrated as the ideal. These sleuths are avowed celibates who display no inclination towards heteronormative relationships or licentious matters, an aspect crucial for catering to the pedagogical requirements of formative minds in an era of militant nationalism in colonial Bengal. It is interesting to note that Hemendra Kumar Roy was writing at a time when the woman question in Bengal had already gained considerable prominence with active participation on the part of women in educational reforms and establishment of numerous schools for girl children. Popular leisure literature for children equally appealed to readers from both sexes as can be deduced from various autobiographies, memoirs and letters to the editors of magazines since the mid-nineteenth century. Therefore, the gendered implications of narratives that espoused clearly demarcated visions and expectations of performativity very naturally triggered differential notions of identification on the part of the target readership. A revisit to select works from Jayanta Manik Samagra (Jayanta Manik Omnibus) namely “Manush Pishach” (The Human Monster), “Shani Mangaler Rahasya”(The Mystery of Saturday and Tuesday), “Shahjahaner Mayur” (Shahjahan’s Peacock), “Jayantar Kirti” (The Achievements of Jayanta), and “Kancher Coffin” (The Glass Coffin) would clearly illustrate the masculinist world of twentieth century Bengali goendakahini that relegated women to a

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conspicuously ineffectual, often extraneous position with no agency within the narrative framework. “Manush Pishach” depicts the characters of Sheila and two other anonymous women in the stereotypical roles of naïve, gullible, precocious, vulnerable and easily overpowered females who are categorically entrapped by the antagonist for his criminal intent and then rescued by the sleuths in due course. “Shani Mangaler Rahasya” goes a step further to completely efface the presence of any living, breathing female character within its fictive paradigms and rather plays upon the idea of a cursed idol of the goddess Kali who is supposedly on a killing spree to quench her thirst for human blood. The demonization of the figure of the woman/goddess/mother problematizes the entire prevailing discourses on gender assumptions, especially within the context of the narrative’s resolution where the sleuths discover the entire legend to have been concocted by a selfish, cold-blooded, manipulative murderer for serving his own materialistic greed. The relegation of female agency to that of a lifeless, stone sculpture and the falsities surrounding the myth of indestructible female power raise pertinent questions about their desired impact upon the consciousness of the readers. “Shahjahaner Mayur,” again, interestingly adopts the strategy of cross-dressing and disguise, using the female identity as a stereotypical signifier of mayabini or enchantress. In a formulaic manner, it is the male criminal who exploits the wiles of a supposedly “up-to-date woman” (Roy 2018, 349) in order to evade capital punishment for murder. The woman-as-deceiver theory is broached here by Roy yet again in order to juxtapose it with the intelligence, sheer command and resilience of the heroes against all odds. “Jayantar Kirti,” which perhaps targets an exclusively juvenile readership, completely omits the presence of any female within the plot action, focusing emphatically upon the courage, dexterity and fortitude of the Jayanta-Manik duo and also concluding with an acknowledgement of Sundar Babu’s crucial role in the lives of the sleuths. This is a heterotopic space imaginatively constructed by the writer to idolize examples of male homosocial bonding over heteronormative relationships, in order to deliberately avoid anxieties surrounding sexual or carnal influences over a child’s mindset. It also has to be kept in mind that celibacy was regarded as an ideal vocation for young nationalists who aimed to offer their lives towards the service of their motherland. These bachelor men function in their all-male universe, engaged in daring exploits that end in the glorification of their masculine prowess and their steadfastness towards the nation. “Kancher Coffin” comes across as perhaps the most fascinating among all the other stories composed by Roy as part of the Jayanta-Manik series, utilizing the thematic possibilities offered by Bengali speculative fiction in the early twentieth century. In this story, quite interpretably, women are shorn of any sense of active agency in determining the course of action or leaving an impression upon the minds of the readers. The character of Lalita aka Sushila



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Devi remains limited to being an experimental subject for her scientist father, Manohar babu and a paragon of beauty for the other onlookers who are mesmerized by the appeal of her youth, grace and melodious voice. At the end, in an anti-climactic turn owing to the revelation of no actual crime, this woman is reduced to the role of the generous host serving snacks to the men. A close critical reading of the afore-discussed works by Hemendra Kumar Roy will expose the privileging of male characters over the female in all instances of negotiating with the public space and its associated implications. The conservatism at the root of middle-class or bhadralok sensibilities in the colonial times curtailed active participation of women in physical or intellectual pursuits to a considerable extent despite there being many spectacular instances of female achievements in the public sphere. Thus, while the male reader could enjoy a sense of belonging and kinship by identifying with the veneration of a masculinist ideology, the female reader had to negotiate with the same experience through either an act of unsexing herself or deriving pleasure by wallowing “in the reflected glory of their male heroes” (Mukherjee 2018, n.p.). The subtle politics of exclusion and inclusion embedded within such narratives conditioned readers of different sexes into different notions of childhood and socio-cultural mobility. IV The masculine world of Hemendra Kumar Roy’s detective fiction can be perceived as a quintessential example of Bengali bhadralok ideology in the twentieth century, striving to achieve an equilibrium between contending affiliations of traditional culture and colonial modernity. The idea of masculinity itself had become one of the primary concerns for this social group who were increasingly anxious to establish their cultural hegemony within Bengal, itself caught up in a whirlpool of radical shifts. Celebrating the role-model of the innately “Bengali” and charismatic, capable, rationalist, celibate detective having a penchant for the traditional way of life yet well-oriented in scientific epistemology entailed gendered visions of Bengali childhood and pedagogical practices during an era of fervent nationalism. Any emasculating influence upon the inculcation of ideal manhood was deemed pernicious within the nationalistic vision, which is why these dhoti-kurta clad, assertive, de-sexualized sleuths remained endearing figures neatly insulated in their all-male heterotopia which remained out of reach for women. Thus, it can be safely concluded that the indelible impression of these uneven power dynamics with regard to gender, socio-political subjectivity and cultural agency ingrained itself upon the mindsets of the target readership for generations to come and affect their participation in the public and private domains.

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WORKS CITED Bag, Samik. 2015. “Calcutta Noir.” Last modified January 17, 2015. https://www. livemint.com/Leisure/LibY45l3PWg0B2DYI8SsCN/Calcutta-noir.html. Mukherjee, Anuparna. 2018. “Masculinity and ‘Mute’ Females in Bengali Children’s Fiction.” Ethos Literary Journal 6 (November): n.p. https://www.ethosliterary.org/november-2018/nonfiction/ masculinity-and-mute-females-in-bengali-childrens-fiction. Roy, Hemendra Kumar. 2018. “Jayantar Kirti.” In Jayanta-Manik Samagra, edited by Samudra Basu. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. ———. 2018. “Kancher Coffin.” In Jayanta-Manik Samagra, edited by Samudra Basu. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. ———. 2018. “Manush Pishach.” In Jayanta-Manik Samagra, edited by Samudra Basu. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. ———. 2018. “Shahjahaner Mayur.” In Jayanta-Manik Samagra, edited by Samudra Basu. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. ———. 2018. “Shani Mangaler Rahasya.” In Jayanta-Manik Samagra, edited by Samudra Basu. Kolkata: Dev Sahitya Kutir. Sen, Arunima. 2017. “A Literary History of the Detective Genre in Bengali Literature: From the Rig Veda to Byomkesh Bakshi.” The Criterion 8, no. VIII: 689–701. http://www.the-criterion.com/V8/n8/IN37.pdf. “The Great Bengali Detectives‒Part 1.” The Growlery (blog), February 24, 2014. https:// thegrowlery2014.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/the-great-bengali-detectives-part-1/.

Chapter 15

Nativizing Holmesian Tradition of Detective A Reading of Select Stories of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda Abhinaba Chatterjee

The genre of detective fiction, as is well-known, is little explored in the academia, with a recent surge in interest in India owing primarily to the interest in popular fiction. The genre can be traced to have originated in the West, more specifically Britain, and arrived in India primarily through the contact with the West during the colonial rule. The centrality of the genre to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories reconfigures its history, considering the fact that Holmes is not the first detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories have a universal appeal. The employment of scientific methods by the master detective, his keen powers of observation, deductive reasoning and scientific knowledge, has fascinated all. Having appeared in 60 narratives (56 short stories and four full length novels), published between 1887 and 1927, the stories of Holmes have enjoyed enormous international popularity down through the years. Scores of articles, essays, and books have been written analyzing the stories, their origin, and the characters of both Holmes and Dr. Watson. A number of “Holmesian” clubs are in existence of which the “Baker Street Irregulars” is the most famous. Even in the present space age there is little indication that the public affection for the “Holmesian” lore is about to die out. The literature can be found in university publications, professional journals, newspaper feature articles, and even as full page colour cartoons in the Playboy magazine.

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Significantly, though English detective fiction was not influenced by the sub-genre of any other European language, it influenced the Bengali detective fiction considerably. The Indian litterateurs failed to avoid and isolate themselves from the influence of the language and different literary sub genres of the principal colonizers. This development of the detective fiction in India articulates a relationship to the reconfigured history of the genre with Holmes-as-origin, where the actual and the reconfigured history intersect. The complex transnational production of Holmes is reconfigured to serve a narrative in which the Holmes stories are the original detective stories even if they’re not the earliest instance of the genre, thereby implying a centrality of the stories to any production in that tradition and genre. This chapter considers the colonial and postcolonial detective fiction in India—Satyajit Ray’s Feluda mysteries and Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Bakshi stories—to examine how they deploy intertextual relationships to Holmes stories while simultaneously resisting the Anglo-centric narrative. In the late nineteenth century, England had its Indian headquarters in Calcutta, Bengal, which was, until December 1911, the administrative as well as cultural capital of India. Long before 1947, Bengali had evolved itself into a strong and important language with rich literary heritage, and in pre-independence India, the sub genre of detective fiction had become more distinct and popular in Bengali than in any other Indian language. In fact, there is no evidence that any other Indian language and literature contained, in contemporary India, a detective character as popular as Byomkesh Bakshi. Had there been any, the adventures had never been meticulously chronicled. The Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay were produced during a period of Indian passive anticolonial resistance and global conflict. The text’s immediate historical context combined with its “conventionality” allows both the stories and their afterlives—especially their image in public memory and their film adaptations—to engage in a detailed deconstruction of universal norms of justice (in reality and in fiction) in the light of open colonialism, post-Independence authoritarianism, and Western imperial collapse. In the case of all three textual threads, analyzing their attempts to refashion a new, ostensibly “national” or ethnic tradition of crime fiction-making serves to challenge their common critical treatment as derivative or colonial textual artefacts. For eighty years, Byomkesh has been Bengal’s favorite literary character, his only competition coming from Satyajit Ray’s Feluda who made his debut in 1965. However, there is a crucial difference between the two. The Feluda stories were written for teenagers; so Ray had to work within a set bandwidth no crime could have a sexual angle to it (Ray even complained that this significantly restricted his freedom to plot the stories). Saradindu Bandopadhyay



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wrote for adults. The mysteries that confront Byomkesh quite often hinge around lust, adultery, promiscuity, even incest. So, the annals of Byomkesh should be viewed in the context of the works of the international masters of mature detective fiction, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler. Reading and re-reading the stories on Byomkesh, Sherlock Holmes, and Philip Marlowe, it can be said that at his best, Saradindu Bandopadhyay was as good as anyone in the world working in this genre. Like Conan Doyle, he wanted at some point of time to retire his sleuth. Doyle tried it the nasty way by killing off Sherlock Holmes in the story The Final Problem. However, huge public demand forced Doyle to bring Holmes back to life. Saradindu Bandopadhyay tried to retire his sleuth by marrying him off, an almost unheard-of thing for detectives across the world (Holmes definitely was misogynist), in only his tenth outing. But on a visit to Calcutta, he discovered that Bengalis still hankered for his hero; graciously, he returned to Byomkesh and stayed with him till the end of his life. He was forced to continue with his stories, who despite his wishes to retire him, was helpless as long as a vast number of Bengali readers wanted more of him. And Saradindu Bandopadhyay could not let them down. This is the other interesting aspect of the Byomkesh stories. Unlike many other fictional detectives—Hercule Poirot, for example, would have been at least one-hundred and ten years old by the time he handled his last case in Curtain, Byomkesh ages, marries, has a son, starts a publishing firm with his assistant and chronicler Ajit (he makes a more stable income from this than from his seeking of the truth), buys a house in South Calcutta, and ponders buying a car for his wife Satyabati (note that “satya” occurs here again). He is very clearly situated historically. For instance, Adim Ripu (a loose and not very accurate translation would be The Primal Lust), irrespective of the country of origin, is set in the days just before and after India’s independence and records the situation in Calcutta at that time. Other than Basu Chatterjee’s endearing TV serial, which was extremely loyal to the source material, several Byomkesh stories have been made into films in Bengali, though most seem to have disappointed the audience (including Satyanweshi the last film the highly talented Rituparno Ghosh directed before his untimely death). “Shimonto Heera,” first published in 1933, opens with the author’s ironic reference to the characteristic silence and lack of protest among the Bengalis. Nevertheless, he presents a resilient society that withstands in direct opposition to the British society depicted in the Sherlock Holmes stories where not a single crime goes unreported and unreciprocated. While this might indicate that the colonized Bengali people lack the courage and inclination to register their protest, this might also point to the lack of power of adjustment among the British citizens when compared to the Indians.

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According to Bandyopadhyay, the Indians lack tact but the crimes in the British colony are seldom of serious magnitude: It is a bad habit among the Indians that they remain undeterred by small thefts - they do not even approach the police. Perhaps they think that mental peace is superior to happiness. In those rare cases when the crime is really serious, the news reaches the police no doubt, but no one seems to be interested or take initiative to spend his hard earned cash in employing a private investigator. After a few days of mourning and indicting the policemen for inaction, they fall silent again. Murders and assaults do sometimes take place in our country. But there is often no sign of intelligence in them; the murderer who kills in a rage is immediately apprehended, and the Government police first put him in a lock up and thereafter, send him to the gallows as soon as possible. (Bandopadhyay 1999, 70)

Significantly, while the imperial police in India showed laxity in arresting the general criminals, the Indian nationalists met with swiftest retribution. The above quotation might also be interpreted as Bandyopadhyay’s irony against the frequent employment of private investigators in Eurocentric detective fiction like the Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot narratives in context of the fact that the affluence of imperial powers is dependent on their utilization of the colonies’ resources. Bandyopadhyay asserts his patriotism by using the phrase “our country” similar to what Sherlock Holmes does by bulleting “V.R” or Victoria Regina on his drawing room wall in “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (Doyle 1980, 334). It is significant that the author mentions “lock-up” and “gallows” side by side, but no “court,” thus implying that justice was denied to the Indians in the British-Indian courts. Satyajit Ray as a writer of the detective fiction, the Feluda series, tries to transfuse in the minds of his readers India’s rich cultural and historical heritage. (Ray 2000a; Ray 2000b) The theme of history in postcolonial literature addresses issues of fabricating “mimic men” other than appropriating history as a tool to restore faith in India’s past. Ray subverts the concept of “mimic men” as he gives the protagonist a purely Indian identity who derives inspiration from Doyle’s Holmes but is not merely a prototype. Ray through his detective novellas tries to revive local cultures and systems which form the backbone of native India. He tries to evoke national consciousness about India’s historical richness by constructing images and fictional plots which are woven around realistic settings and bears resemblance to eminent historical events glorifying India’s past, reviving myths and rejuvenating pride in its cultural forms. The setting of the plot is often at historical places like Lucknow in “The Emperor’s Ring,” Jaisalmer in “The Golden Fortress,” Benaras in “The Mystery of Elephant God,” Jodhpur Fort, Udaipur, Darjeeling, Haridwar, Agra, Delhi, Rajasthan and many others. Ray



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tries to mention important sites like “Kesar Bagh, Badshahi Manjil, Lakhu Phatak” referring to great monuments in Indian history. Ray highlights India’s splendor by situating his plots in natural reserves like Sunderbans, Terai etc. Ray purposefully marginalizes the occupation of British and its legacies emphasizing more on events like the Sepoy Mutiny as he mentions it in “Robertson’s Ruby” and many more similar episodes, characters that heighten Indian-ness, to test the knowledge of Indian readers giving them a glimpse of the country’s historical variety. Ray’s postcolonial strategy is to refrain from mentioning anything about the British, thereby proclaiming India’s decolonized state by educating Indians about geography, climate, landscape and history of India. Though there is similarity between Feluda who is the protagonist and Holmes, his western counterpart yet Ray cannot be accused of colonial mimicry. Feluda can often be termed as the “other” which is discussed in the work of Edward Said, as opposed to “orient.” Orient is the superior image in the West which is copied in the colonized states and is “constructed as a mirror image of inferiority.” Hence Ray’s protagonist had the risk of being called the “other” but Ray’s ingenious innovative differences which he inserts in the character sets him apart negating the allegation. The Indian publishing industry considered the Indian borne crime narratives and writers as inferiors comparing them to the western ones as these writers lacked inventiveness and popularity. In order to avoid this and exercise freedom of publishing Ray chose his own magazine Sandesh to get the works published. This also enabled him to limit his readers mostly to children. Analyzing the history of detective fiction it can be seen as Francesca Orsini remarks in “Detective Novels: A Commercial Genre in Nineteenth Century India” that the method of deduction and the clues which are hinted in Sherlock Holmes have ancient Indian forebearers. So here the whole concept of colonial mimicry is negated. Hence the main aim of Ray as a writer is to urge the present generation to move away from this colonial violence and to relieve Indian minds from the impacts of colonial thinking. In Ray’s creation the post colonial response is achieved through the detective’s hybridity and cultural ambiguity. The Feluda mysteries, written and set between the 1960s and 1980s in an independent India, do not engage with re-historization. The process of re-historization happens in the primary texts and quite prominently in English translations and scholarly commentary. A generic continuity with Sherlock Holmes and thereby with an Anglo-centric tradition of detective fiction is favored over a more complex history of local influences and genre interaction, with the explicit aim of accessing greater circulatory power. The strategy deployed by Ray is that of contesting the colonial hierarchy of the genre and refashioning it. Much of the process of re-historizing Ray’s mysteries is enacted in translator’s notes, author’s prefaces, the literary press, and strategic publisher’s choices about title translation

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and back-of-the-book marketing language. The English translations of the original Bangla pieces of Ray tend to rely on Holmesian language, in sync with the colonial emphasis, to ensure a good review or market a film or comic book adaptation of Ray’s detective. Feluda’s modes of detection are based on the science of deduction, popularized by Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes narratives. He depends, much like the English investigator, on empirical evidences, is strongly built, six feet tall, and is an expert in shooting with Colt, which, unlike Byomkesh Bakshi, he always carries with him. The detective who makes no qualms about imprinting “Prodosh C. Mitter, Private Investigator on his visiting card, exhibits a wide mobility in the thirty plus stories written on him, “Robertsoner Ruby” (Robertson’s Ruby), “Jato Kando Kathmandutey” (Incidents at Kathmandu), “Bombaiyer Byombete” (Bombay’s Rogues), “Darjeeling Jamjomat” (Theft in Darjeeling) and “Sonar Kella” (The Golden Fort) being the more famous among them. Ray’s stories are firmly rooted in an Indian sociocultural space that predominantly reflects Bengal. The stories are almost like travel guides taking the reader to different parts of the country. Feluda’s adventures in Darjeeling, Calcutta, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Kailash, Varanasi, Bombay et al. offers a doorway to visit the places through Ray’s fluid descriptions of the various cities. Feluda definitely represents the private professional detective but on many occasions he is also driven by his inbuilt morality to unveil the perpetrator. Ray’s stories are laden with various culture specific nuances. Each narrative is laden with some typical elements that create a Bengali atmosphere even outside the boundaries of Bengal. No matter where they travel, the people they meet, the way they address each other, the food they eat everything has a subtle touch of the culture of Bengal. Ray utilizes the crime fiction platform to expand the readability and popularity of the series and, more importantly, instruct readers on how to visualize the “real” India. Readers who comprehend all facets of Indian history are better equipped to move away from confining colonial discourses, respect and celebrate their Indian-ness and extend such knowledge to future generations. While the aim of revamping Indian education to include exposure to India’s vast heterogeneity marks yet another divergence from Conan Doyle’s Holmes’ series, it also proves to be the most significant indicator of a decolonized text that advances beyond the need to respond to colonizers. Hence, Ray’s Feluda series provides a kind of literary independence. By reminding readers about India’s cultural and social wealth, the urge to mimic has been replaced with national pride. He requests readers to take delight in their independent nation and feel a sense of camaraderie with fellow Indians. To that end, the Feluda series demonstrates the role of Indian literature in generating and sustaining a strong national identity. India, Ray argues, has more to offer than the valleys, peaks and everything that is recorded in its history.



