WGSS 110 Midterm

hard-boiled detective

-A figure of masculinity unbound -An independent operator -Typically unmarried, childless and motherless -Doesn't bow to women or work -Will walk away from money -Treads the line between right and wrong, often bending the rules

List 5 reasons people love murder mysteries and crime dramas:

-Arousal of powerful emotions -Puzzle, fun to try and solve -Justice is served; sense of satisfaction and safety -Explores the dark side of our own natures -Window into society

Explain how the presence of a women sleuth disrupts the genre of detective fiction

-Inclusion of women into detectives stories challenged the genre itself- moderates/disrupts the masculine norms of the genre. -Master narratives do not easily include women. -One of the main examples we see is women who solve the mystery and simply return to domesticity.

Name at least 3 people suspected of being Jack the Ripper

-Jill the ripper -Lewis Carroll -Prince Albert Victor (Eddy)

List the 5 biological sexes Anne Fausto-Sterling identifies

-Male -Female -Intersex (one testis one ovary) -Intersex (XY chromosome, testes, and some aspects of female genitalia but no ovaries) -Intersex (XX chromosomes, ovaries, and some aspects of male genitalia but no testes)

List the 5 "canonical" victims of Jack the Ripper

-Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols -Annie Chapman -Elizabeth Stride -Catharine Eddowes -Mary Jane Kelly

Explain how Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot disrupt gender stereotypes:

-Miss Marple: She is an old lady who can solve the crime (no one expects that a women her age can do this). She does things outside of the normal gender roles for females. She doesn't spend all her time cooking and cleaning. -Hercule Poirot: He has a very feminine essence about him. He's kind, carring, understanding, and soft. Also, he cares greatly about his appearance. He doesn't look like a typical man would in modern day hollywood.

Name 3 types of women sleuths and give one example of each

-Private eye: Mary Russell -Police-trained detective: Vera Stanhope -Amateur Sleuth: Miss Marple

List 5 characteristics that make a detective story feminist

-Representation of sexual politics -Liberal feminism -Makes patriarchal abuse visible -Foregrounding gender -Disabling the genre itself

Name 3 structures that characterize women's detective fiction

-Utopian model's of women's agency -Transgression of social mores, especially through disruptive humor and parody. -"Feminizing" of male authority

List 3 ways violence is eroticized in crime dramas

-Women in the background- flat, insignificant characters whose victimhood contributes to the movement of the plot or provides fodder for the male gaze. -Descriptions of violence- especially sexualized violence- are often graphic and gratuitous. Appeals to misogynistic enjoyment of rape, torture, murder of women. -Strong women leads may simply mask or provide a screen for all the violent scenes. Give veneer of feminism to misogynistic book/shows.

Name 5 feminist issues in detective fiction and crime drama

-Women's friendships -Power relations -Intersectionality -Women's experiences- domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, abortion -Women's concerns

A Study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Written in 1886, the story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction.

Thames Police

A newly formed body of police officers brought much needed law and order to that most historic of rivers. The Thames River Police was the first policing body ever to be set up. Its sole objective was the prevention and detection of crime on the Thames and it was to become the forerunner of many other police forces throughout the world. (Thames is a river).

Limehouse Golem

A series of murders has shaken the community of Limehouse in Victorian London to the point where people believe that only a legendary creature from dark times - the mythical so-called Golem - must be responsible. When music-hall star Elizabeth Cree is accused of poisoning her husband John on the same night as the last Golem murder, Inspector John Kildare discovers evidence linking John Cree to the Golem murders and finds himself determined to crack both cases before Elizabeth is hanged. Characters- Kildare (detective) Elizabeth Cree (murderer and actress) John Cree (victim) Uncle/Eddie (Theatre owner) Dan Leno (main theatre actor) Aveline Ortega (Jealous girl)

Sensation Novel

A type of novel, popular in England during the Victorian Era, which deals with the "sensational" topics of convicts, murder, insanity, and other forms of immorality that occur in the midst of everyday domestic life.

Maria Marten

A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover William Corder. The two had arranged to meet at the Red Barn, a local landmark, before eloping to Ipswich. Maria was never seen alive again and Corder fled the scene. He sent letters to Marten's family claiming that she was in good health, but her body was later discovered buried in the barn after her stepmother spoke of having dreamed about the murder. The case had all the elements to ignite a fervent popular interest: the wicked squire and the poor girl, the iconic murder scene, the supernatural element of the stepmother's prophetic dreams, the detective work by Ayres and Lea. Many different versions of the events were set down and distributed due to the excitement around the trial and the public demand for entertainments based on the murder, making it hard for modern readers to discern fact from melodramatic embellishment. The murder at the Red Barn has provided a living for writers and travelling players. Balladeers made money singing their versions of the story and the publishers of broadsheets sold copies counted in the hundreds of thousands. Actors performed many versions of plays surrounding the events in the lives of Maria Marten and William Corder. The story had all the elements of Victorian melodrama; a poor, naïve country maiden seduced by a wealthy blackguard and discarded when she became inconvenient. There was even the paranormal element of Maria's stepmother dreaming about the location of Maria's body to spice things up. The playwrights did not feel constrained by the known facts and embellished the evilness of Corder.