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The growing terminology to “resist” external influences, often visible in contemporary India, lacks credibility as well as cogency. Indian culture, as it has evolved, has always been prepared to absorb material and ideas from elsewhere. The adaptation and simultaneous “re-fashioning” of the genre of detective fiction by both Saradindu Bandyopadhyaya and Satyajit Ray are not, in any sense, out of line with our traditions. The adaptation and re-fashioning of the scientific methodology to decode crime and identify criminals, it must be understood, is not the special possession of Europe or America, as the very centrality of Holmes in the genre of detective fiction, tend to claim. Just as the centrality of Holmes in the genre of detective fiction is being questioned, so is the authority of the West over the genre of detective fiction is being questioned, by means of a radical re-fashioning of those very techniques of the Western detective fiction, by virtue of which the West claims its ownership of the genre. The detectives created by both Saradindu Bandyopadhyay and Satyajit Ray have deconstructed this ownership, despite acknowledging their debt to its Western origin. WORKS CITED Bandyopadhyay, Saradindu. 1999. Picture Imperfect and other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries, translated by Sreejata Guha. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. ———. The Menagerie. 2006. In The Menagerie and Other Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries, translated by Sreejata Guha. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1980. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Oxford University Press. Ray, Satyajit. 2000a. The Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol. 1. New Delhi: Penguin Books. ———. 2000b. The Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol. 2. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2000.

FURTHER READING Sen, Amartya. 2005. “The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. London: Penguin Books. Stewart, Nicholas. 2003. “A Postcolonial Canonical and Cultural Revision of Conan Doyle’s Holmes Narratives,” February 3, 2003. http://www.qub.ac.uk/english/rmeprial/nidia/conan doyle.htm.

Chapter 16

The Purloined Artefacts Tracing Repetition Automatism in Satyajit Ray’s Joy Baba Felunath and Jahangirer Swarnamudra Ipsita Chakrabarty and Soham Roy

I The origination of detective fiction is generally traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is only in the twentieth century that a major development in this field is noticed. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe are regarded as major precursors of the modern detective fiction. In fact, The Murders in the Rue Morgue has introduced to the world the famous fictional detective, the aberrant and ingenious C. Auguste Dupin and he features in the other two tales as well. The character of Dupin has inspired various other detective characters, most noteworthy among them is Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes served as the inspiration behind the creation of the most popular Bengali fictional detective character of the twentieth century, Feluda. Though, Priyanath Mukhopadhyay was the pioneer of Bengali detective fiction, Satyajit Ray is hailed as one of the best composers of detective fiction in twentieth century Bengal. His Feluda series gained immense popularity during the late twentieth century and is still revered as one of the best detective series to have been produced in Bengal. Two of his notable works from this series, namely, Joy Baba Felunath (The Mystery of the Elephant God) and 173

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Jahangirer Swarnamudra (The Gold Coins of Jehangir) are analyzed in this study in the light of Jacques Lacan’s notion of repetition automatism. II Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist and pioneer of psychoanalysis, introduced the concept of repetition compulsion in his 1914 article “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through” and explored it further in his 1920 essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” In the latter essay repetition compulsion is defined as a psychological phenomenon in which the subject continuously repeats certain traumatic events from the past, either by re-enacting them or by revisiting them in dreams and hallucinations. It has been established by him that the compulsion to repeat is associated with the death drive and the impulse to return to an inorganic state. The essay further postulates that the compulsion to repeat is a constant desire in an individual to transgress the pleasure principle and move towards a certain jouissance (Freud 2003, 71–102). Later, Lacan in his “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’” further develops upon Freud’s concept of repetition compulsion. Jacques Lacan has used the idea of an impasse between a signifier and signified in linguistics, as pointed out by Ferdinand de Saussure, to explain the workings of a repressed desire hiding in the unconscious realm of the human psyche. He seeks to understand this desire through a symbolic order, which constitutes a symbolic structure built around a signifier located at the center. Just as a signifier gets displaced in a signifying chain in search of an intended signified, similarly the signifier at the center of the symbolic order also shifts position repeatedly (Muller and Richardson 1988, 58). Every time the signifier shifts position, it does so along with the entire structure around it, such that it always remains at the center. This structure constitutes a combination of certain subject positions, along with an intersubjective relationship working among them, which always remain constant within the structure even as the entire structure shifts position (Muller and Richardson 1988, 57). However, the occupants of these positions change every single time the structure gets displaced. Lacan believes that, in a similar fashion, the repressed desire within human beings repeatedly comes to the surface in different forms or identities, the essential desire and its pattern always remaining the same. Thus, the unconscious exists and works through a structural pattern which can be understood through a similar recurring symbolic structure that can be defined through language (Homer 2005, 68–69). This phenomenon of automatically or compulsively repeating itself is regarded as repetition automatism or repetition compulsion.



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Lacan explains this theory by using Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter,” a detective fiction, as a case study. At the center of Poe’s text is a letter, which is taken to be the signifier located at the center, around which the symbolic structure is formed. This symbolic structure, highlighted by Lacan, has three subject positions which share a triadic intersubjective relationship with each other. Among these three, the occupant/s of the first subject position is always blind or unaware of the presence or whereabouts of the symbol representing the signifier and of the power politics taking place between the other two. The occupant/s of the second subject position craftily hides the symbolic object from the first subject by keeping it out in the open where anybody is least likely to notice or look for it and feigns ignorance. The occupant/s of the third subject position observe, analyze and understand the politics of the situation, and taking advantage of the second subject’s helplessness or ignorance, grabs the opportunity of having control over the symbolic signifier and correspondingly the entire situation. In the first situation that Lacan proposes, the King occupies the first subject position because although the letter lies in front of him, he does not pay heed to it and is unaware of its contents. The Queen occupies the second position because she owns the letter and saves the letter from the King’s eyes by not trying to hide the letter at all, which may otherwise have aroused the King’s suspicion. The Minister takes the third subject position here because he notices that if the letter is displaced by someone at that moment the Queen would be unable to revolt, and therefore capitalizes on this situation (Lacan 2006, 8–10). In the following condition the letter is with the Minister. This spatio-temporal shift of the letter represents the shift in position of the signifier along with its surrounding structure. Here it must be noted that since the structure remains the same, the relationship of each subject position with the signifier also remains constant. However, since the subjects occupying those positions change or get shuffled, the relationship between each of those subjects and the signifier undergo changes, which also shows that the signifier works independently “of the subjects through whose hands it passes” (Muller and Richardson 1988, 57–58). There also comes a corresponding change in the relationship or power politics among the subjects. Therefore, in every shift and corresponding repetition, although the form or image of the structure remains constant, the actual structure has already changed due to a change in position of the signifier and its surrounding structure, which results in a change in the identity of the subjects occupying each position within the structure. Therefore, what we get in every repetition is a virtual image of the original structure. Hence, in the next situation the Prefect of the Police, who is a representative of the Queen, takes the first subject position, because in spite of his thorough search he has failed to notice the letter which was there in front of him,

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lying above the mantelpiece, all the while. The Minister here takes the second position because just like the Queen he takes the unconventional measure and hides the letter by keeping it out in the open. It is later discovered and secretly displaced from there by the detective C. Auguste Dupin who is aware of the Minister’s unconventional methods, and therefore he now occupies the third subject position (Lacan 2006, 8–10). The scope of this Lacanian theory extends beyond time, place and culture, and may well be applied to all major works of detective fiction, to which Satyajit Ray’s famous Feluda series is no exception. As Lacan has shown in Poe’s text, a similar tripartite structure can be found in the repetitive symbolic order of Ray’s Joy Baba Felunath (The Mystery of the Elephant God) and Jahangirer Swarnamudra (The Gold Coins of Jehangir) as well. III In both The Mystery of the Elephant God and The Gold Coins of Jehangir, from the beginning of the texts to the point where the sleuth unveils the criminal along with the mystery concerning the respective artefacts, the symbolic order can be found automatically repeating itself thrice in the former text and twice in the latter. While the final repetition in both the texts can be studied parallel to each other, the first and second structure formed in The Mystery of the Elephant God stands corresponding to the first structure in The Gold Coins of Jehangir. In the first structure of the former text, Ambika Ghoshal occupies the first subject position because although he owns the Ganesh, he is completely unaware of the ploy surrounding the artefact, and the possibility of it getting stolen. His son Umanath Ghoshal and Maganlal Meghraj together occupy the second position because both of them know the whereabouts of the Ganesh and are secretly arguing about its possible displacement. They are under the impression that they have control over it, as Umanath reports to Feluda that Maganlal has offered him thirty thousand rupees for the statuette, which he has refused and Maganlal has “‘left saying he’d get it by hook or by crook.’” (Ray 2020a, 524) Instead of physically removing it, they let the statuette remain in Ambika Ghoshal’s cupboard, providing a third subject with the opportunity of displacing it. Rukmini Kumar or Ruku, the son of Umanath and grandson of Ambika, takes the third subject position, as he overhears the discussion between his father and Maganlal which puts him in an advantageous position, and he quickly seizes the opportunity of moving the artefact for safekeeping (Ray 2020a, 565–566). In the following iterative structure, the artefact which is the symbolic signifier has changed its position, leading to a corresponding change in the position of the symbolic structure, where a new set of subjects now occupy each of the positions. Umanath now



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belongs to the first subject position of the symbolic order for being completely blind to the fact that his own son has removed the Ganesh figurine and has placed it inside the mouth of the idol of lion. Based on their previous meeting, Umanath suspects Maganlal to be present behind the theft, and is blind to the reality that the artefact has not been stolen but merely displaced and is present within the premises of the house (Ray 2020a, 522–524). Ruku now takes the second subject position because, much like the Minister in the second situation of “The Purloined Letter,” he carefully hides the artefact from everyone by simply keeping it in an unconventionally open place, where anyone is least likely to search (Ray 2020a, 566). However, it falls into the hands of Shashi Babu, the idol-maker, who hands it over to Vikas Sinha, Umanath Ghoshal’s secretary, since the others were not at home that evening (Ray 2020a, 568). Vikas capitalises over this situation by secretly acquiring the bejewelled Ganesh for himself, hiding it inside his transistor radio, and then going out to kill Shashi Babu so that the truth remains suppressed: “‘ . . . Vikas Babu did not tell the police . . . that Shashi Babu had handed him the figure of the Ganesh . . .. So he had to be silenced. Vikas Babu followed him . . . and stab[ed] him . . .’” (Ray 2020a, 568). This puts Vikas in the third subject position of this structure because he analyses the entire situation and finding it favourable for himself, befools the second subject that is Ruku and gets the better of everyone by secretly taking possession of the Ganesh. Likewise, when one of the twelve gold coins is stolen, in the text “The Gold Coins of Jehangir,” a similar symbolic structure is formed. In this structure, Shankarprasad Chowdhury, the owner of the gold coins, belongs to the first subject position since at first he is completely oblivious of the theft and later, even after discovering that a gold coin is missing, he is unaware of the identity of the actual thief (Ray 2020b, 276–78). The thief (either Dr.Ardhendu Sarkar or Jayanta, because it has not been specified which one of them has physically stolen the gold coin) belongs to the second position, owing to his belief that nobody else has noticed him. However, Kalinath Roy himself being a trickster has noticed the thievery but remained silent, only to gain from it by blackmailing the thief later, which puts him in the astute third subject position (Ray 2020b, 292). In the following repetition of the symbolic structure, which corresponds to a shift in location of the respective artefacts, while Ruku takes the first subject position, Vikas the second and Feluda the third in The Mystery of the Elephant God, in The Gold Coins of Jehangir the first position is jointly occupied by Shankarprasad Chowdhury and Kalinath Roy, the second position by Dr.Ardhendu Sarkar and Jayanta, and Feluda takes the third subject position in a pattern similar to the other text of Ray. In the former text Ruku is unaware about the change in location of the Ganesh from where he had hidden it. Besides being unaware of its whereabouts, he also remains ignorant

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about the machinations of its present owner Vikas, who successfully hides the artefact from him. All these are discovered and brought to light by Feluda, who takes the opportunity of knowing the entire truth of the situation and retrieves the Ganesh idol (Ray 2020a, (565–568). Similarly, in the latter text Mr. Chowdhury and Kalinath are unaware of the ploy made by Dr. Sarkar and Jayanta, which is craftily discovered by Feluda at the end of the story, along with the fact that Kalinath has also been a secret benefactor from the previous theft. Also, Kalinath is unaware “‘that the thief had an accomplice,’” which may also be considered in making Kalinath share the first subject position with Mr. Chowdhury who remains completely unaware about the identity of either of the criminals (Ray 2020b, 292). Here, Mr. Chowdhury and Kalinath are both blind to the fact that through the conspiracy Dr. Sarkar and Jayanta, the thieves who now occupy the second position in the symbolic order, are apparently in control of the artefacts. However, Feluda is able to recognize the ploy and therefore, he takes the opportunity of silently displacing the artefacts, as he reveals that the “‘remaining coins and other objects’” have been removed by him (Ray 2020b, 293). Also, since the entire truth lies with Feluda, it gives him control even over the single coin which was stolen earlier. IV According to Lacan, in the triangular structure established in The Purloined Letter, “there appears to be a certain correlation between the position of the ‘blind’ personage and the real, between the position of the self-absorbed ‘seer’ and the imaginary, and between the position of the perspicacious ‘robber’ and the symbolic” (Muller and Richardson 1988, 63). In the first structure the King and the Prefect of Police in the second structure represent the real because they “fail to notice what is beneath their very noses” owing to their “realist’s imbecility” (Homer 2005, 47). Similarly, Ambika Ghoshal, Umanath and lastly, Ruku, who take the place of the blind personage in the first, second and third structure of The Mystery of the Elephant God, respectively, and Shankarprasad Chowdhury and Kalinath, who occupy the position of the blind personage in The Gold Coins of Jehangir, embody the real because they fail to discern the occurrences that happen before them on account of their “native empiricism” which make them “oblivious of the role of the symbolic structures in the organization of reality” (Muller and Richardson 1988, 63). The “imaginary quality of the second position” must be “understood in terms of the narcissism . . . implied in the subject’s ‘seeing’ but failing to see that he is seen” (Muller and Richardson 1988, 63). Therefore, the Queen and the Minister in The Purloined Letter, Umanath, Maganlal, Ruku and Vikas in



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“The Mystery of the Elephant God,” and lastly, Dr. Sarkar and Jayanta in The Gold Coins of Jehangir, the complacent seers, are analogous to the imaginary phase, because of their delusion that they have successfully defended themselves from being exposed, but are unaware that they have been seen by the occupants of the third position. The analogy between the third position and the symbolic rests upon the fact that those who occupy the third position “understand their situation within a larger structure and the function of the structure in determining their actions” and therefore, exploit situations and turn them to their own advantage (Homer 2005, 48). In Poe’s story the Minister senses the vulnerability of the Queen and uses the situation to his own advantage by stealing the letter, and later, Dupin takes advantage of the situation at the Minister’s place and replaces the real letter with a fake one (n.d., 181 & 192). Similarly, Ruku overhears the conversation between his father and Maganlal and capitalizes upon the situation by hiding the Ganesh idol. Then in the second situation Vikas profits from the situation by keeping the idol and murdering Shashi Babu for good measure. In the final situation Feluda manipulates the situation to his advantage and reveals the real identity of the criminal and retrieves the statuette (Ray 2020a, 566–569). Likewise, in The Gold Coins of Jehangir, Kalinath notices the thief and benefits from the situation by blackmailing and extorting money from him. Finally, Feluda takes advantage of the situation and displaces the coins from the safe and later reveals the identity of the thief and his accomplice (Ray 2020b, 292–293). All of these characters occupy the third position and represent the symbolic because they discern “the role of structure in the situation” and act “accordingly” (Muller and Richardson 1988, 63). IV Through his explanations Lacan arrives at the fact that in the repetitive chain of events the subjects are not in control of the signifier, but it is the other way around. In his “Seminar on The Purloined Letter Lacan says, “My apologue is designed to show that it is the letter and its detour which governs their entrances and roles” (Lacan 2006, 21). Each subject or character remains delusional about being the possessor of the symbolic signifier. But as soon as the signifier gets displaced, the entire dynamics of the situation gets shuffled and the identity of the possessor changes. Moreover, with every repetition, the very idea of possession gets nullified. This happens in all the texts discussed earlier in this chapter. Thus, it is actually the floating signifier that lures the subjects and draws them into the chain of signification, without their

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awareness of the larger scheme of events (Homer 2005, 48). The repressed unconscious desires act like the signifier and control human behaviour and action, through which the desires express themselves following a repetitive symbolic pattern, which can only be understood symbolically and not through the real or imaginary vision. The individual however, remains completely unaware about his repressed desires as the root of his actions, as well as about the symbolic structure and its repetitive nature. Hence, Lacan argues that the analyst who occupies the third subject position is always successful by virtue of their position in the repetitive structure, as they belong to the realm of the symbolic or the unconscious and as such, can decode and understand the same. The analyst is therefore like a doctor who can recognize the unconscious desire at work behind an individual’s trauma, and thereby help the patient get rid of the symptoms and make the desire recede again into the realm of the unconscious (Felman 1988, 147). Both Dupin and Feluda therefore, symbolically represent the analyst or the doctor. By virtue of their positions in the symbolic structure, they cure the trauma of their respective clients by returning the letter, the Ganesh and the gold coins to the Queen, Ambika Ghoshal, and Mr. Chowdhury, respectively. V Unlike Satyajit Ray’s cinematography, which is widely studied in the international academic circle, the critical exploration and evaluation of Ray’s novels and other texts remain fairly limited. Though the Feluda series is an indispensable part of the canonical Bengali detective fiction, research in this area is quite scant and psychoanalytic interpretations of the Feluda texts are very rare. Thus, this chapter through its analysis of The Mystery of the Elephant God and The Gold Coins of Jehangir in terms of Lacan’s theory of repetitionautomatism has attempted to contribute to the gamut of knowledge available on the popular Bengali detective series Feluda, and has tried to open up new avenues in the field of critical study of detective fiction. WORKS CITED Felman, Shoshana. 1988. “On Reading Poetry: Reflections on the Limits and Possibilities of Psychoanalytical Approaches.” The Purloined Poe Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading, edited by John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, 133–156. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.



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Freud, Sigmund. 2003. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings, edited by Adam Phillips, 43–102. Translated by John Reddick. New Delhi: Penguin. Homer, Sean. 2005. Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter.’”  Ecrits. Translated by Bruce Fink, Heloise Fink and Russell Grigg, 6–48. New York: Norton. Muller, John P., and William J. Richardson. 1988. “Lacan’s Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’: Overview.” The Purloined Poe Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading, edited by John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, 55–76. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Poe, Edgar A. n.d. “The Purloined Letter.” The Complete Edgar Allan Poe. Kolkata: Projapati. Ray, Satyajit. 2020a. “The Mystery of the Elephant God.” In The Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol. 1. Translated by Gopa Majumdar. Gurgaon: Penguin. ———. 2020b. “The Gold Coins of Jehangir.” In The Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol.2. Translated by Gopa Majumdar. Gurgaon: Penguin.

Chapter 17

The Glocalization of Detective Fiction by Satyajit Ray Ananya Chatterjee and Nisarga Bhattacharjee

The general public that we live among has consistently been undergoing constant social variations. At the base of different accepted practices are belief systems which are abided by the individuals who expect to maintain their customs, authority, and predominance. This training has prompted the development of progressive superstructures that work in practically all spaces of human undertaking. This is additionally noticeable in the realm of writing where a few works are viewed as more genuine and consequently superior than others. This classification is set upon certain norms that thus arrange a few literary genres as worthy of academic interest, while the rest of the literary genres, like detective fiction and travel writing, to the fringe. The term genre stands to accord a level of greatness to certain works by making a distinction between great and awful works. Works which draw extensive acknowledgement about its literariness appreciate a bit of leeway regarding genuine criticalness and are in this way taught into the instructive program or structure of different scholarly establishments. The authoritative status of literary academia predominantly relies upon this legislative issue of consideration and rejection. Nonetheless, this order is generally founded on the abstract investigation of critics or researchers; however, the inclination to classify and categorize literature in this manner has been widespread. Literary genres coming under both the terms “non-fiction” and “popular fiction” are those that have always been conveniently side-lined to the periphery of literary canon on grounds of being lesser literary merit. Further, the two categories are considered mutually exclusive in nature. On the other hand, however, the forces of glocalism have encouraged a cross-generic approach to literature, as is indicated by the gradual inclusion of popular literature in 183

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academic courses in multiple places and the institutionalization of the study of popular culture. As the “the interpenetration of the global and the local, resulting in unique outcomes in different geographic areas” (Ritzer and Dean, 2015), glocalism encourages the mixing of multiple approaches in a manner that defy conventional practices, thus dealing a blow to those structures of behaviors and beliefs that underlie both conventional social customs and literary understanding. Satyajit Ray’s Feludaseries subverts the cannoning approach to literature and the distinction between different literary genres, especially that between crime fiction or detective fiction and travel writing, by incorporating multiple narrative approaches and multiple literary traits many of which do not traditionally belong to the detective genre. We contention that this eclectic literary approach can be understood in the context of the glocalist worldview. The opening of Kailashe Kelenkari or A Killing in Kailash distinctly shows traits of a travel narrative, rather than that of any other literary genre: Even a little while ago it had been possible to stare out of the window and look at the yellow earth, criss-crossed with rivers that looked like silk ribbons and sweet little villages with tiny little houses in them. But now grey puffs of cloud had blocked out that scene totally. So I turned away from the window and began looking at my co-passengers in the plane. (Ray 2000)

Such passages, which are usually of much lengthier, do feature in multiple novels of the Feludaseries, and it might be argued that, even though these descriptive may appear to lead you away from the core of the story, they do not actually do so. Such passages are consciously included by Ray to indicate that the heart of his detective fiction is locatable in terms of a discursive ambiguity, the heart being not as strictly at the center of the mystery as in case of other detective works, nor entire elsewhere. In case the reader mistakes this creative choice as an occasional factor that has not actually been given serious thought, we go to the second paragraph of the story where Ray self-reflexively comments upon the intermingling of literary genres and thereby indicates that he supports the cross-generic approach on principles: Next to me sat Feluda, immersed in a book on space travel. He always read a lot, but I had never seen him read two books—one straight after the other—that were written on the same subject. Only yesterday, back at home, he had been reading something about the Takla Makan desert. Before that, he had finished a book on international cuisine, and another of short stories. It was imperative, he’d always maintained, for a detective to gain as much general knowledge as possible. Who knew what might come in handy one day? (Feluda 2000)



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The passage suggests not only the polyglottic knowledge of the sleuth, but also the fact that a mind oriented to attain knowledge or the pleasure of reading cannot afford to observe genre distinctions. As Feluda moves on from space travel to the Chinese desert, to a cookbook, to a book of short stories, he shows no sign of difficulty in traversing the boundaries between the genres. The first and the second paragraphs set a parallel between geographical and mental travelling, thus also indicating that the texts and the world are equally readable. Further, if the world is the common denominator from which all texts are derived, then the gesture of reading is also equally applicable for any and every text and genre. Feluda’s capacity as a reader speaks of his ability to read, analyze and interpret life, and this process is of vital importance for his capacity as a detective. Hence, Ray makes a case for the accessibility of multiple genres of literature which would counter a tunnel vision that intends to orient the work towards any particular direction. However, the fact that all texts are thus readable does not mean that the Feluda series shows a general disregard towards genre distinctions as such through a principle of universal sameness. Rather than this supposition of textual and therefore real-life homogeneity, which is also the dominant ideological argument of globalism, like a glocal text, Ray’s literary approach is such that he indicates that the diverse generic traits cross-connecting to a complex literary fabric in which diversity is maintained. Hence, the particular traits of each genre, whether it be detective fiction or travel narrative, are distinguishable from each other. But they are contained within the same story. A work of detective fiction ideally has a teleological focus, since it is geared towards the end where the sleuth would solve the mystery. This linear focus can be attained in one of two ways—either by eliminating all deviations and diversions, thereby maintaining a singular generic focus, or by subsuming all variations and enlisting their service singularly for the service of the main plot. Ray takes neither of the two paths, thereby developing a glocal approach. Historically, the first path—that of elimination—can be seen as prevalent in European literature in the eighteenth century, in the critical works of Racine, Rhymer and Voltaire who insisted upon attaining literary excellence though the observation of genre distinctions in a methodological manner. The decline and demise of this approach—most radically visible in for instance Sterne’s Tristram Shandy—was concurrent with the emergence of “World Literature.” As famously extolled by Goethe to Eckermann, as he proceeds to pronounce the term Weltliteratur: “National literature is now rather an unmeaning term; the epoch of world-literature is at hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach” (Goethe, 2009). While this transfer from national to international literature shows the promise of greater inclusivity, the universalism accompanying the idea tries to organize World Literature in a single linear canon.

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The question of what is to be included in a “World Literature” anthology has become especially significant in a glocal era, since the selections thus made represent the choices that determine what goes into the way a particular literary text is represented. The demand for the inclusion of multiple genres in this canon of World Literature has ruptured this singular canon and we have entered into the era of multiple canons, and thereby we go from the age of globalism to glocalism. And yet, the idea of World Literature, promoted by Damrosch keeps on giving admittance to perusing an assortment of written works on the planet. He recommends that “I take World Literature to encompass all literary works that circulate beyond their circle of origin either in translation or in their original language” (Damrosch, 2003). His proposal of zeroing in transit wherein messages traverse huge units of existence framing a ‘wave’ is an able method of moving toward world literature, not just as creations of a specific reality but additionally proficient to being rehashed as they travel. In spite of the fact that the genre of investigator fiction was advocated for the Bengali readers by Ray’s Feluda, it is viewed as non-genuine and thus less scholarly form of literature, not meriting a genuine methodology since such stories including Feluda stories can be examined based on specific premises that help to investigate the complexities of the class. In such manner, the analyst attempts to feature that in spite of its complex organizing and arranging the genre has consistently been dismissed from the artistic group and is generally named as popular literature. To comprehend the complexities, the reader should look past the diversion remainder and accomplish something other than a latent perusing of the accounts by including their own thinking resources. This point of view brings a new methodology towards investigator fiction and assists with challenging the thought of its asserted—genuine. The exploration contends that because of the complexities of account creation and the scholarly contribution of the reader that it requires, the genre merits genuine acknowledgement. Considering this, the exploration attempts to re-establish detective fiction to a place of scholarly decency. Edmund Wilson makes a case for the critical relevance of detective fiction based on the fact that the genre in itself, despite what he thinks is its limited capacity, merits analysis. Wilson notes, “detective novels are artistically limited . . . but this does not mean they are “rubbish” or by any chance incapable of being good. Detective novels can be good or bad in and of their kind, and the artistry required to create them is parallel to if not identical with that of the mainstream novelists.” (Stowe 2015) But, as the passage above informs the reader, not only is the genre confined in the sense that Wilson thinks it is, but the genre is inherently bound with multiple others streams of knowledge and other literary practice. Therefore, one cannot actually have an assortment of critical tools exactly meant for specifically and exactly for only the detective



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genre since its boundaries are hardly defined, and hence the genre cannot be pinned down for literary analysis in the form of a scientific examination. The genre almost literarily travels through other genres of literature under the pen of Ray. This trans-generic approach to literature is further explicitly advocated in the opening of The Golden Fortress (Sonar Kella), which opens with the protagonist answering the narrator’s question on the subject of the book he is reading. Having answered ‘Geometry,’ the detective explains why that answer would, in fact, be applicable for any book anyone is reading: Feluda lit a Charminar and blew out two smoke rings, one after the other. ‘There is no such thing as a book on geometry,’ he told me. ‘Any book may be seen as one because everything around us is related to geometry. Did you see those smoke rings? When they left my mouth, they were perfect circles. Now just think. There are circles everywhere. Look at your own body. The iris in your eye is a circle. With the help of the iris, you can look at the sun and the moon. If you think of them as flat objects, they are circles, but of course they are actually spheres—each a solid bubble. That’s geometry.[ . . .] After that, the spider starts weaving a spiral web from the intersecting point of those diagonal lines. That keeps growing in size, until it covers the entire square. If you think about it, your head will start reeling . . . it’s something so amazing!’ (Ray 2000)

Through this demonstration of the indelible remnants of geography in all spheres of life, Ray manifests the necessity of not just a cross-generic understanding but an apprehension of life that does not make a distinction between the sciences and the humanities. The implication in this line of thinking is that the narrative art as practiced especially in the realistic mode becomes unperformable without an understanding of the science of geometry in the writer, either acquired through education or demonstrated through common sense. It is the implicit backbone of any narrative aspiring for verisimilitude since such finer details make the reader visualize them on a personal level. In the same manner, the detective genre might be said to be an implicit aspect of any literary genre, especially of the modern turn in literature, since literature functions via not just direct narration but also hints and suggestions, images and symbols, which need to be similarly pieced together by the reader. Why then do we at all need the distinction between literary genre and the streams of knowledge? The above passage also implies the necessity of such distinction, since Feluda notes that once one starts to see a stream of knowledge in a comprehensive manner, “your head will start reeling” (Ray 2000). And yet, Ray is pushing the readers to appropriate that perspective since, once one overcomes that confusion, the effect can be “so amazing” (Ray 2000). The epistemological attitude of Ray as made visible in the Feluda series is particularly suited to the genre of travel writing, more than any other genre of

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literature, since voyaging grows the boundary of the skylines of information and understanding of any person. It not just brings various societies and social legacies closer but also additionally initiates understanding and social integrity. Further, there are travellers, who have the inventive twisted and capacity to form their encounters with a due measure of anecdotal innovativeness give a record of their excursions in masterful vein and this offers shape to what in particular can be named as “Travel Literature”—for example travel composing of artistic worth. It might be argued that the one with the creative bend of mind are Tophse and Lalmohan, while Felude is the one who travels, whether physically or through his books, is a traveler looking for the broadening of the informative mind. Hence, it is understandable that the narrative molded in the tradition of travel writing within this detective fiction comes via the pen of the narrator Topshe. But, this too would be a simplification, indulged in to make clear boundaries of the kind that Wilson would be comfortable with, since the faculty for aesthetic appreciation of scenic beauties is in fact equally apparent in Feluda, as much as it is in the other two. The narrative of The Golden Fortress creates the ambience through a combination of the factual and the aesthetic poles as Topshe narrates the journey from the city of Jodhpur to Jaisalmer: The scenery started to change when we were only ten miles out of Jodhpur. I had never seen anything like it. Jodhpur had a number of hills around it. The fort there was made of red sandstone that came from those hills. But now, those hills disappeared, and were replaced by an undulating terrain that stretched right up to the horizon. It was a mixture of grass, red earth, sand and loose stones. Ordinary trees and plants had disappeared, too. Now all I could see were acacia, cacti and similar plants whose names I didn’t know. The other thing I noticed was wild camels. They were roaming freely, like cattle and sheep. Some were light brown, like milky tea; others had darker coats, closer to black coffee. I saw one of them munching on a thorny plant. Feluda said that the thorns frequently injured a camel’s mouth; but since those bushes were its only source of food, the camel put up with the discomfort. (Ray 2000)

As opposed to the avoidance of the loose ends, as advocated by the idea of the Chekov’s gun, the scenery provided here or the information regarding the diets of camels as mentioned in the above passage has no pragmatic purpose in the plot of the story. That does not mean that the elements of travel writing consequently have no purpose whatsoever in the novel The Golden Fortress. Rather, the very notion of “purpose” is something that must be interrogated when we are looking at Ray’s text. When Ray inserts information and scenic details into the text, he aims at a mise-en-scene which would make the life of the story emerge. For this, he utilizes a heterogeneous assortment of elements



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that are necessarily related in a logical manner, but do produce an organic unity. The glocal is similarly an assortment of organically interrelated local elements that retain their local nature, enhance the value of the global through the addition of local colors, rather than presenting hinderances to the global flow through local resistances, and thereby makes the currents of globalization profit from an overwhelming abundance of information and diversified material wealth. Information, drawn from other streams of knowledge, add depth to the narrative and highlight how different historical currents come to configure a local identity: Feluda also told me a little about Jaisalmer. It was built in the twelfth century, and became the capital of the BhatiRajputs. Only sixty-four miles from there was the border between India and Pakistan. Even ten years ago, going to Jaisalmer was quite difficult. There were no trains, and what roads there were often disappeared under the sand. The place was so dry that if it rained just for a day in a whole year, people thought they were lucky. When I asked him about battles, Feluda said AlauddinKhilji had once attacked Jaisalmer. (Ray 2000)

As the detective fiction-cum-travel narrative shifts into the historical genre, we see that the division between India and Pakistan is historically traced back to the conflict between the BhatiRajputs and AlauddinKhilji. This adds to the story thematically since Mukul, the boy around whom the particular revolves, is apparently a reincarnate Bengali boy who somehow remembers his previous life in Jaisalmer. In this manner, the interweaving of diverse themes results in a comprehensive form of story-telling in which the ultimate resolution of the crime is as important and engaging—or, according to the reader’s preference, might even be less important and engaging then—as these finer details. Travel narratives can broadly be divided between subjective and objective variants. The way of serving and introducing his material, the travel narrative writers have their own inclinations and individual styles as well. Some like to introduce the excursion in its real-life form, by introducing each detail; how the courses were chosen, sections were covered and what difficulties he needed to experience in transit to the destination; whereas other authors would not want to draw much on the plans of travel, rather they would remark on the result of the excursion embraced, and their very own impression on the way of life and the individuals they went over. In the travel narratives as well, some writers present their own material basically as the primary individual solitary record, with the story “I,” and permitting the readers to experience the content with his conclusions and perceptions, though some of the time, the storyteller hides behind the veil and presents the image from his

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higher, objective seat. We see that in the case of Feluda, Ray takes the subjective route, thereby engaging the readers in the narrative on an experiential level. Thus, the book becomes a transcultural site in itself where not only do characters from different parts of India do gather—characters from Kailash, Rajasthan, Bengal, Orissa, and others—but also readers from different parts of the globe do approach. WORKS CITED Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 2009. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) on ‘Weltliteratur.’ Compiled by Alok Yadav. George Mason University. http://mason. gmu.edu/~ayadav/Goethe%20on%20World%20Literature.pdf. Ray, Satyajit. 2000. The Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol. 1. Trans. Gopi Majumdar. New Delhi: Penguin Random House India. Ritzer, George, and Paul Dean. 2015. Globalization: a Basic Text. New Jersey: Wiley–Blackwell. Stowe, William W. “Popular Fiction as Liberal Art.” College English Vol 48.7. (1986): 646–663. JSTOR. Accessed June 5, 2015.

Chapter 18

Detectives and Father Figures A Study of the Metamorphosis of the Indian Father Figure with Ray’s “Feluda” Gouri Parvathy V

“What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had a son.” (Matthew Arnold, “Sohrab and Rustum”)

The story of fathers and sons are eons old. When civilization took root, and the hunter gatherers settled down, familial relationships began to gain definition. They slowly seeped into the human psyche and became defined in particular ways. While these definitions mutated constantly, a paradigmatic shift found its source in the golden age of Vienna. The city had reigned as the center of learning and philosophy. A new science of psychoanalysis was being developed by a neuroscientist by the name of Sigmund Freud. This was marked by the publication of his most famous work, The Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900. Everything after its conception would be tinted with definitive and distinct colors of the concept of psychoanalysis. The turn of the century was marked by the event of the psyche, no longer remaining a mystery. It had descended into the realm of science from that of spirituality. The elements of everyday human life became entwined with psychoanalysis, one of them was the oft overlooked relationship between fathers and sons. Almost a millennium ago in 429 BC, a play about a son who unwittingly murders his father was performed in Athens. In the Greece of old, the topic was not horrific, it did not shock its audience. This play was Sophocles’ 191

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Oedipus Rex. But when Sigmund Freud, fresh from his practice of psychoanalysis, or the talking cure, introduced this Grecian fiction into the everyday psyches of real people, it was a different experience. Waves of changes were taking place in the all fields of study. Science, art, and philosophy were mutating. Religion, theology, science and art, all clashed creating unique and often confused combinations. God, in Christendom had developed into a father figure. But this phenomenon had preceded the wars. From the strict God of the Torah, the New Testament developed a mellow, merciful and loving God, this translated in the psyche of the ordinary man into a protecting, loving, father. A father to be looked up to, a father who protects his children, and a father with infinite love to give. But he is also a father who will not tolerate diabolical deeds, his anger as intense as his love. Theology constantly changed its perspectives with time. The spiritual void of one age was not the same as that of another, when an age needed a vengeful, easily angered God, the people were provided one. The persistent need for a father figure, loving and protecting created was created in the wake of the Great War. Nevertheless cultural and social needs varied across the world. While the images of God equaled that of a father in the West, the East was developing father figures along a different tangent. Myths are an important source of understanding the psyche of a people. And India being a country flush with both oral and written myths, it provides a fertile landscape for this exercise. Often considered the Indian counterparts of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata abound with father figures and fathers. The helpless grief of Dasarath, when he sees his heir being exiled to the forest. The tumultuous state of Yudhishthira beholding his brothers and wife being forced into slavery. A grief stricken Arjun witnessing his adolescent son falling in battle. These are all examples of how Indian mythology dealt with fatherhood. And yet the mythical fathers in India were not all driven by helplessness, some like the King of Indraprastha, Dhristarastra, were pushed to injustice upon others by blind love for his own children. Fatherhood did not necessarily entail being the father biologically, it entailed the responsibility that rested on the person, a brother could be the father, and father could equally have no responsibilities of the father. Conclusively what is derived from these instances is that Indian mythology did not see fathers as infallible. They were not towering figures of power and indefatigability, they were fallible, liable to weakness, sorrow and grief, and most of all they were human. These father figures could not be more distinct from the father figures of the West. The Western mythological repertoire comprised largely of the Greek myths. Owing to the fact that most of West derives its history and often conception from the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire looked to Greece as



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the land of its mythical founder, Aeneas, Europe owes its myths to this land. Other than that of Oedipus, Greek myths have a gamut of father-son relationships that serve as templates. For instance, the relationship between the legendary Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Odysseus leaves for the Trojan War when Telemachus is an infant. The boy grows up hearing stories of his father’s greatness. Odysseus is elevated to an infallible figure in his mind. In Book 21, Homer describes the final showdown of a competition between the suitors to win Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, and with her, the kingdom of Ithaca. The suitors are asked to string the bow of Odysseus. Several suitors try and fail, finally Telemachus attempts to string the bow. He is on the verge of succeeding when his father, in disguise, advises him not to. Telemachus promptly obeys, leaves the bow unstringed, and concedes defeat (Homer 2014). The father here is an extraordinary figure, and despite the fact the son has managed to fill his father’s outlines, he remains in perpetual awe and obedience of the father figure. This is in stark contrast to the fathers of the East. The East looked at fathers as fallible, human, and no different from their children. The twentieth century had brought the new world closer to Europe. Colonies had been set up and the newly “discovered” nations were satellite stations to the vast empires of England, France, Spain, and Portugal. Other European nations scrambled to grab a part of the new world for themselves. With the trade of spices, the new world also proved to be rich ground for literature and culture that Europeans found novel and often “exotic.” These myths travelled to Europe and unsurprisingly it found many takers. In this trade of myths, Western myths also travelled to countries of the East. Oedipus, Telemachus, Odysseus, and several other characters transmitted their own cultures baggage into the East. It is here, in this imperial world, that Freud introduces his theory of the oedipal complex. The Oedipal complex essentially pitted the fathers against the son, an intense psychological competition to win the favor and, more shockingly, the sexual preference of the mother. As much as the response to the theory is considered, contemporaries of Freud were not impressed. The suggestion, that a relationship as sacred as that of mother and child should be marred by implications of sexuality was not acceptable to the society. The relationship that came under question, that of a mother and her child, was rife with religious significations, this further complicated the idea. Nevertheless modern criticisms of the same theory target elements other than the indication of child sexuality; the assigned gender roles, and the heteronormative tone that Freud takes. The element that was underplayed and often went unnoticed in this was the relationship of the father and the son. That the father could be projected as a competition, a prospective enemy, raised less eyebrows than the idea of the mother as a sexual partner. This owed to the lurking sense of complicit agreement with the argument. That the father was a role model and the son

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would yearn to fill the outlines that he leaves is a societal norm. The pressure upon the offspring to rise to his father’s height, both physical and of rank, is immense. Even when religion represented inimitable fathers, the ideal was always to rise to his greatness and thus to salvation. In 1887, when Sherlock Holmes was first published in a monthly magazine in London, it attracted but moderate attention. By 1891, the character became widely known, loved and sought after in both England and America. Created by Arthur Conan Doyle, the character was a reflection of what the science of observation and silent contemplation could achieve. Sherlock Holmes was not created to be lovable. He was emotionally distant, spoke less, and most of all, there pervaded around him and his actions an air of acute patronization. While John Watson, his sidekick and “friend” would be all praises of the abilities of Holmes, the man himself barely acknowledged Watson. The catchphrase that came to be repeated across film reproductions and popular culture, “Elementary my dear Watson, you know my methods,” (Doyle 2019) reeks more of a sense of superiority than of confidence. Nevertheless and often despite these freaks of character, Holmes came to be largely admired. Father or pater in Latin creates the adjective patronization. Patronization is commonly defined as speaking or behaving toward someone as if they were stupid or insignificant. It is not coincidental that this word gained such a meaning and a negative connotation, it has to be read in tandem with its root word; pater. To generalize the behavior of a father towards his offspring would be erroneous but the adjective signifies only what was determined as the norm. The father is pitted as the authority sans doubt. This applies not only to the relationship between the biological father and child but also that of a father figure with anyone younger. Patronization becomes an increasingly important concept when it comes to the analysis of Sherlock Holmes’ character. If the phenomenon of a largely anti-social character being loved, and looked up to be considered through a Freudian lens, it reveals a lot about the Oedipal tendencies that lie at the bottom of the public consciousness. Oedipal in the sense that an inimitable, patronizing character is loved as one would a father, but also anti-oedipal for there is no attempt or feeling of wanting to triumph this figure. A silent and compliant defeat is accepted as ideal by the child-like and dependent consciousness of the reader as opposed to rebellion. The counterpart of the child in the narrative is, of course the sidekick, Dr. Watson. A doctor and a soldier who served in the Afghan war, John Watson, uncharacteristic to what is described of his history prior to meeting Holmes, is comparatively acquiescent of Holmes’ authority. In the winter of 1893, Doyle published ‘The Final Problem,’ the story shockingly narrated Sherlock Holmes and his arch nemesis Moriarty plunging to their apparent deaths in Reichenbach falls. Doyle had killed off the



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character than had made him. Doyle had developed a deep sense of hatred towards Holmes. The character that had propelled him into worldwide fame, success, and wealth, had inevitably overshadowed the author. Doyle stood perplexed in the enormous shadow that Holmes threw upon his creator’s dwarfed form. When he finally did kill off the character, Doyle wrote, “I have been much blamed for doing that gentleman to death, but I hold that it was not murder, but justifiable homicide in self-defense, since, If I had not killed him, he would certainly have killed me” (Miller 2009). From the brambles of a detective fiction, a very conspicuous bloom of the oedipal complex emerges. Holmes had grown to represent a father figure that would eventually swallow his author as Oedipus his father or Rustum his son. Oedipus was ever present in the Western consciousness. Raised a Catholic, Arthur Conan Doyle would have been steeped in the Bible and the institution of the church. The concept of the father figure, introduced in the New Testament, would have represented God for the author. That Doyle should identify in Holmes the outlines of an inimitable power, would be but natural. Holmes could do no wrong, and none could attempt to scale the heights that he has. The character tends toward reflecting what God would be to believer. Nevertheless, the character is also a reflection of a father figure, a person occupying such gigantic quantities of space that cannot be expected to be filled. What is interesting is that Doyle who was raised a Catholic relinquished his religion and turned to psychic spirituality later in his life. And so, like he attempted to kill of his triumphant creation, Doyle also attempted to kill off his God, an Oedipal yearning of parricide. Several things underwent cataclysmic changes after the Second World War. A deep sense of doubt and uncertainty reigned in the public consciousness. The war that was to end all wars, the Great War of 1914, had only created another strife. Authority, government, and religion itself seemed to have undergone an eclipse. The power of the human race to transcend calamity has helped sustain it. And thousands of generations have subsisted on religion as their silver lining. Nevertheless philosophies and the sciences of the twentieth century had already reduced the dependency of the people upon religions. And thus when the war arrived, they found themselves without the support. If belief and tales they spun for themselves had been what sustained the civilizations of the past, it was obviously what was needed to support them now. And thus men started spinning new tales. The tensions of the European world had not yet spiraled into full blown war in 1936. It was at this time that in America a comic strip featuring an uncannily powerful hero began to be published. Kal El was born on the planet of Krypton. When the planet fell to its enemies, Kal El, yet an infant, was sent to earth. He was raised as Clark Kent, the future Superman. Superman even as a story was significantly part of the psychological human need for

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dependency. A belief, a story, no matter how sparsely described, provides a system of dependency, necessary to the human psyche. Here, the story of an alien being, who despite his origins is human enough, descending onto earth to protect and sustain, was the system that the war generation needed. It is here that the oedipal father figure seems to lose some of his authority. Father figures, protectors in this time of uncertainty needed to have their rigidity cut down. The popular fictions and films were all prepared to initiate this change. The image of the father figure had to be taken back to the drawing board, it had to be reconstructed and restructured to such an extent that the oedipal concepts would be eclipsed. Every child in America and any other part of the world that had access to its fast culture identified in Superman the father figure. This was of course just the beginning. The missile crisis of 1960s acutely intensified this movement. Superheroes proliferated like spores. Beginning from Superman, the trend extended to several figures, with several exclusive franchises like DC and Marvel comics featuring multiple superheroes. Detective fiction, all this time was tottering. Although Sherlock Holmes would be an eternal figure of wonder, new detectives were becoming less and less common. The prowess of the detective was not enough for the cultural and political crisis that had enveloped the world. While the Western world struggled through the first and second world wars, India had its own difficulties. The National freedom struggle was gaining strength and India as a nation was uniting against her colonizer. Culturally India after colonialism had changed significantly. The common enemy, the British, had lent a hand in creating a newfound unity. In the sector of trade, the markets had opened up under the commonwealth, all the roads now led to London. This in turn, created a flow of Indian students to London and other parts of the British Empire. English became the language of privilege, and Victorian and Edwardian fiction flowed into India. With this literature becoming a staple among students, the very face of Indian and vernacular literatures changed. Victorian sensibilities, morals, and ethics became entangled with the already established Indian ones. A melange, of the strangest elements, created the concoction that was the Indian culture of the late 1940s and 1950s. English education mixed with the Indian traditions, and the uncertainties that war brought, to create a new normal. And this new status quo had a lot to contribute to several fields including that of the psychological realm of father figures. The first time a Feluda story was published was in 1965. While the detective fiction and superhero fiction in the West sought sidekicks in friends, the Indian scenario was different. Despite the effects that colonialization might have had in ushering in a Westernized attitude in India, family still remained the fulcrum of the Indian society. Satyajit Ray took this into consideration when he made Tapesh Ranjan, cousin to Pradosh Mitter, aka Feluda, his



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sidekick. The sanguineous relationship between the characters made them more relatable and acceptable in the Indian scenario. Ray was an avid admirer of Sherlock Holmes and the structural similarities between Holmes and Feluda was intentional if anything. But while Holmes remains the emotionally distant and patronizing being, Feluda inaugurates the genre of the lovable hero. Despite the fact that Pradosh Mitter’s style is quite similar to that of Holmes, he does not look down upon his brother. The brotherly banter and the protective attitude of Feluda towards Tapesh or Topshe as he calls him, is distinctively different from Holmes’ conversations with Watson. Several instances can be gathered from Holmes’ conversations with Watson that has a distinctive tang of patronization. Further Watson himself constantly expresses his distaste in the vanity of Holmes. The first instalment of the series, “A Study in Scarlet,” shows Dr. Watson being constantly amazed and even willing to write a chronicle of Holmes’ adventures. Nevertheless this was initial days of their alleged friendship. By the time the series reached a few instalments, Dr. Watson is seen making commentaries about the vanity of Holmes and the fact that he constantly criticizes the chronicles he volunteers to write. The fact that Watson willingly writes of their adventures, always shining the spotlight on Holmes and yet never really getting thanked for it has to be noted. Watson is relegated to being a dutiful son doing his duties, yet never really getting appreciated for it. Satyajit Ray, when he constructed Prodosh Mitter, was essentially recreating, restructuring and making Indian, the character of Sherlock Holmes. And considering that Sherlock Holmes comes with the additional baggage of the whole of the Western cultural, social, and theological concepts, this was a difficult task. To recreate was to keep the essence, and yet to not leave the character so Western as to alienate him from his Indian audience. Prodosh Mitter had to be Sherlock Holmes, and yet not him. This “to have the cake and to eat it too” problem was becoming increasingly common among authors who wished to adapt Western characters and introduce them to the Indian audience. This was especially seen after colonization left its indelible mark on India. The reason why several Western adaptations don’t work with their Indian audience is because they often don’t care to remove this baggage of the implicit Western influence. The character would be made Indian, yet the essence that makes the character Western remains. This creates a character Indian in flesh and blood, but English in habits, beliefs and quite often Western in all other essential raw materials. Ray succeeds in establishing this precarious balance in the character of Prodosh Mitter. Ray inverted the whole concept that made Sherlock Holmes, the oedipal father figure he was. Feluda is not unlikable, he is warm, friendly and cares deeply about his cousin Tapesh. He is the new father figure in Indian fiction.

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While Sherlock Holmes has a few female characters, including the famous Irene Adler who outwits Holmes, Feluda is conspicuous by the complete absence of female characters. While the reason for this complete avoidance of female characters is not entirely clear, following the essence of oedipal father figure, this could have been used to avoid conflict. The concept of the oedipal conflict with the father becomes relevant and explicit only in the presence of a mother, or a female figure whose favor is to be gained. And the absence of any female figure entails a complete absence of conflict, essentially resolving the Gordian knot. If it is not to be unraveled, it can always be cut through, and this is what Ray does in Feluda. A feminist critique would not treat this solution kindly, nevertheless it achieves the desired result. Another element that helps ease the conflict is the lack of vanity in the main character. As long as the main character does not engage in vanity and a course of looking down upon his sidekick, the conflict remains at bay. This is especially relevant in Feluda. Tapesh is never looked down upon, quite on the contrary Feluda is seen training him to understand and observe things as he does. The father figure here is not an inimitable character whose shoes the sidekick can never fill, he is teacher who trains his pupil, to one day take over the trade from him. There is no conflict, since the interests both the characters move towards, is the same. The satellite status that Tapesh possesses is something he covets, not resents. The Indian scenario throws in a few other significant challenges to the exported father figures from the West. Traditionally grounded ideas, in spite of the centuries of Colonial rule, are often constantly suspicious of anything that reeks of the West. And several times the Colonial rule instead of displacing the old beliefs have helped strengthen their roots. Indian films and novels for a long time followed the structures and features of father figures that the myths dictated. Weak, helpless, authoritarian, patronizing fathers were the staple of Indian fiction and films. Oftentimes novels or films would even be adaptations of myths. For Instance, the 1959 novel by V. S. Khandekar, Yayati is a story from the Mahabharata. Yayati is a possessed by his lust into ignoring his duties as father and husband. He goes on to ask his son, Puru to sacrifice his youth so that Yayati could enjoy the sensual pleasures of life. Here we behold a father who is weak, and at the same time authoritarian enough to command his son to sacrifice his youth. The son is willing and submissive, a mere shadow beside his father. That, a story from the Adiparva of “Mahabharata” should be relevant in the twentieth century says a lot about how India has remained unchanged in its collective cultural and social relations. The rigidity of the established norms was probably the reason why Indian films and fiction held fast unto these very ideals even till the fin de siècle of the twentieth century. The Indian mainstream films of the 1980s and the



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1990s had, as a staple, the strict father who could only refuse any wish of their children. The towering patriarch was the unpleasable Godhead of the household. While the fathers were securely established in this role, a subtle revolution took place in the portrayal of the father figures. The difficulty of the Indian audience to digest a friendly father, but the necessity of the hour to usher him in, was solved by introducing friendly uncles, brothers and cousins. All father figures, and yet not so tied down by the mandates of tradition. Feluda, I would prefer to believe, was the first in the long line of these friendly, guiding, father figures. Ray had constructed a character who would be well before his time, and would be a revolutionary pioneer. With the beginning of the twenty first century several changes took place. A generation that had grown up with the stories of Feluda and other similar father figures, took up the reins. The friendly father figure and the authoritarian father had found a level ground to exist together in the 2010 film, Udaan (The Flight). This film illustrates and provides a canvas where both the past and the future of the father figure can be observed. The authoritarian, strict and often frightening Bhairav Singh stands out in contrast with his calm, reassuring, loving, and emotionally available brother. Here, the father despite his biological claim to fatherhood, falls short of the emotional duties. A foundation had been laid in mainstream cinema and thus in the Indian collective psyche that the father owes more to his offspring than genetic material. This emotional requisite that the fathers were required to fulfill created confusions at first. It was a new concept even in the Western world, where God had begun to be projected as such a figure. And more so in the East, where such a concept was unprecedented. The collective mind had to be rewired and reset to accommodate this change. And if Rome could not be built in a day, what hope is there for creating revolution in the centuries old and culturally inherited ideas of fatherhood. It has taken a significant amount of time for the concept of the emotionally available, protective father figures to seep into the Indian society. Despite the fact that only in the last decade has this aspect trickled down into Bollywood, Ray’s Feluda establishes this cult as a pioneer. A teacher who does not look down upon his pupil, Feluda is in essence the first among Indian father figures to break both the Victorian stereotype of the Freudian, and Indian status quo of the helpless father. While the Indian society might still find it difficult to accept a father who engages with his sons on an emotional plane, it has allowed for father figures, uncles, brothers, and teachers, to play substitute in this complex role. The emotional void that the unavailable father leaves, is filled by these father figures, the first among whom is Ray’s Feluda. In the time that human civilization has developed its constituent relationships, father-child bond has undergone immense changes. The contribution of myths, religion, literature, and popular media to these changes, are

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significant. The psyche is malleable and often absorbs from a repertoire of sources, what we call its unconscious. And in a connected, globalized world, a collective unconscious comes to be constituted. While cultural differences and personal experiences create uniqueness, an unconscious template lies at the edge of our being. Every action and thought is crafted to fit, like water in a vessel, in a template. Literature gives its part in the making of this template. Satyajit Ray’s Feluda played an important part in building and morphing the Indian template of a father. In a genre like detective fiction, the protagonist directly translates to a protective figure, and Ray’s Feluda appeals to his audience quite unambiguously as a father figure. Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh writes about Rustum and Sohrab. A tragic tale of fatherhood, Rustum unknowingly murders his own son. A tale similar to that of Oedipus, except in that the son is killed instead of the father. In the history of the myths and folk literature of the world, blood was shed on all battlefields. In the midst of clanging metal, raging battle and flying projectiles, many a son and father would have acted upon their unconscious will to destroy their primary rivals. The need of the civilized world then, are examples of fathers and father figures who break the stereotype of the patron. When Satyajit Ray created Feluda, he changed his beloved Sherlock Holmes to suit the need of the hour. Consciously or otherwise, Ray had created with Feluda an enduring example of fatherhood. Seeking in detective fiction, we make the serendipitous discovery, of the loving father figure. WORKS CITED Arnold, Matthew. 1891. “Sohrab and Rustum.” Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. Kindle. Doyle, Arthur Conan. 2019. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  USA: Amazon Classics. Homer. The Odyssey. 2014. Translated by Barry B Powell. New York: Oxford University Press. Kindle. Miller, John. J. 2009. “The Burden of Holmes.” The Wall Street Journal, December 23, 2009,  https://www.wsj.com/articles/ SB1000142405274704240504574585840677394758-22.

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Chapter 19

Byomkesh Breaks Bad Unraveling the Hidden Desires in Dibakar Banerjee’s Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! Kaustav Mukherjee

Dibakar Banerjee’s psychedelic representation of the colonial Calcutta is a quest for both the missing father and desired erotic overtures within the unconscious labyrinths of multiple Byomkesh narratives. As Salman Rushdie might have said, the film concocts a chutnification of stories, myths, histories, and literary characterizations. This chapter will look at the representation of the city and characters as an attempt to fill in the missing pieces of puzzle that had remained hidden through the germination and reception of Byomkesh stories in situ. Using the Scylla and Charybdis of British colonization and a romanticized Japanese invasion as the backdrop, the narrative weaves a network of psychotic (in the Freudian sense) desires: the father, the young mother who is of the same age as Ajit, the mesmerizing beauty of a triple crossing courtesan, and the haunting ghost of a character that comes out of the original Byomkesh story to wreak a vengeful bloodbath. While the movie amalgamates many Byomkesh stories, the one that takes preponderance is the very first story ever written with Byomkesh and Ajit. It is in this infancy that we find the overarching presence of Onukul Guha—the ghost that lives on in Byomkesh’s life to reappear again in one of his subsequent stories. This chapter will try to have a psychoanalytical discussion of the missing pieces of the very puzzle that had remained hidden in the world of Byomkesh. The film is the moment in time when the idea of Byomkesh (not just the character) wakes up and looks back clinically at the desires that had been repressed 203

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for so long. It is as if this awakening comes with a hysterical exclamation as shown through the title Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! Byomkesh is not just a character. It is a discourse. This discourse incorporates the Babu and the British, the colonial and the anti-colonial, the sweet and the decent, the jagged mental acuity and the not so manly muscles. The dhoti takes preponderance and not the gun. It is meek in its physicality but lightning in its mental kung-fu kicks. Decades of readership has put this idea on a pedestal; this pedestal is high because of what the idea of Byomkesh could achieve against stronger forces, but it is also close-by as it represents Every Man in the readership who can still touch the physical meekness of the hero but maybe not his mental acuity. Byomkesh was an Every Man with some extra gray matter. The Bengali reader worshiped that brain and felt a close kinship with the Every Man that was part of the idea of Byomkesh. The character of Byomkesh incorporates this idea in its literary avatar. He is charming but not a macho-man. He is not a womanizer. He respects women from a distance. And when he finally gets hitched with Satyavati, he is the forever gentleman husband. There is romance in that relationship but not passion; there is poetry but no vigorous embrace. The idea of Byomkesh lets its ego control the vagaries of its unconscious (Freud 1927, 161–67). The ego is alive, and it is the ego that makes him Every Man. The movie Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is an exclamation point in the discourse of the beloved Bengali sleuth. Byomkesh breaks bad in this movie. He breaks bad because of the web of intoxication within his unconscious that comes out in the open. The literary narratives had his desires hidden, largely. But here it is out in the open. It is intoxication of a degree that the literary readership had never imagined the idea of Byomkesh to be capable of. The very first scene of the movie depicts a silent boat that creeps slowly over the black water of the Ganges with its illegal secret contents. There is a bloodbath that ensues, and the audience is immediately thrown into a whirlwind of delirious revelations that come with a lot of clandestine realizations. In this study, I will look at four principal characters and their relationship with Byomkesh and the larger discourse around the world of Byomkesh: Angoori Devi, Onukul Guha, Ajit, and the colonial Calcutta, which is a veritable living character in the movie. Much of the discussion stems from a Lacanian understanding of the unconscious as being structured like a language (Lacan 2006, 412–443), which I use quite literally in this reading even though Lacan’s study takes a more angular approach. Angoori Devi, the name, suggests a woman who is as luscious and juicy as grapes. Angoor in Bengali (and in Hindi) means grapes. Now, if we read that name backwards, it becomes “i-roogna,” which in Bengali would mean two words: I (same as in English) + Sick (roogna). Angoori Devi is the projected desire that causes sickness or is this a self-punishing realization on the part of Byomkesh as he



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admonishes himself internally for not escaping the lure of the woman that is purportedly the hysterical (in the Freudian sense) projection of his unconscious desire? Either way the idea of Angoori Devi is a sequence of desirous transgressions. Angoori Devi is the sour grape that Byomkesh can never have. She epitomizes the Lacanian Desire that will always be left unsatiated, the woman who will be deleterious for the signification of women (Lacan 2006, 575–584). Let us look at the filmic sequences that lure Byomkesh into facing the desire of Angoori Devi. Even before he meets Angoori Devi in person, there are several scenes in the movie that show the audience glimpses of her through billboard hoardings, paintings on streets and advertisements on public transports. Interestingly, Byomkesh never realizes the presence of these images as they remain hidden to his ever-curious eyes. His existence is around these images, but he never could ascertain the very presence of any of them, consciously. Angoori was ever present in his unconscious being. She had been hidden in his mind and he is baffled when he confronts those hidden images. The moment finally arrives when they meet, and it happens when Byomkesh goes to investigate the premises of a factory in his search for Ajit’s missing father. He finds the factory to be locked and his gaze catches the backside of a woman who plunges into the Ganges for a swim. This scene is focused through the slanted pillars of a bridge the end of which acts as the diving board for Angoori Devi. The tunnel vision helps concentrate the gaze of the scene at her. Byomkesh does not get a glimpse of her face instantly but keeps ogling on when her maid intervenes. Angoori interjects and tells her to allow him to keep on gazing as he has probably not seen “it” previously. Her comment makes Byomkesh uneasy and he drags his gawking eyes away. This scene situates Angoori as a strong desire that Byomkesh has had to consciously confront for the first time in his life. As the scene goes on, the physicality of this desire is made blunter. The gentleman Byomkesh of Saradindu would not have been flustered the way he is shown to be in this scene. The camera pans from Angoori’s naked leg to Byomkesh, focuses again on the voluptuous enunciation of Angoori’s physicality, and immediately highlights the discomfiture and embarrassment on Byomkesh’s countenance. Angoori uses Byomkesh’s desire for her to manipulate him several times in the movie. First, she gives him a red herring through a cleverly concocted letter and then in a subsequent scene she invites Byomkesh into the bathroom as she is shown covered in soap foam in her bathtub. Byomkesh’ s incredulity at this astonishing invitation is superseded by his trepidation at being tantalized by the hidden nakedness of her body. Is he ashamed of himself or is he furious at Angoori for putting him in a spot of gentlemanly bother? The next time they meet coincides with a moment when Angoori had just poisoned Gajanan and as she sees Byomkesh approaching the dining room,

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she immediately pushes him into an empty office and stops him in his tracks by planting lascivious kisses on his lips. These are serious firsts in the annals of Byomkesh stories. Out from the pages of Saradindu, the quintessential platonic intellectual, the bhodrolok in Byomkesh, finds a new avatar in this movie. This avatar is guilty of being high on desire. The unconscious grappling against the desire is made into a conscious surrender to it in the movie. One line that is said aloud quite a few times by Onukul Guha is that a person’s enemy’s enemy is his friend. The narrative of the movie insinuates a remarkable projection of Onukul in the context of the idea and personality of Byomkesh. It has to be considered that in the literary world Saradindu’s Byomkesh, Onukul is the first ever adversary that crossed swords with Byomkesh. Furthermore, he returns for more vengeance in a subsequent adventure. In the context of this movie, Byomkesh meets Onukul during the initial stages of his investigation into Ajit’s father’s disappearance. His lies are easily deciphered by Onukul, much to his amazement. It seems as if Onukul had always known what Byomkesh was hiding. Onukul is a part of Byomkesh’s repressed unconscious. The name Onukul in English when spelled backwards in Bengali reads Lukono which means “hidden” in Bengali. His last name, Guha, in Bengali stands for a cave. His full name then reads as a hidden cave, where we see the unconscious desires of Byomkesh. It is from this cave that the desire of Byomkesh springs out in the open. Near the end of the movie, Onukul warns Byomkesh: “Bakshy babu you could not take my friendship so how would you take my enmity”? Onukul had acted as his ego and had been protecting him so far but now it is out for blood; at the very end Byomkesh turns around as if he had seen a ghost even though, consciously, he knows that Onukul had been taken away by the Green Gang and is perhaps dead by now, which of course is not the case. It is when Byomkesh is unconscious during the climax scene that Onukul gets abducted by his captors. Onukul Guha is the ego that is the enemy of Byomkesh’s unconscious that houses his never-to-be-satiated desire. In fact, it is at Onukul’s direction that Angoori had tantalized Byomkesh, an act that Byomkesh equates with tempting a dog with a bone. Quite fittingly, at the end of the movie, Onukul kills Angoori Devi. After the act has been done, he yells: “Did you see the color of the Truth? It’s red.” This indicates that it has been Onukul who has been protecting Byomkesh from the truth all along, the truth being red, the color of passion, blood, and murder. That is why with all the dead bodies falling everywhere, Byomkesh had been spared because his existence ensures Onukul’s own existence and vice-versa. In fact, Onukul does say that his killing of Byomkesh would have solved all problems and mysteries. It is only after Angoori is dead that Byomkesh and Satyavati come close to each other as Byomkesh realizes what



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his protective ego has perpetrated. With his desire murdered, he will have to settle for a lesser desire, one that can be satiated, with Satyavati. Near the beginning of the movie, we get introduced to Leela who is shown to be the girlfriend of Byomkesh. It is also revealed that Byomkesh was her private tutor. It may be interesting to note that in the story, Adim Ripu, it was revealed that Byomkesh’s father was a schoolteacher and a Sanskrit scholar. Byomkesh’s temporary emulation of his father’s vocational predilection is subtly revealed in this short segment. Incidentally, Leela means “play,” in Sanskrit. The word choice here is quite curious as we come to know that Leela is betrothed to a chemist named Atanu, much to Byomkesh’s chagrin. The titillating nuance of the play theme in her name indicates the relationship they may have had; it may also indicate the play she may have committed with the desires within Byomkesh. The empty classroom scene that is the venue of the conversation between Leela and Byomkesh has a blackboard in the background that reads: “History of Love . . . Sexual or Divine.” The name, Atanu, is curious as well. Interspersed with various other Sanskrit meanings, the word Atanu also indicates a person with no body. One other meaning associated with this name is Kamdeva or the lord of passion. This may indicate the dichotomy prevalent in Byomkesh as he tries to come to grips with the notion of losing his love interest to a person without a body at one end and the same person who could be defined as the very lord of lust and passion, Kamdeva. Can we detect a strong hint of consternation along with a note of jealousy that is built on a lack that Byomkesh understands he has? Maybe this realization pushes him over the edge in his zealous dealings with Angoori Devi. Leela is the play that he wants to engage in with Angoori knowing full well that the grapes may turn sour. Subsequently, the plot pushes Byomkesh to engage the services of Atanu to chemically analyze the contents of the Paan box of Bhuvanbabu. While no heroin is detected in the box, Atanu does manage to find the heroin in Byomkesh’s blood, which signifies the intoxication he has been under. It is in this moment of scientific revelation that Byomkesh understands the intricacies of the mystery he is investigating through the source of his own body. The word play (Leela) between heroin and heroine cannot be discounted here. The intoxication is not just because of a chemical in his body but its cause can also be attributed to the heroines (Angoori, Leela, Satyavati) who have been consuming him from the inside. But Satyavati is not the Lacanian desire for Byomkesh as he anticipates a consummation, something that he could not attain with Angoori, and perhaps Leela as well. Both elude him and remain the unsatiated desire. But Satyavati is his love interest; the discourse of Byomkesh knows that she is his future wife. There is no hidden desire in this expectation. When Satyavati comes to the boys’ hostel Byomkesh is shown with a scarf on his eyes as he does not want to quench his desire for Satyavati as once it is quenched it will no

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longer remain the desire. And then there is this little case of the next-door woman on the balcony by the boys’ hostel who keeps popping up, perhaps deliberately, in a trivial manner in multiple scenes and Byomkesh keeps closing the window in each and every one of those scenes. That woman does not interest Byomkesh as she is mundane, much like Satyavati. It seems that if he is not addicted to that unnamed woman and Satyavati, as these heroines do not intoxicate him the way Angoori does, like a heroin, from the inside. Sticking with the play within the name of Atanu, it must be noted that Kamadeva is one of the most powerful, yet under-mentioned or repressed Gods in Hindu mythology. Although the Vedas mention several Gods of the secondary rank such as Vayu, Kubera, Akasha, Surya, there is no mention of him in the four main Vedas (Ray 2012, 303–308). He is mentioned in the Puranas and his interactions with the three main deities (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) are especially significant. Kamadeva was the son of Brahma, the Creator. He is the God of physical beauty and lust and carried a bow of sugarcane and lust-inducing arrows. This is in contrast with his sister Sandhya, who is celebrated for her chastity. While Gods in Hindu mythology are depicted in human forms that signify their powers and roles, Kamadeva is formless (therefore called Atanu and Ananga). Lust is a state of mind; the power of lust is formless since it exists in the mind. The irrepressible churning of the mind that Kamadeva causes is the reason he is referred to as Manamatha. However, on the walls of the twelfth century temples of Khajuraho, we see him etched alongside his wife, the lustful Rati. Kama plays the pivotal role in the story of creation and sustenance according to the Hindu mythology as the unifier of Shiva and Shakti (Parvati) without which there would be no balance in Creation. Kamadeva is probably the only mythical being (Sura or Asura) who could not be resisted by the omnipotent Shiva. Brahma lusted for own daughters Sandhya and Saraswati (who later became his wife). Angered by Brahma’s lust for Sandhya, Shiva burned Brahma’s fifth head and we find the four headed Brahma in some of his idols. Kama was blamed for the lust in Brahma’s heart. However, when the fierce ascetic Shiva was the victim of Kama’s lust, Shiva did not forgive him. Despite Parvati’s prayers to Shiva to be accepted as his wife, Shiva did not yield. Kama’s arrow broke Shiva’s firm heart and he fell for Parvati. Much shocked, Shiva burned Kamadeva with his third eye. Kama was restored at Rati and Parvati’s request. However, Kamadeva did get the better of Shiva, a feat that no one else ever could. Vishnu, in the form of Krishna, also fell victim of Kama’s lustful arrows. Byomkesh, the name of our beloved protagonist, is another name for Shiva. Just like in Hindu mythology, the film depicts Byomkesh to be a victim of Kama, through losing Leela to Atanu, and by falling for his own unsatisfied desires.



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Interestingly, the name Ajit, in Hindu mythology, refers to both Shiva and Vishnu. They are the deities who have never been weakened or defeated by any God or Demon. The only exception is Kamadeva. The darpa or ego of the highest God was shattered by Kamadeva, giving him the name Kandarpa. Ajit, the invincible, in this specific narrative, is haunted and defeated by his unconscious desires as well. Ajit is an integral part of the discourse of Byomkesh. Ajit is a character within the very idea of Byomkesh. He is the quintessential second fiddle, a great friend, the confused Watson, and the literary narrator. The idea of Byomkesh supposedly is a concoction of Ajit. When that idea is narrated by an amalgamation of hidden desires, Ajit is stripped from the roles that had been originally assigned to him. His unsatiated desires get a spark as well. The archetypal Oedipal complex is assigned to Ajit with surreptitious aplomb. While he never loses his eyes, Onukul blinds himself in one eye near the end and the leader of the Green Gang had been blinded by Onukul at the beginning of the movie as well. The audience gets to see him first in the game room of a college where Byomkesh frequents. He tries to convince Byomkesh to help him find his missing father. His stance looks demure and solemn till the moment when Byomkesh implies that his father may be out in a secret location having fun with a woman at which point Ajit slaps Byomkesh, rather hard. In a subsequent scene Byomkesh unearths the contents of Bhuvan Babu’s trunk and finds an illustrated version of Kama Sutra, which he tries to hide from Ajit. He also finds a war warrant worth Rs 10,000 made out for a certain Kamalbala Devi, age twenty-four. After an initial round of denial, Ajit accepts the fact that Kamalbala Devi is indeed his stepmother and his father’s much younger second wife. Continuing with our readings of the word plays in names, it must be added here that the word Kamalbala designates a young woman who is as pure as a lotus flower. The indication of the flower trope is captivating as the illustrated sex manual indicates a certain de-flowering that may have ruffled the unconscious desire of Ajit. Kamalbala Devi remains the unsatiated desire of Ajit. Ajit’s stepmother is an original interpolation. We never get to see her properly nor do we hear her speak. The only glimpse we have of her is her shrill and plaintive cry as she is escorted down the corridor of the hospital where she has just seen the dead body of her husband. Ajit is shown to be directly behind her in the scene and he does not speak a word. Nor does he show any focused emotion at the demise of his father. At another point in the movie, it is delineated that Ajit is twenty-four himself, as are Byomkesh and Satyavati. During the aforementioned bathroom scene, Byomkesh escapes the moment Angoori Devi touches him gently and the next scene cuts into

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a chained padlock on closed factory door that eventually has to be unlocked and in turn leads to the discovery of the dead body of Ajit’s father. When Ajit comes to know about the dead body, he keeps asking: “Why? But Why?” Is that a question from a distressed son or is he really asking why did Byomkesh unearth the father back into his life? Or is he asking why did Kamalbala Devi marry his father and not him? The fact that his father had never wanted him as a son is revealed in a heated tête-à-tête between Byomkesh and Ajit. Near the end when Byomkesh says that he thinks Ajit’s father might have been a good man, Ajit retorts that maybe he was really a criminal who did everything because he desired money and got killed in the process. The note of anger or jealousy can be found in this utterance. Can one tie this anger to the muted desire that Ajit felt toward his mother? Is that why Ajit did not want his father to be found? The father was left for dead in a hidden place where his body was being consumed by ants. The revelation of the body takes the “missing” out of the missing father, even though Ajit had always missed his father even when he was alive. He also missed being his father, perhaps, always desirous of a place by his young stepmother. As we come to know later, Onukul Guha was the assailant who killed Bhuvanbabu. If Onukul stands for the ego of Byomkesh, then this equation becomes even more complicated and interesting. Dibakar Banerjee in the introduction to The Rhythm of Riddles: 3 Byomkesh Mysteries, says that a detective story is all about the detective and his atmosphere as each cannot exist without the other. Calcutta is the atmosphere that makes this narrative happen. The depiction of Calcutta is like a dream sequence. Calcutta is presented as a character that is historicized, fictionalized, and adored at same time. It has a distinct European cadence interspersed with the expected Bengali-ness. It is Calcutta that we see in the movie and not Kolkata. The British are romanticized rather suavely. Kolkata is depicted as a melting pot where people from England, China, Japan congregate. Byomkesh is an import himself as he hails from Munger. Kolkata is the climax of action; it is the destination and the goal with the contemporary angle of the Chinese as the antagonistic idea is insinuated rather robustly. The play of trust between Byomkesh and the British deputy commissioner of police, Wilkie, is exhibited without regret. This is simply not the colonized cry against the colonial baton. The background score seems to highlight this weird amalgamation with a grunge music overlay as the local trams and rickshaws are highlighted along with the Calcutta neighborhoods of Shyambazar, Burrabazar, and Lal Bazaar. The Japanese air-raids and night-time display of WWII fireworks on the Kidderpore docks add to this motley dream. It is impossible to draw an identifiable boundary between any of the stark distinctions that come together to create this dream like etching of the narrative on Calcutta. There



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is a nostalgic glimpse of the College Street Coffee House where Byomkesh seeks out Ajit; there is a reference to Bus 32A, which to this very day plies via Shyambazar. The address of Vidyasadan College (a fictitious name) is conspicuously shown as 64 Sealdah Street. It is to be noted that there is a Sealdah Road, a long and busy one at that but no Sealdah Street, in Kolkata. It is within this building that Byomkesh and Ajit put on their disguise while a young man is shown reading a magazine with the cover picture titled, “Inside Detective.” The secret heroin cladded paan masala of Bhuvan Babu is named Calcutta Kiss and there is a western motley song in the movie that is also called Calcutta Kiss. It will be easy to say that the Calcutta displayed in the movie is a postmodern chutnification. What makes it a little more complicated is the psychosis that is displayed in all the main characters. They all exhibit the Freudian hysteria as their narrative beads get joined by a thread whose source lies in the unconscious. That is why the story puts into motion different markers that are to be found in the various narratives of Byomkesh. It starts off with a strong depiction from the story, “Satyanweshi,” that was the first ever published Byomkesh story. Ajit and Byomkesh meet here in a Men’s hostel and the rest is as they say, history. Putiram is an easily recognizable figure who is literally mute in the story with hardly any dialog but who stays in the background showing consistent trepidation and ineptitude that are both comical and hysterical. Satyavati meets the Satyanweshi in a story called, “Artham-Anartham,” as Byomkesh saves her brother Sukumar from a murder charge. The same plot pebbles can be found in this movie as Sukumar is the initial suspect in the murder of his uncle. Byomkesh at one point declares that he hails from Munger and while the background whereabouts of Byomkesh has never been revealed in any of his adventures, the author, Saradindu Bandyopadhyay did have a strong Munger connection in his early life. The end credits display a graphic that says, sach ka khulasa, painted in blood red. The English translation of that should read something like, truth is revealed. The narrative is all about the revelation of unseen, hidden, “truths” about the discourse around Byomkesh. That is why Byomkesh is no longer a truth seeker (or Satyenwasi) in this movie. He is a Detective, an epithet that his literary avatar had always abhorred. The story helps him detect the bloody hysteria constrained within him. That is why the end credit shows a bloody trail: there is the paan box, the weapon of intoxication, from which blood comes out. There is also an image of a blood splattered wedding card of Byomkesh and Satyavati, an omen of things to come? And all the while the song that keeps playing in the background is titled Life’s a Bitch. I am quite sure that the Bengali audience of the literary Byomkesh may be a bit surprised, not just with the song but with multiple sequences within the movie. It is hard to swallow the idea of Byomkesh breaking bad but that is exactly

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what we see in the film. The end credits add to the atmosphere that makes the detective in Byomkesh Bakshy happen. WORKS CITED Banerjee, Dibakar, dir. 2015. Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! India: Yash Raj Films. Bandyopadhyay, Saradindu. 2012.  The Rhythm of Riddles: 3 Byomkesh Bakshi Mysteries. India: Penguin Books India. ———. 1995. “Adim Ripu.” Byomkesh Samagra. India: Ananda Publishers. ———. 1995. “Satyaneswi.” Byomkesh Samagra. India: Ananda Publishers. ———. 1995. “Artham-Anartham.” Byomkesh Samagra. India: Ananda Publishers. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. “The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious.” In Ecrits: The first complete edition in English. 412–443. Translated by Fink Bruce. United Kingdom: W.W. Norton & Company. ———. 2006. “The Significance of the Phallus.” In Ecrits: The first complete edition in English. Translated by Fink Bruce. 575–584. United Kingdom: W.W. Norton & Company. Freud, S. 1927. “Fetishism.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 (2). 161–167. Translated by Joan Riviere. Ray, Sitansu. 2012. “Madana (The Mythical Love-God) in Kalidasa and Tagore.” In Allegory Old and New: In Literature, the Fine Arts, Music and Theatre, and Its Continuity in Culture, edited by Marlie Kronegger and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, 303–308. Netherlands: Springer Netherlands.

Chapter 20

Serial Detectives and Reverse Forensics Cases of Literary and Filmic Red Dragon Sheng-mei Ma

The body of works or the corpus known as the detective genre formulaically opens with a body, a corpse. A series of detectives or pseudo-detectives from Sherlock Holmes to Clarice Starling commence to investigate, reading the corpse and reversing the flow of time, often with the aid of, or doubling as, forensic scientists (Conan Doyle, 2015, xix–xxii). Bullet holes and knife wounds on the deceased are clues to be traced back along the arc of the bullet and the lunge of the knife to their source, from the murder weapon, to the hand of the murderer, and finally to the motive that wields that hand. Detectives are serial not only because they combat serial killers, Satan incarnate of our secular age, but because they are sequential, handing over the magnifying glass, figuratively speaking, to their younger partners (Nelson, 258). Pursuing their investigation, serial detectives move forward in time, which entails going backward in the reconstruction of forensic and other evidence. Progress in any criminal case means to return to the criminal behavior and mindset. Progressing or regressing, time is well-nigh negated in both serial detectives and their doppelganger serial killers—or the other way around since the homicide precedes the hunt as though the killer is the Self to be followed by the Shadow, the hound. The porousness of cause and effect, the blurring of police and perpetration, suggests a paradoxical meeting of the minds of justice and evil: the police grasping the evildoer’s means and motives. On the one hand, murderers repeat their crimes, which are as much new offenses as old impulses. Serial crimes, by definition, are consecutive in time as well as driven by the repetition compulsion. On the other, detectives 213

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rely on reading clues at the crime scene and beyond. Facts are pieced together in the police lab, but, more dramatically, on the mental screen of Sherlock Holmes et al, imaginatively reconstructing the past event. Literary and filmic representations of the detective’s mental archaeology of crime borrow from the trope of flashbacks in that the detective and the viewers witness and even experience viscerally the homicide. The temporary art of reading a detective story or watching a show follows what I term “reverse forensics” back to the genesis: the Original Sin of the Fall. Reverse forensics serves the purpose of revisiting the crime, which is each show’s raison d’être. The ambiguity of the course of investigation and its retrograde slide balances precariously on the banality of evil and the beauty of life, or the banality of life and Yeatsian “terrible beauty” of death. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud coins the terms Eros and Thanatos to describe the simultaneous instincts drawn to sex/life and to death. Eros and Thanatos aptly designate the detectives the fans adore and the criminals they abhor. As the criminals will not be revealed until the very end of whodunit, their actions and identity must be decoded along the way by death whisperers: detectives-cum-coroners. Such pairs of Freudian Eros and Thanatos encapsulate that love-hate rivalry between the hunter and the hunted, between the hunter who remains haunted and the hunted who used to hunt, between our instincts drawn to and repulsed by what William Blake calls “the Devil’s party.” As such, Sherlock Holmes opines like a lovelorn lad without the pleasure of Professor Moriarty’s company, resorting to cocaine to dull his senses. Absent his doppelganger named after mortality, Holmes prefers insentience, a death-in-life. The fall of the two down the Reichenbach Falls reminds one of lovers’ double suicide. Only by joining hands, however, do the twain of good, scientific detection and forensics into evil accomplish what their fans wish. The mystery of death and its messengers are countenanced for the ultimate pleasure of whodunit. Freud hypothesizes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the pleasure principle is “a tendency operating in the service of a function whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to keep it as low as possible.” He follows it up by positing that the ultimate goal of this drive for “all living substance” is “to return to the quiescence of the inorganic world” (Freud, 1920, 76). The irony of life, according to Freud, is that any striving presupposes its opposite— the cessation of self. Like sets of contrapuntal chords, serial detectives and reverse forensics perform their looping repertoire of life and death, order and chaos, humanity and the beyond, the numinous and the monstrous.



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RED DRAGON’S COMPANY Patterns of detection and forensics abound in the detective genre. In the order of appearance, killing comes before detecting. The detective genre, however, privileges the embodiment of law and order, with which fans identify, if also titillated by disorder. Artistically, the firstborn of violence is replaced by detectives, a long line of them, in fact, to cover up the trail of blood. The seriality of triumphant detectives hides the everlastingness of evil, which, nonetheless, rubs off on the victors. A case in point: Detective Morse named after Morse Code, sequences of dots and dashes to be decrypted. Based on Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse novels (1975–1999), the BBC’s and PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery broadcast Oxford-based Inspector Morse (played by John Thaw in 1987–1993 and 1995–2000), which morphs into Morse’s young lieutenant Lewis (Kevin Whately) as he plays the lead Detective Inspector in Inspector Lewis (2006–2015), aided by another young Detective Sergeant Hathaway. Rather than having the baton passed to Hathaway, the BBC reinvents a prequel called Endeavour (2013–2021), which pairs a young Morse with a senior Inspector Thursday straight out of film noir, complete with fedora and street talk. Endeavour is Inspector Morse’s given name rarely used in the original run. The pilot program of Endeavour ends when the young Morse looks into the rear view mirror and sees a gray-haired John Thaw. Even after the traffic light turns green, Morse continues his blank stare and reverie into the mirror, which reflects his future self, or the character’s past reincarnation, rather. Only when Thursday rouses him by switching to a stern “Endeavour!” does he step on the accelerator. The show charges forward from a look backward. A bit of cinematic sleight of hand and nostalgia since Thaw died in 2001 at the age of sixty! Despite the conservative, nostalgic nature of the Morse franchise, all three TV series betray a dark streak, the evil with which Morse et al. are obliged to wrestle, which entails touching— physical and mental contact. Set in Oxford, the bulwark of British tradition and learning, the series expose the place as ridden with insidious crimes, often perpetrated by Oxford dons and students. The English audience can have the cake of the pinnacle of British culture while eating it, while savoring intermittent trashing of the high and mighty! If serial killers represent the devil and death in our secular age, then serial detectives embody our wish fulfillment of justice. In their pursuit of whodunit in multiple and multiplying murders, these detectives succeed one another on the page and onscreen to triumph over evil and death. The genre of British detective drama thus epitomizes a collective, fictional denial of the reality of evil and the totality of death. Serial detection is thus ongoing, one that goes, ironically, backwards from the result of the dead body to the cause. Each and

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every case of whodunit hinges on reverse forensics that denies the power of evil and the tyranny of time, both represented by death. To be precise, detection and forensics not only unfold in opposite temporal directions, but they diverge in occupying the center versus the margin of investigation. Clipping either wing, however, results in the detective genre falling flat. As serial detectives self-propagate, they are paired with freakish, macabre coroners, death whisperers. Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon (1981) has his leads double bill: Will Graham as investigator and “forensic specialist” (Harris, 1981, 7); Hannibal Lecter as serial murderer and Sherlockian consulting detective to Graham and to his successor Clarice Starling. Endeavour continues the legacy of Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis, while adding to the young Morse the gallows humor of Dr. Max DeBryn. The first three seasons of ITV’s Vera (2011–2020) team up the detective Vera and Dr. Billy Cartwright with execrable bedside, that is, corpse-side, manners. Cartwright’s role is replaced twice in season 4 and season 7, both by comparatively bland pathologists. New Zealand’s The Brokenwood Mysteries (2014–2018) relies on the Slavic bluntness and off-kilter sensibility of Dr. Gina Kandinsky. CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries (2008–2019) weds, literally, Detective Murdoch with the coroner Dr. Ogden, much too prim and Victorian among her Scottish and antipodal cohort. The difference stems from Canada’s Commonwealth identity in emulation of the mother country’s classy gentility, on the one hand, and, on the other, Scotland and other postcolonial culture’s double consciousness, including the irony of the quintessential British sleuth Sherlock Holmes created by a University of Edinburgh-trained surgeon of Irish Catholic descent. Setting a paradigm for his ensuing colleagues, Arthur Conan Doyle has Dr. Watson shadow Sherlock Holmes. That bromance lasts from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from London to New York. Like her male counterparts, Dr. Joan Watson in CBS’s Elementary (2012–2019) is medically trained and adept in reading corpses. Drs. DeBryn, Cartwright, Kandinsky, and other coroners share an outlying, dark sensibility, which points to the nature of their profession tainted by death as well as to the human evil that has inured and numbed them. In William Blake’s wry comment on John Milton, namely, that the blind bard is “of the Devil’s party without knowing it,” the serial detectives’ scalpel-wielding shadows only highlight their shared kinship, albeit repressed, with the Other: the namesake Morse Code lying beyond comprehension; the irascible, possibly alcoholic, curmudgeon Vera; the quirky Country Music fan Detective Mike Shepherd at Brokenwood who opens each investigation by engaging the deceased in a “dialogue”; even the impeccably mannered Murdoch with a Homburg hat still has an ominous name.



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Variations of this central partnership exist. The doctor may turn into the detective, as in the BBC’s Silent Witness (1996–2020) and CBC’s The Coroner (2019). Dr. Sam Ryan of the former show outlives—outperforms, rather—a string of detectives. Alternatively, the detective may take over autopsy all but in name, especially in dramas with a skeleton crew. For instance, Death in Paradise (2011–2019) invariably opens with a literal murder in the Caribbean island of Saint-Marie. Given the size of the island, lead investigators have no access to a coroner’s office, thus relying on their own resources. In fact, such murders embroil even the male lead, who has been, literally or figuratively, bumped off twice, from Ben Miller to Kris Marshall to Ardal O’Hanlon; the female lead twice, from Sara Martins to Joséphine Jobert to Aude Legastelois; the supporting actor once, from Gary Carr to Tobi Bakare. Ben Miller’s detective character is murdered at the beginning of season 3 in 2014, necessitating his replacement. Kris Marshall, on the other hand, returns to London for his beloved, bringing Ardal O’Hanlon with his Irish brogue to the Caribbean. Sara Martin leaves in season 4 in 2015 in the name of joining the metropolitan police force in Paris. Joséphine Jobert retires in 2019 after the death of her fiancé and a near-death experience herself. Insofar as characters with longevity, or the “undead” in paradise, are concerned, there are only the police commissioner, one police officer, and one bar owner. The high turnover rate in paradise ensures that the show goes on; multiple shedding of victims and detectives alike keeps the island drama afloat. Likewise, detectives in other far-flung corners of the British Isles, such as Shetland (2013–2019) in the North Sea and Hinterland (2013–2016) of Wales, have to multitask, to manage without their sidekick. “Lowly” uniformed police sergeants such as Sarah Lancashire in Happy Valley (2014–2019) in Yorkshire must also rely on their own scrappiness. The detection drama’s formulaic overture telegraphs in shorthand the violent crime, a transgression against humanity folded anon into the theme music and opening credits. This creates a tension between eruption of new disorder and return of old routine, a tension to be sustained for the life of the show. The subsequent mise-en-scene of detection drama routinely lays out the pair bending over or squatting by the deceased. In shot reverse shot, the detective’s cool, tragically human face is montaged with the coroner’s skeletal toothy grin in response to cause and manner of death as well as time and location of death. This argument proceeds to tease out the symbiosis of the detective genre’s longevity and serial deaths, of the police dragnet cast out and the body parts autopsied, of the cop as weak, “seasonal” vaccine and the doc as weakened virus to make that vaccine. Given the infinitely winding double helix of the living and the dead, aka, the dying and the revenant, in the detective genre’s DNA, let us take the knife to this incurably chronic human ambiguity in one cold case so chilling that its hot blood rushes through

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the veins of all the cinematic spawn: Red Dragon. The scarce screen time for coroners in film and television compels a closer look at Thomas Harris’s 1981 novel, where reverse forensics unfolds substantially, with its afterimages flitting across the celluloid brood of Brett Ratner’s Red Dragon (2002) and Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal (2013–2015). Drawing from Harris, Ratner, and Fuller comparatively, this analysis concentrates on literary and filmic rendering of the forensic scientist-cum-detective Will Graham’s largely intuitive reverse forensics into the serial killer’s crimes. THOMAS HARRIS’S RED DRAGON Forced out of retirement by a serial killer who appears to be following the cycle of full moons, Will Graham in Harris’s Red Dragon surveils the crime scene at the Leeds’s house, before driving back to his hotel. The epiphany does not strike until he wakes up from a nightmare of “Mrs. Leeds lying beside him bitten and torn, mirrored eyes and blood like the legs of spectacles over her temples and ears” (Harris, 21). The nightmare has already turned Graham into Mrs. Leeds’s strange bedfellow and killer. Exhausted, terrified, and intoxicated, Graham’s mind wanders, flashing back from the Bufferin he took for headache to childhood “drugstores with soda fountain” run by a bungling “Old Smoot.” Smoot had once ordered “fifty Kewpie dolls” and “arranged [them] in a semicircle in the front window so that they all stared at whoever was looking in.” It suddenly dawns on Graham that the inexplicable blotches of bloodstain on the wall and carpet was left by the three Leeds children—dead dolls arrayed “facing the bed . . . A dead audience” like Smoot’s window display (Harris, 22). So was Mr. Leeds staged as a spectator, tied to the headboard. The broken glasses inserted into the victims’ eyes provided reflection of the rape of Mrs. Leeds, amplifying the perpetrator’s thrill into a vortex of blood, saliva, and semen. Lightning strikes twice when Graham, in the same breath, perceives the cause of the mysterious traces of talcum powder on Mrs. Leeds’s leg while there was no talcum in the bathroom. Graham intuits that “The powder came out of a rubber glove as you pulled it off to touch her, DIDN’T IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH?” (Harris, 24). The capitalization signals the click, the climax, of Graham’s insight, whereby he steals into the mind of the killer. Just as the killer is driven to touch his victim, leaving behind a partial fingerprint, so does Graham touch or reach out to the killer imaginatively, retroactively, wreaking havoc to the detective’s own mental stability. Most unsettling is this “small bond to the killer” that “itched and stung like a leech,” a simile suggesting porousness between a body and a parasite, between sensations—itch



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and sting—inflicted from without as much as internalized within (Harris, 23). “YOU SON OF A BITCH” is literal in that the mass murderer has been created by maternal figures: a mother who abandoned him as a result of his birth defect of a cleft palate; and a grandmother who threatened to castrate him for bed-wetting, among other abusive child-rearing techniques. That the talcum powder is applied to prevent heat rash inside a baby’s diaper manifests the killer’s stunted growth, psychologically arrested at the oral stage seeking revenge against, biting back at, Mrs. Leeds and other “surrogate mothers.” However, that second-person curse addresses the killer as much as it does Graham himself, whose stroke of genius sinks him into the abyss of humanity of the distant past and of Graham’s immediate present. A lesser epiphany at Graham’s hotel room arrives without any conscious flashback. Whereas the association of Bufferin, childhood drugstores, and kewpie dolls solves the riddle of the Leeds’s tableau of death, the unspoken connection of talcum powder on the thigh is with a particularly ugly scene at Graham’s hotel just hours before. Returning from the crime scene and riding up in the hotel elevator with two conventioneers, Will Graham overhears their crude comments on “Wilma,” whose name consists of a jarring neologism of Will’s Ma, or mother. The conventioneers fantasize “Fuck [Wilma] till her nose bleeds.” They even exchange an obscene joke of “a woman has legs . . . so she won’t leave a trail like a snail” (Harris, 20). Metaphors of body fluids fuse with residues of talcum powder, leaving a trail for the like-minded detective to pursue. For the case to proceed, however, Graham the forensic specialist goes back in time: not only his and the killer’s childhood, but also his immediate present and the killer’s modus operandi. Harris’s motif of touch runs through the entire novel, yoking past and present, sewing together what has been torn. After all, both serial detection and reverse forensics aim to apprehend the criminal, which entails seeing from the perspective, or through the eyes, of the perpetrator, a most unsettling partnership in imagination. The detective-cum-coroner thus traces back to the source of the crime. Red Dragon’s birth defect of a cleft palate is a primal wound, harking back to the “stigmata” of decay, mortality, and even original sin in the detective genre. Physical defects have long been a popular trope to denote evil in detection. Arthur Conan Doyle pens “The Man with a Twisted Lip” (1891). Dashiell Hammett gives Flitcraft a facial scar in The Maltese Falcon (1929). The incestuous Evelyn has a “birthmark” of a flaw in her iris in Roman Polanski’s neonoir Chinatown (1974). All such birthmarks—death marks, rather—drive the characters and await the detectives’ intervention to make them whole again. Red Dragon’s primary victims, Mrs. Leeds and Jacobi, are his vehicles to reconnect with maternity in a final orgy of blood by way of self-regression to the oral stage of sucking and devouring. “Suck mark” materializes on women’s bodies, as Red Dragon observes on the street

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and in the office; he inflicts bite marks on Mrs. Leeds and Jacobi; he bites off the muck-raking journalist’s Freddie Lounds’s lips; he signs the letter to Hannibal Lecter in prison with a crescent left by his natural snaggleteeth sans dentures. The only survivor of his series of incestuous matricide is the blind girlfriend Reba McClane, yet another M for mother (Ellis, 2008, 160–175). Reverse forensics turns into an overarching conceit in Harris’s infinite psychological regression, evidenced by Red Dragon’s treat to Reba. Knowing that Reba has lost her sight at a young age, Red Dragon takes her to a zoo and guides her to stroke and touch a sedated Bengal tiger’s body and, climactically, testicles. Having spurned Reba’s earlier request of “May I touch your face?,” Red Dragon compensates by giving her license to touch his manhood by way of Freudian substitution (Harris, 299). Reba’s sighted memory from her childhood includes a puma and the tiger is likened to “a super puma” (Harris, 319). By corollary, Red Dragon is like a super tiger. This “touching” scene culminates in “A sudden constriction in Dolarhyde’s [Red Dragon’s name in the novel] chest as her fingers trailed over the furry testicles. She cupped them and moved on” (Harris, 322). The “sudden constriction” becomes Ralph Fiennes’s facial and upper body spasmodic, almost orgiastic, erection in Brett Ratner’s film Red Dragon. The digital cupping in the shape of the female organ foreshadows their subsequent intimacy. Just as Reba leaps unwittingly from a puma in the fog of memory to a tiger in anesthesia and to Red Dragon “hyding” beside her, so does Red Dragon ravish the maternal archetype, each female victim a throwback to the trauma that made him a monster. Red Dragon’s career of vengeance is doomed to repeat rather than heal the split that is on his face and in his psyche, of his traumatic childhood and of his adult present. Even in the one and only sexual relationship that is not a rape, Reba performs a fellatio while Red Dragon excites himself by viewing the home video of his next victim Mrs. Sherman, with the sound muted. Blind and with no knowledge of the perversity in which she implicates herself, Reba services Red Dragon, her haptic touch severed from the visual stimulation insofar as she is concerned. It is the male body that synthesizes the haptic and the visual, doubling arousal. The aim of ejaculation justifies the means of employing two female bodies, one onscreen, the other off, neither knowing her collaboration with the other. This fundamental split that cries out for healing via a touch or a union plagues Will Graham the detective as well, until the forensic evidence hiding in plain sight is finally grasped. Belatedly, it dawns on Graham that the victims’ home videos long in the FBI’s possession, the videos that Red Dragon’s company processes, comprise the trove of candidates for the serial murderer. Viewing the exterior and interior shots of happy families is all the casing the killer ever needs to choose his next target and to execute his evil deed.



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BRETT RATNER’S RED DRAGON Brett Ratner’s film adaptation Red Dragon features Edward Norton as Will Graham, Ralph Fiennes as Red Dragon, and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. In contrast to literary narratives that thrive on imaginative flights unbounded by the medium of print, cinematic representations are framed, pun intended, by the mise-en-scene, material props, and actors’ performance. Red Dragon on screen thus supplants wandering of the mind in Harris with wonders and woes of cinematic visualization. The exigencies of the film screen trump the frameless mental screen. The neural flaneur across the pages gives way to relentless celluloid feeds. In Ratner, Norton’s character does return to his hotel after the Leeds’s crime scene, but all the flashbacks in Harris are excised in favor of what is immediate in the mise-en-scene of his hotel room. Given the difficulty of filmic rendering of multiple flashbacks or flashbacks-within-flashbacks, childhood reminiscences of Kewpie dolls, even the conventioneers’ dirty jokes, become extraneous to the film, other than a few quick cuts to the dolls on the dresser of the Leeds’s children. These quick cuts rouse Norton to ferret out police photographs of the bloodstain on the wall and carpet, laying them out on the hotel floor, as if in simulation of the horseshoe of “a dead audience.” Ratner streamlines the scene, evicting the free association of Bufferin and Old Smoot’s drugstore, of kewpie dolls with wide-open eyes and the Leeds with glasses in eye sockets, and of the conceptual jump from Wilma’s legs to Mrs. Leeds’s thigh. Instead, the film stresses the immediacy of Norton’s inspiration, cutting the reverse forensics in the character’s subconsciousness. Examples abound with respect to Ratner’s “decluttering” of Harris’s reverse forensics, or mental flashbacks to the past that crack the case. In Harris, for instance, Graham comes to identify Hannibal Lecter as the serial killer by “coincidence” (Harris, 67). Graham narrates the amorphous, blurry mental process through which he intuited Lecter’s true identity. Paying Lecter a visit at his office because “[t]he sixth victim” had been treated there a long time ago, Graham soon became suspicious. This sixth victim was “laced to a pegboard . . . cut and stabbed, and he had arrows in him.” In Lecter’s office, Graham randomly surveyed “some very old medical books on the shelf above his [Lecter’s] head. And I knew it was him” (Harris, 68). When pressed how he knew, Graham confesses that he did not realize that until a week later: “It was Wound Man—an illustration they used in a lot of the early medical books like the ones Lecter had . . . . I had seen it in a survey course a pathologist was teaching at GWU. This sixth victim’s position and his injuries were a close match to Wound Man” (Harris, 69, italicized in the original). That match hinges on Graham’s George Washington University survey course

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taught by a pathologist. Harris charts well the vagaries of the thought process, strewn across random incidents and unrelated experiences, all the way back to Graham’s college days. Note that Graham merely skims through the bookshelf without opening any medical tome. By contrast, Ratner tightens the narrative into a brief audience with Lecter when Norton’s Graham innocently shares his musing of the case: “’The tenderest part of the chicken is the oysters, here on the outer side of the back.’ I—I had never heard that expression before. ‘Oysters?’ And suddenly, I had a flash of the third victim, Darcy Taylor. She was missing flesh from her back. And then it hit me—liver, kidney, tongue, thymus,” the missing body parts of four victims. Thymus, of course, is the gullet, euphemistically named Sweet Bread. Ratner ratchets up horror by wedding connoisseurship with cannibalism, high culture with barbaric man-eat-man. Far more precise in comparison to Harris’s verbal rambling, Ratner has the camera roam through Lecter’s bookshelf, deliberately lingering on chinoiserie statuettes made of ivory side by side with moth and insect specimens, subliminally Othering Lecter as the Asian alien or the arthropod subhuman or both (Ma, 2019, 51–78). Norton then rests his eyes on an old hardbound French cookbook, which is neither a medical tome nor associated with a college survey course; he flips to a page with the marginalia of “sweet bread” penned next to a French entry. A visual aid for the dummy, as it were, vis-à-vis Harris’s casual glance at the bookshelf of medical tomes! What a difference between literary suggestiveness and cinematic lucidity, so clear that it verges on manipulating audience reception! Nevertheless, Norton’s realization is too late as Lecter plunges a knife into his stomach and confides that he plans to eat his heart, for Graham is evidently closer to his own heart than the four previous victims. With the blade buried in Graham’s abdomen, Lecter whispers soothingly into his ear that he would soon feel “lightheaded, then dizzy,” never raising his voice, lulling Graham to an eternal sleep. Ratner deliberately juxtaposes a deadly assault and words of affection: the tenderness of whispering to a lover whom one has just stabbed; the promise of taking to heart of Graham’s heart. Abstract and conceptualized, language forever distances and aestheticizes the reality of bloodshed. Not only is Lecter attempting exactly that, but cuisine at large sugarcoats blood-letting. Accordingly, a chicken back is renamed “oyster,” a crustacean that would not feel pain as much as a fowl does, and sweet bread, as though from a plant, removes the gullet altogether from any association with animals. BRYAN FULLER’S HANNIBAL Both Will Graham and Red Dragon conceived by Thomas Harris evolve in the subsequent film franchise to become virtually secondary, upended by Clarice



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Starling and Hannibal Lecter. In addition to Ratner’s Red Dragon, many in the entertainment industry contributed to making Hannibal the Cannibal a cultural icon: Jonathan Demme directed The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ridley Scott Hannibal (2001), and Peter Webber Hannibal Rising (2007). NBC executive producer Bryan Fuller develops a three-season, 39-episode television series Hannibal. The symbiotic existence of the serial detectives and serial killers morphs into many guises: Will Graham (played in films and on TV by William Peterson, Edward Norton, Hugh Dancy), Red Dragon (Tom Noonan, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Armitage), Clarice Starling (Jodi Foster, Marianne Moore), and Hannibal the Cannibal (Brian Cox, Anthony Hopkins, Gaspar Ulliel, Mads Mikkelsen). Instead of Ratner’s two-hour feature film, Bryan Fuller’s three-year run casts Hugh Dancy as Graham and Dutch actor Mads Mikkelsen with his continental cachet as Dr. Hannibal. Ratner’s principle of condensation and dramatic intensification requires a bit of stretching and spreading in Fuller. The television show’s namesake taps into the rage over Anthony Hopkins’s Hannibal persona, but it revolves around Graham rather than the co-star of the Hannibal myth—Clarice Starling. That Starling never even makes a cameo appearance throughout Fuller’s series testifies to the centrality of Graham, pitted against not just Red Dragon but also Hannibal Lecter. From the outset of the TV series, Graham introduces himself as a “special investigator” to Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park), the forensic specialist in Harris and in Fuller. Fuller has taken some pains in reassigning Graham, situating him in the liminal space between an FBI agent and Katz’s forensics lab. The moniker “special investigator” crosses Harris’s “forensic specialist” with regular investigators. In addition, Dancy’s Graham character has been “updated” to one who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, rarely making eye contact, having considerable difficulty socializing. In the scene where he self-identifies to Katz, for instance, he is visibly shaken, stammers, and sweats. Yet his neural atypical condition endows him with the gift to empathize with psychopaths to the extent that he subconsciously assumes the role of the murderer in executing the victim or victims. Dancy’s Graham comes in a long line of millennial saviors with this singular disability: Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005) and The Millennium Trilogy (2005–07); Saga Noren in the Swedish-Danish production of The Bridge (2011–2018); Elise Wassermann in The Tunnel (2013–2018), the English-French remake of The Bridge; Detective Sergeant Sean Stone in Chasing Shadows (2014); Adrian Monk in Monk (2002–2009); even the Chinese cryptographer Rong Jinzhen in Mai Jia’s spy thriller Decoded (2002). All these heroine-saviors in our secularized millennium, plus the hero Graham, are lost souls for they are stricken with autism spectrum’s affectlessness, detached from their own and

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other people’s emotions. Despite their mechanical precision and computer wizardry, they are modern-day “melancholic androids,” in Eric G. Wilson’s term, best exemplified by the Blake-quoting, homicidal-suicidal Roy Batty the replicant in Blade Runner (1982). These “aspergirls” are Graham’s company, who go against social conventions, particularly the protocol of police procedural, combating crime by breaking the law, fighting fire with fire (Ma, 2014, 79–102). By going against the grain, they turn everything on its head, even the inviolable selfhood and the irreversible time. Katz catches Graham unawares because he is in the throe of a reprise over how he as the killer would strangle the victim with his bare hands. Fuller’s television show exhibits violence and bloodbath in such prolonged and aestheticized fashion that it fully exploits the contagious power of evil, as the detective-forensic specialist Graham re-enacts every killing. Invariably in slow motion, bodies are cut and pierced, with blood splattering across the screen like Jackson Pollock’s oils on a canvas. Fuller’s stylization of Graham’s detection, that is, re-animation of the perpetration, is the fullest evidence yet of reverse forensics. In season 1’s opening minutes, Fuller establishes Graham’s modus operandi and his own signature virtuosity. In the midst of a chaotic crime scene at the Marlow residence, Graham closes his eyes to visualize the crime, to get under the killer’s skin. In slow motion, punctuated by high-pitched, eerie, and increasingly atonal electronic music, Fuller borrows the erstwhile technique of filmic wipes to rid the detective’s mind of the confusion of the crime scene, restoring the bloodbath to its pristine condition. The wipe resembles the swing of a windshield wiper, except it consists of a shaft of blinding light. Whereas the windshield wiper enables the automobile driver to see what lies ahead in a downpour or snowstorm, the light turns Graham backwards to see into the past, from the effect of the crime back to the cause. Those repeated swings to clean the windshield conjure up as well the pendulum of a grandfather clock, inversing time like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Consequently, Graham would open his eyes, each oscillation of light purging the crime scene of police and of blood. He would then walk backwards out of the Marlow house to begin the imagined assault. In this process, blood would defy the law of gravity and spill “up,” lifting off from walls and furniture, the pool of blood receding without a trace on the gleaming hardwood floor. Simply put, Graham reverses the stream of time. So ritualized is the re-enactment that he would move in a trance, hypnotically mouthing “This is my design!” during and after the massacre. The ritualized mantra of “This is my design” summarizes Fuller’s métier. The show thrives on, in J. G. Ballard’s term, atrocity exhibition. Thomas Harris has long hinted at it when the victim’s body is staged—like the illustration of Wound Man—in a strikingly horrifying tableau, whereby death



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becomes a performance art: “laced to a pegboard,” “cut and stabbed,” and with “arrows in him.” Fuller hones this aesthetics of violence, choreographing with body parts and body fluids. In season 3, episode 8, Graham visualizes the break-in, the breaking of mirrors to insert into the Leeds’s eyes and mouth, the talcum powder, all the Harris and Ratner sequences. What diverges from previous works, however, is Fuller’s climax. In the shrill, atonal music, reaching a cacophonous fever pitch, the camera finally tilts down to Mrs. Leeds in bed, her body radiating red threads like a porcupine to bloodstain on the wall, bed, and carpet. An intersecting, three-dimensional spider web of blood, this mise-en-scene evokes the pianist in bondage in Park Chan-wook’s short feature “Cut” in Three . . . Extremes (2004), not to mention the pornographic fetish of sadomasochistic (SM) bondage. Fuller manages to turn atrocity into a piece of controversial artwork. Given the innumerable specimens throughout the three seasons, one more would have to suffice. In season 2, episode 5, the forensic specialist Beverly Katz is butchered and sliced, each prosciutto-thin cross-section of her anatomy meticulously framed in panes of glass, all displayed inches apart. The display is so precise that the profile shot shows an intact, albeit immobile, Katz. Only when viewed from an angle does the shocking dismemberment manifest itself. This is indeed Fuller’s “design” in the name of a serial killer’s revenge against one who is closing in. Fuller closes his television series with a scenario reminiscent of Holmes and Moriarty’s “double suicide”: blood-soaked Graham and Lecter embrace each other after dispatching Red Dragon, jumping to their death. The fleeting hesitation on Mads Mikkelsen’s face calls into question whether Lecter shares the death-drive as whole-heartedly as Graham does. In a similar vein, ambivalent heterosexual and/or homoerotic bonds exist among Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham, and Red Dragon. The Red Dragon franchise of Harris, Ratner, and Fuller shares in deploying the double-ness of serial detectives and reverse forensics. Consciously or subconsciously, the two-pronged approach moves forward the plot of whodunnit while veering backward and undercutting itself. Each criminal case is satisfactorily resolved, only to find another rush of blood giving birth to the sequel. Around and around each serial detection goes, like a revolution not so much cleansing the world of evil in a single stroke as one rotation in a never-ceasing orbit along the axis of good and/or evil. WORKS CITED Ballard, J. G. 1970. The Atrocity Exhibition. London: Jonathan Cape. Blade Runner. 1982. Directed by Ridley Scott, performances by Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and James Hong, Warner Bros.

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The Bridge. 2011–2018. Performances by Sofia Helin, Rafael Pettersson, and Dag Malmberg, Filmlance International AB, seasons 1–4. The Brokenwood Mysteries. 2014–2018. Performances by Neill Rea, Fern Sutherland, Nic Sampson, South Pacific Pictures. Chasing Shadows. 2014. Performances by Reece Shearsmith, Alex Kingston, Don Warrington, ITV. Chinatown. 1974. Directed by Roman Polanski, performances by Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, Paramount. Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2015. “Conan Doyle Tells the True Story of Sherlock Holmes’s End.” The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories, edited by Otto Penzler, New York: Vintage, xix–xxii. Conan Doyle, Arthur. 2014. “The Man with the Twisted Lip.” Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 162–183. The Coroner. 2019. Performances by Serinda Swan, Roger Cross, and Alli Chung, CBC. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 2008. Directed by David Fincher, performances by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Warner Bros. Death in Paradise. 2011–2019. Performances by Ben Miller, Kris Marshall, and Ardal O’Hanlon, BBC, season 1–10. Elementary. 2012–2018. Performances by Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu. CBS, season 1–6. Ellis, Philip A. 2008. “Before Her Lambs Were Silent: Reading Gender and the Feminine in Red Dragon.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris, edited by Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 160–175. Endeavour. 2012–2021. Performances by Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, James Bradshaw, ITV, season 1–8. Freud, Sigmund. (1920) 1989. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Norton. Hammett, Dashiell. (1929) 1992. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Vintage Crime. Hannibal. 2001. Directed by Ridley Scott, performances by Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman. MGM Studios. Hannibal. 2013–2015. Executive Producer Bryan Fuller, performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy. BBC TV series 1–3. Hannibal Rising. 2007. Directed by Peter Webber. performances by Gaspard Ulliel, Rhys Ifans, Li Gong. Dino De Laurentiis Co. Happy Valley. 2014–2019. Performances by Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran, Shane Zaza, BBC. Harris, Thomas. 1999. Hannibal. New York: Delacorte Press. ———. Hannibal Rising. 2006. New York: Delacorte Press. ———, Thomas. 1981. Red Dragon. New York: Penguin. ———. 1988. The Silence of the Lambs. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Hinterland. 2013–2016. Performances by Richard Harrington, Mali Harries, Alex Harries, BBC Wales, season 1–3.



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Inspector Lewis. 2006–2015. Performances by Kevin Whately, Laurence Fox, Clare Holman, ITV and PBS. Inspector Morse. 1987–1993 and 1995–2000. Performances by John Thaw, Kevin Whately, James Grout, ITV and PBS. Larsson, Stieg. 2005. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Translated by Reg Keeland, New York: Vintage. Ma, Sheng-mei. 2014. Alienglish: Eastern Diasporas in Anglo-American Tongues. New York: Cambria Press. ———. 2019. Off-White: Yellowface and Chinglish by Anglo-American Culture. New York: Bloomsbury. Mai Jia. 2002. Decoded, translated by Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Monk. 2002–2009. Directed by Andy Breckman, performances by Tony Shalhoub, Jason Gray-Stanford, Ted Levine, ABC, Season 1–8. Murdoch Mysteries. 2008–2019. Performances by Yannick Bisson, Thomas Craig, Jonny Harris, CBC, season 1–13. Nelson, Victoria. 2001. The Secret Life of Puppets. Boston: Harvard University Press. Park, Chan-wook, 2004. Director. “Cut.” Three . . . Extremes. Performances by Byung-Hun Lee and Hye-jeong Kang, Applause Pictures. Red Dragon. 2002. Directed by Brett Ratner, performances by Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes. Universal Pictures. Shetland. 2013–2019. Performances by Douglas Henshall, Alison O'Donnell, Steven Robertson, BBC Scotland, season 1–5. The Silence of the Lambs. 1991. Directed by Jonathan Demme, performances by Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, Orion Pictures. Silent Witness. 1996–2020. Performances by Amanda Burton and Emilia Fox, BBC, season 1–23. The Tunnel. 2013–2018. Performances by Stephen Dillane and Clémence Poésy, Canal+, seasons 1–4. Vera. 2011–2020. Performances by Brenda Blethyn, Jon Morrison, Riley Jones, ITV, season 1–10. Wilson, Eric G. 2006. The Melancholy Android: On the Psychology of Sacred Machines. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Index

adaptations; 11, 139, 170–71, 198, 221; film adaptations, 12, 15, 138–39, 166, 221. See also films Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 4, 104, 129, 200 Ajay Singher Kuthi, 11 American society, 140, 146 Baboo, Inspector Sunder, 11, 15 Badshahi Angti, 14 Baker Street Irregulars, 74, 165 Baker Street, 2, 7 Bakshi, Byomkesh, 12, 17, 128, 130, 164, 166, 170 Bandyopadhay, Satishchandra, 11 Bandyopadhyay, Saradindu, 12, 166, 170–71, 211 Barthes, 127, 132 Basu, Gangaram, 15 Basu, Girish Chandra, 11 Bat-tolar lekhok, 11 Bengal, 9–10, 157–58, 161, 163, 166, 170, 173,190; Bengali literature, 12, 164 Bhuswarga Bhoyonkor, 14 The Big Sleep, 8, 146–49, 151–53 Black Mask, 8, 136–37, 142–43 Blake, Robert, 11 Book of Daniel, 1 bourgeoise, 5–6, 95

Bow Street Runners, 2–26, 72, 126 British culture, 9, 215 British detective fiction, 10, 19, 73, 142. See also detective, genre Brodie, Jackson, 121 Brooke, Charlotte, 1 Brooklyn Eagle, 137, 139, 141–43 Brown, Father, 2, 74 Byomkesh stories, 12, 128, 167, 203, 206 Cain, James M., 8 Calcutta, 9, 17, 166–67, 170, 210–11; police, 10; Kolkata police, 14 Campion, Albert, 81–82, 92 CBS, 137, 153, 216, 226 Chandler, Raymond, xii, 1, 8–9, 16, 73, 135, 141–42, 145–46, 147, 150, 152–53, 166 Chatterjee, Kaliprasanna, 158 Chattopadhyay, Kaliprasanna, 10 Chattopadhyay, Priyonath, 10–11, 17 Chesterton, 2, 16, 73–74, 77 Choudhury, Upendra Bhushan, 10, 17 Christie, Agatha, 5, 6, 12, 16–18, 57–64, 66–69, 74–75, 80, 88, 95, 127, 129, 131 Classic British detective fiction, 8, 16

229

230

Index

clues, 1, 28, 32–33, 50, 53–54, 68–69, 74, 76–77, 79, 103, 119, 127– 28, 169, 213 Collins, Wilkie, xi, 1–2, 16, 24, 27, 32, 35–36, 73 colonization, 9, 197; colonial metropolis, 10; colonial modernity, 10, 161, 163; Colonial rule, 11, 165, 198 Communist Party, 140 conny-catching pamphlets, 3 Continental Ops, 8, 136 coroner, 32, 216-, 18, 226 crime: behavior, 126, 213; criminals, 11, 21–25, 32, 38, 41, 46, 49–53, 62, 71, 73, 75–77, 90–91, 97–99, 107, 113, 120, 122, 125–26, 142, 145–46, 150, 168, 171, 176, 178–79, 210; fiction, vii, 16, 18, 37–39, 41, 43, 59–60, 69, 115, 125–27, 132; homicide, 125, 213–14 Cuff, Sergeant, 2, 28, 31 “Curtain Falls,” 58–59 The Dain Curse, 8, 137, 143 Dalgleish, Adam, 130 Daptor, Bakaullar, 10 Darogar Daptor, 10 Das, Bimal Kumar, 11–12 The Dead Secret, 27–28, 32, 34–36 Defoe, Daniel, 3 Derrida, Jacques, 71–72, 80, 180–81 Descartes, Rene, 75, 80 detective, viii, 3, 7, 21–25, 31, 33, 45–49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 61–65, 67, 69, 71, 95, 98, 100, 107, 119, 127–28, 131, 153, 169, 215–16, 219; department, 2–3, 14–15, 29, 120; female, 32, 59, 61, 62, 64, 95, 97–104, 114, 131; Classic British fiction, 8, 16; genre, vii-viii, 55, 164, 184, 187, 213, 215–16, 219; private, 10, 15, 22. See also crime, Kolkata police Detective Footprints Bengal, 11 Dickens, Charles. 1, 2, 12, 16, 21–27

Doyle, Arthur Conan, 2–3, 4, 5, 16, 17, 26, 31, 37–39, 40, 41, 42–45, 47–55, 73, 96, 126, 128–31, 158, 159, 167– 69, 171, 194–95, 200, 210, 219 Dupin, C. Auguste, vii, 2, 7, 31, 72–73, 128, 130, 173–175, 179–180 Eliot, T.S., 4, 27, 151 empiricism, 2 English: colonial powers, viii; translations, 11, 169, 211 Enlightenment, 2–3, 74–75. See also post-Enlightenment era ethics, 140 evil, 4–5, 17, 29, 82–85, 98, 121, 213– 16, 219–20, 224–25 evolution (Darwin), 4 Feluda Samagra, 13–15, 129, 166, 186, Feluda, 13–15, 126–28, 130, 165–66, 169–71, 173, 176–81, 184–91, 196– 200; stories, 13–15, 129, 166, 186, 196. See also Feluda Samagra feminist, 59–61, 101, 103, 109, 148, 198 Fielding, Henry, 2 films, 12, 14–15, 63, 114–15, 137, 139, 141, 167, 169, 196, 198–99, 203, 208, 212, 218, 221, 223 foil, 128, 130, 159 Freud, Sigmund, 125, 174, 180, 193, 204, 212, 214, 226 Gangopadhyay, Sunil, 14–15 Ganguly, Lal Mohan, 13 genre: Athenian tragedy, 1; British detective fiction, 10, 19, 73, 142, detective, vii-viii, 55, 164, 184, 187, 213, 215–16, 219; English detective fiction, 9, 103, 165; Eurocentric detective fiction, vii, 168; gothic horror, 2; Hard-boiled detective fiction, 8, 17, 73; popular fiction, 25, 165, 183, 196; private detective, 10, 15, 22. See also history of detective fiction, Golden Age (of detective fiction) The Glass Key, 8, 135, 139, 143

IndexIndex

Golden Age (of detective fiction), 5, 8, 58, 77–78, 103, 118, 191 “The Golden Fortress,” 128, 187–88 Great Britain, 9, 165 Great Depression, 140 Great wars, 4, 192, 195. See also World War I Green, Anna Catherine, 6 Hastings, Colonel, 130 Hammett, Dashiell, 8, 16–17, 73, 135– 39, 141–43, 219, 226 Hemingway, Earnest, 14 hermeneutics, viii heroine, 27–29, 31–33, 35, 207–8; detective, 32, 100, 104, 114, 132 Highsmith, Patricia, 6 Hindi, 11, 204 history of detective fiction, 66, 71, 169 Holmes, Sherlock, 2–5, 7, 9–11, 12, 13, 22, 31, 32, 38, 42–43, 44, 47–55, 73–74, 92, 95, 97, 118, 122, 126–30, 137, 158, 165–69, 173, 194, 196–97, 200, 213–14, 216, 225, 226 homicide, 125, 213–14 Household Words, 3, 22, 25, 27 Jaker Dhan, 11 Jane Eyre, 1, 42 Jayanta-Manik, 11–12, 15, 159–162 Jayanta-Manik Samagra, 164 Joy Baba Felunath, xii, 14–15, 173, 176 Kakababu Herey Gelen, 14 Kancher Coffin, 12, 161–162, 164 Kolkata police, 14 Macdonald, Ross, 8 Mahabharata, vii, 127, 192, 198 The Maltese Falcon, 8, 135, 137, 139– 141, 143, 219, 226 Manush Pisach, 12 Marlowe, Philip, 73, 146–48, 151, 166 Marple, Miss, 5–6, 58–61, 64–65, 67, 69, 95–96, 127, 131–132 Mishar Rahasya, 14 Moll Flanders, 3 The Moonstone, 2, 27, 31, 35, 73 Morse, Inspector, 128, 215

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Mouchak, 12 The Mousetrap, 6, 57 Mukhopadhyay, Sirshendu, 14–15 The Mystery of Edwin Drood, 1, 24, 73 Newgate Calendar, 3, 126, 132 Marsh, Ngaio, 6 Mukhopadhyay, Priyonath, 157–58 Oedipus Rex, 1, 71, 127, 191, 192– 93, 195, 200 Pahar Churay Atonko, 14 Peel, Robert, 2 Phineas Redux, 1 Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, 8 Pitaval, François Gayot de, 3 Poe, Edgar Alan, vii, 1–3, 7, 16–17, 31, 72–73, 76, 122, 126, 128, 130–31, 159, 173–74, 176, 179, 181 Poirot, Hercule, 4, 5, 17, 59, 62, 64–65, 77, 95, 128–29, 197–68 post-Enlightenment era, 3 Puranic, 1, 12 The Purloined Letter, 2, 31, 72, 173–74, 177–81 Rahasya Lahori, 11 ratiocination, 1–2, 72, 126 Red Harvest, 8, 135, 137, 142–43 Rogers, Mary Cecilia, 2 Roget, Marie, 2, 31, 72 Roy, Dinendra Kumar, 11, 158 Roy, Hemendra Kumar, 11, 15 Sabar, Inspector, 14–15 Sabuj Dwiper Raja, 14 Sahjahaner Mayur, 12 Sandesh, 13, 169 Sarkar, Colonel Niladri, 14 Satyanweshi, 12, 167, 211 Sayers, Dorothy L., 7, 17, 32, 73–74, 100, 103, 104, 114, 129, 130, 132 Shakespeare, William, 6, 75 Shil, Binodbehari, 11 Siraj, Syed Mustafa, 14, 18 Sophocles, 1, 71, 127, 191 Spade, Sam, 8, 73, 138–41, 143 St. Mary’s Mead, 5, 59–61, 69

232

“Susanna and the Elders,” 1 Tey, Josephine, 6 “The Final Problem,” 73, 129, 194 Tintoretor Jishu, 14 Trollope, 1

Index

Vidocq, Eugene Francois, 3, 72 Wilson, Edmund, 4, 6, 186 Wimsey, Lord Peter, 7, 74, 130 World War I, 8, 58, 76, 135–36 Yeti Abhijan, 14

About the Contributors

Debayan Deb Barman, PhD, is assistant professor and head of the department of English at THLH Mahavidyalay (University of Burdwan), West Bengal, India. He has done his doctoral research from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has presented papers in national and international conferences. His research articles have been published in journals like Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Melus-Melow, Visva-Bharati Quarterly, and others. He has also contributed book chapters in several critical anthologies. He has edited the book Shakespeare in India: Criticism, Translation and Performance (2017) and co-edited Post Independence Indian Theatres: Critical Perspectives (2020). His research interests are in postcolonial literatures, theater studies, popular literature, film criticism, Indian literature, comparative literature, culture studies, crime fiction, and horror literature. Abhinaba Chatterjee holds a master’s degree in English literature and translation studies from Calcutta University & Annamalai University, respectively, and an M.Phil degree from Delhi University. He has published extensively on various fields of English literature, including Shakespeare, Indian Writings in English (IWE), and postcolonial theory. He has also presented papers in many national and international seminars, both in India and abroad. He is particularly interested in Indian Writings in English, modernity in Indian literature, modern drama, postcolonial literature, and translation studies. Amy Lee, PhD, has a background in comparative literary studies, and has published in a range of topics including feminine autobiographies, witchcraft and witchery, experiences of solitude, teenage literature of magic, marginalized experiences by female writers, and popular film and fiction. She has published a series of essays on Agatha Christie for The Literary Encyclopaedia and has written on many other aspects of popular fiction and film. She has been an associate professor at the department of humanities and creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is now Dean and professor of School of Education and Languages at The Open University of Hong Kong. 233

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About the Contributors

Ananya Chatterjee is assistant professor of English at Balurghat College. She has formerly been an assistant professor of English at JIS College of Engineering and a part-time lecturer of English at JIS University, Agarpara. She did her master’s degree in English from the University of Calcutta. She is also currently a PhD scholar at Techno India University, Kolkata. She has co-authored a book on Mary Wollstonecraft, contributed several chapters, and research articles to several academic anthologies and scholarly journals. She is also a published poet and short story writer. Her research interests lie in Tagore studies, gender and literature, language studies, and identity theory. Anne K. Erickson, PhD, is assistant teaching professor, Drexel University. Dr. Erickson’s doctoral research focused on the role of the post-colonial Irish short story. Subsequent research culminated in presentations at conferences like the MLA, the International Conference on the Short Story, American Conference for Irish Studies, and various English Associations. Her publications include essays on popular culture and literature, as well as business writing cases. Barnali Saha, PhD, is assistant professor at School of English Studies, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies. She has done her BA (Hons) in English from Calcutta University, West Bengal, and her MA and PhD from GGS Indraprastha University, New Delhi. A gold medalist in her MA course from GGSIPU, her doctoral work investigated the articulation of the partition from a literary and cultural point of view. She has published several papers and presented papers at several national and international conferences. Her areas of academic interest include post-colonial studies, partition literature, translation, popular culture, and gender studies. Some of her publications include: Borders and Boundaries: Reading Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh,” “The Last Salute” and “Yazid.” Published in Indraprasth: An International Journal of Culture and Communication Studies, volume: vii, 2018; Problematizing Nostalgia: A Study of Selected Short Stories on Bengal Partition. Published in MEJO: The MELOW Journal of World Literature. volume 3, February 2019; Problematizing the Panegyric: Violence, Woman’s Body and Songs of the Nation.” Daath Voyage: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in English, vol. 3, no.3, Sept. 2018; The Trauma and Tragedy of Partition through the Eyes of a British Cartoonist: Reading Selected Cartoons by Leslie Illingworth. Published in New Horizons: A Multidisciplinary Research Journal, vol. xv; August 2018. Deepali Yadav, PhD, is an assistant professor in department of English at Banaras Hindu University, India. Her research involves working in the field of visual studies including caricatures, paintings, graphic novels, illustrations,

About the Contributors

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etc. She has been a visiting fellow at University of Victoria, Canada. Recently, she was also invited by School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow, Scotland, to speak on Mahatma Gandhi’s depiction in films. Gouri Parvathy holds a master’s degree in English and comparative literature from the Central University of Kerala, India. Her research interests include the interdisciplinary engagements of literature with science, history, art and philosophy, the nuances of translation and their relationships with cultures, and memory studies. Her published works include “Migratory Translations: Exploring Aliens and Boundaries” in Nation in Translation (Sankaracharya University Press, 2018). Ipsita Chakrabarty did her master’s in English literature with first class from Maulana Azad College, University of Calcutta. Her interest is in the area of Indian writings in translation. She is currently doing a masters of philosophy at Vidyasagar University, Midnapore. Her dissertation focuses on popular fiction and postcolonial theory, with particular reference to Said and Fanon. Her paper, “Forced Marginality and Identity Crisis of Aaba, the Educated Dalit” in The Victim, has been accepted for publication in the edited volume Marginalisation in Literature: Critical Perspectives. Her other research interests include psychoanalysis, posthumanism, and literature of the marginalized. Jonathan Wilkins is a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstones’ bookseller, and former basketball coach. He taught PE and English for twenty years and coached girls and women’s basketball for over thirty years. He regularly teaches at creative writing workshops in and around Leicester. He takes notes for students with special needs at his two local universities. He has had a few pieces published traditionally, as well as online, and has had his work exhibited in art galleries, studios, and museums. He also has his writing on various blogs. He enjoys presenting papers at crime fiction conferences and loves writing poetry. For his MA, he wrote a crime novel, Utrecht Snow. It is part of a series of murder mysteries he has planned based in the Dutch city. He followed it with Utrecht Rain, and self-published both with Lulu.com. He is writing a crime series set in the Great War and the early twenties. The first part, “Poppy Flowers at the Front” was published by Brigand Press, London in March 2020. Karabi Barman is a postgraduate of English, who is keenly interested in the areas of crime fiction, feminism, and psychoanalysis. She has completed her graduation and post-graduation in English from Miranda House and Hindu College, University of Delhi, respectively in the years 2018 and

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2020. She has presented a paper entitled “Tracing Bengali Detective Fiction: Satyajit Ray’s Feluda” at the seminar on detective fiction, which was held at Miranda House in the year 2018, and a paper on the topic “Transgression in Women’s Writings” at the international webinar organized by Bharti College, University of Delhi, in 2020. Kaustav Mukherjee, PhD, is assistant professor at department of English, Gannon University, Pennsylvania. He did his BA and MA from Calcutta University, and he received his PhD from Michigan State University. His research areas include postcolonial theory and literature, South Asian history and literature, Middle Eastern literature, African literature, and twentieth century and American immigrant literature. Kyamalia Bairagya is assistant professor at T.H.L.H Mahavidyalay (University of Burdwan). She is currently doing her doctoral research from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. The area of her research is concerned with select English novels of the victorian age. Her paper on Michel Foucault’s idea of space/s entitled “Theory of Space/s: Rereading Foucault’s Heterotopia and its Various implications,” has been published in the online issue of the Postscriptum: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literary Studies (volume 5, Issue 2) in July 2020. A paper entitled “Karnad’s Tughlaq: A Political Allegory” has also been made a part of an edited volume on Indian theater named Post Independence Indian Theatres: Critical Perspectives published in the year 2020. A paper entitled “The Sunderbans and its Tigers: A Zone of Conflict between Man and Nature” has been incorporated in the history journal  Journeys into the past: Historical and Heritage Tourism in Bengal of 2018. There are also papers published in the annually issued volumes of the Shakespeare journal known as Yearly Shakespeare. The 2018 issue of the annual Shakespeare journal contains her paper entitled “Shakespeare among the Victorians: Influence of Shakespeare on Dickens.” She has also presented at national and international seminars. Madhumita Biswas is assistant professor of English at Khatra Adibasi Mahavidyalaya, Bankura. She is also a PhD scholar at School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, and has completed her M.Phil with the same department. She has completed her BA (Hons.) and MA in English from Jadavpur University, department of English. Her areas of interest are nineteenth-century literature and culture, Indian writing in English, Dalit studies, and women’s writing. Her publications include an article on Dalit literature in Jadavpur University Essays and Studies (2020), and an essay on neo-historicist reading of millennial fiction in Breaking New

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Grounds: Perspectives on Recent Indian English Fiction (Routledge India, forthcoming). Medha Bhadra Chowdhury completed her graduation in English honors from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and her post graduation from Jadavpur University. She was enrolled as a junior research scholar at Jadavpur University, department of English, doing her PhD. She submitted her PhD thesis in 2020. Her area of specialization includes gender and memory studies, and she takes an interest in women’s writing and feminist theory. She is currently working as an assistant professor in English at the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata. Neepa Sarkar, PhD, teaches in the department of English at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, and is the coordinator for MA English at MCC. Her PhD was on literature and collective memory. She has presented papers in many international and national conferences; she has published chapters and articles in books, and in journals of international and national repute, including History Today and Middle West Review, The Confidential Clerk (2018), Melus Melow Journal (2014, 2016), Journal of Literature and Aesthetics (2015), Glocal Colloquies (2016), and The Himalayan Journal of Contemporary Research, H.P. University, Shimla (2015, 2019). She won the Issac Sequiera Memorial Award (2018) for her paperon Italo Calvano’s Invisible Cities in the MELOW conference (2018). Two of her chapters on partition literature and postcolonialism and ecocriticism respectively have been published by De Gruyter Press and Lexington Books. Additionally, her poetry has been published in an anthology brought out by Cyberwit publishers, India in 2016, and Daath Voyage Journal, 2017. Her poems were shortlisted for the Srinivas Rayaprol Prize (2015). Her interests are film theory, memory studies, science fiction, and literary theory. Nisarga Bhattacharjee is a PhD scholar at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He was formerly a lecturer of English at Seth Anandram Jaipuria College (Day) and at Acharya Prafulla Chandra College. He received his Master’s degree from the University of Calcutta. He has also done his M.Phil in English Literature from the University of Calcutta. His academic interests lie in romantic poetry, cultural studies, energy humanism, and modernist and postmodern poetry. He has co-authored a critical work on Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. He is the author of several articles online and in offline journals, and has written chapters for multiple books. He is an academic editor for the journal New Literaria. He has also published poems in anthologies.

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Phil Fitzsimmons, PhD, is head of education at Alphacrucis College, Sydney. He has been associate professor at Avondale University College ,and an independent researcher and educational consultant. Prior to this, he was assistant dean of research (Faculty of Education, Business and Science) at Avondale University College—Australia, where he was a doctoral supervisor and board member of the spirituality research center. Prior to this, he was the director of research (San Roque Research Institute, California). Purnima Chakraborti, PhD, is associate professor with the department of English at Vidyasagar College, Kolkata. Her publications include “The Secrets of the Narrative” in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Nilanjana Gupta (Worldview Publications, Delhi, 2001); “Sherlock Holmes: The Myth Reworked” in Middle Flight SSM Journal of English Literature and Culture, vol. 3, Sept. 2014; “Crime Fiction and the Scottish Highlands” in Aureole: An Academic Journal, vol. 5 (no. 2), Nov. 2014. Her area of interest is Crime Fiction. Robert McParland, PhD, has written on Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and other detective figures in his books, including Beyond Gatsby: How Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Other Writers of the 1920s Shaped American Culture, From Native Sons to King’s Men: The Literary Landscape of 1940s America, Bestseller, and The People We Meet in Stories. He is a professor of English in New Jersey in the United States. Sheng-mei Ma (馬聖美[email protected]) is professor of English at Michigan State University in Michigan, in the United States, specializing in Asian Diaspora culture and East-West comparative studies. He is the author of over a dozen books, including The Tao of S (2022); Off-White (2020); Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet (2017); The Last Isle (2015); Alienglish (2014); Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity (2012); Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture (2011); East-West Montage (2007); The Deathly Embrace (2000); Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures (1998); and memoir Immigrant Horse’s Mouth (2023). Co-editor of five books and special issues, Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile (2018) among them, he also published a collection of poetry in Chinese, Thirty Left and Right (三十左右). Soham Roy did his Master’s from Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, affiliated to University of Calcutta. Being a theatre practitioner his area of interest lies in Performance Studies. He is currently doing M.Phil at Vidyasagar University, Midnapore. His dissertation focuses on alternative form of theater, rather performance, with particular reference to Jerzy

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Grotowski. He also takes interest in translation and has translated Harry Potter and The Cursed Child: Parts One and Two from English to Bengali, which was published by Bloomsbury India in 2019. His other research interests include psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies. Sourav Banerjee, PhD, is an associate professor at Mahitosh Nandy Mahavidyalaya (Hooghly, West Bengal, India), a degree college affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He had been a former university research fellow. He has teaching experience of more than seventeen years and has done his PhD on post-colonial literature. He has presented papers in many national and international seminars and conferences, and he has published articles and chapters in many books and journals. He has also delivered a few invited talks on various topics. His areas of interest are Shakespearean dramas, gender and culture, romantic poetry, post-colonial literature, and posthumanism. Stella Chitralekha Biswas is a PhD scholar in comparative literature at Central University of Gujarat, India. She did her graduation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and MA from Pondicherry University, India. She did her M.Phil from Central University of Gujarat. Her publications include “The Travels and Travails of a Bengali: Sanjib Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Palamau in Café Dissensus, vol. 9, Issue 56, 2020; “ Alternative Worlds: Ecocritical Tendencies in Select Bengali Specualtive Fiction” in Middle Flight, vol. 9, issue 1, 2020; “Daughters of the Nation: Revisiting Women’s Speculative Writings in Bengal” in Postscriptum, vol. 6, issue 1, 2021; “ ‘Sons of Bengal’ and the Absent Daughters: Gender, Performativity and Nationalism in Bengali Juvenile Literature” in Indialogs: A Spanish Journal of India Studies, 2021; “A Revolution in Print: Multimodality in Bengali Children’s Literature and Its Challenges” in Bookbird: Journal of International Children’s Literature, 2021. Her research interests include studies pertaining to colonial Bengal, sexuality archives, gender studies, juvenile literature, pedagogy, and speculative fiction.