The Bermondsey Horror

According to neighbors, O'Connor had been openly romancing Mrs. Manning with her stolid husband's apparent approval. Then, the Mannings suddenly sold up and left. The discovery of O'Connor's body was called "The Bermondsey Horror" and police put out a description of the missing couple on the telegraph to all ports and railway stations. O'Connor dined with the Mannings at their home, 3 Miniver Place, Bermondsey. Following a pre-arranged plan, the Mannings murdered their guest and buried his body under the flagstones in the kitchen, which was later found only a week after his murder when an officer noticed a damp corner stone on the floor and found his toe when poking with a dagger.

Night Watchman

Adult male whose duty it was from sunset to sunrise to guard the town gates and to assist the constable in keeping the peace

Thief-taker

An alternative name for Henry Fielding's Bow Street Runners.

Critical Race Feminism

An analytical tool that centers experiences and perspectives of women of color.

Queer Feminism

An analytical tool that challenges heteronormativity (the assumption that everyone is heterosexual and all the ways society reflects that assumptions in its structures) and disrupts normative ways of thinking.

Bow Street Runners

An early English police unit formed under the leadership of Henry Fielding, magistrate of the Bow Street region of London.

Intersectionality

Another analytical tool that helps us keep in mind how all forms of social difference (gender, race, sexual identity, social class, ability, age, nation of origin, and religion) are interacting and shaping individuals experiences within systems of power and oppression.

Madame Tussaud

Artist during French Revolution that made death masks of Reign of Terror victims.

Explain why detective fiction is a male genre

Because it operates through the male gaze (the viewer/reader is forced to see the events through a male perspective). It is ultimately one voice/one version that silences all others, establishing a single version of "truth"; general acceptance of a male authority figure who alone is capable of explaining the world satisfactory.

Explain the significance in "The Fall" of Paul Spector's question, "Why are you watching this?":

Because of the world's fascination with serial killers and brutality. It really highlights this fact by asking what people are doing, or getting out of when watching these types of things.

Racial essentialism

Belief that certain characteristics are naturally or inevitably associated with particular races. Undermines attempts to dismantle racism.

Thomas de Quincey

British Romantic, English writer who described the psychological effects of addiction to opium, wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater. He invented the true crime genre with his blood-soaked description of the Ratcliffe Highway murders in On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Characters- -Hercule Poirot: The detective solving the case -Dr. James Sheppard: The murderer. As a result of his bad investments and desire to save face, blackmails Mrs. Ferrars and is then forced to murder his friend Roger Ackroyd to prevent himself from being exposed. The novel's narrator is a physician in the town of King's Abbott. He serves as a companion-chronicler to Hercule Poirot, the brilliant detective who will eventually crack the very complicated case. Although Sheppard appears to be a genial, straightforward character, his complicity in the mystery will prove one of the great plot-twists of all time. Ultimately, Dr. Sheppard is revealed to be a shrewd, duplicitous, detached villain -Caroline Sheppard: Sheppard's older sister who likes to gossip. -Mrs. Ferras: Poisoned her alcoholic husband in order to escape his abuse. Because of the financial burden of being blackmailed, as well as her guilt, she kills herself. -Roger Ackroyd: The central figure in King's Abbott. A wealthy businessman, Ackroyd's influence as well as the intrigue surrounding his stepson, family, and himself, make him a constant subject of gossip and speculation. He is the one who is killed. -Ralph Patton: Ackroyd's stepson. His disappearance, as well as several major clues (including how well he stood to benefit from Ackroyd's death), make him the major suspect in the crime. -Flora Ackroyd: Mrs. Ackroyd's daughter, Flora is young, fair, and beautiful. Like her mother, she is burdened by the strain of being financially dependent on her uncle, and longs for freedom from this frustrating reliance. Although she agrees to be engaged to her step-cousin Ralph Paton, she does so because she sees the opportunity for more independence and a new life, not out of love. She is the one that asks Sheppard to help her ask Poirot to investigate the case.

Florence Bravo

Charles Bravo (1845 - 21 April 1876) was a British lawyer who was fatally poisoned with antimony in 1876. The case is still sensational, notorious and unresolved. a famous Victorian Heiress and young widow at 26, her first husband died under mysterious circumstances. She was well known for seducing rich men with her charms and wiles. She met and married Charles Delaunay Turner Bravo, a rich, mean Barrister who was just 30 years old. They lived together in a huge, beautiful Estate in a section of London, England, called Priory in Bedford Hills which lies in Bulham. It was suspected that he was trying to slowly kill his wife by poisoning her, to inherit her fortune. However, he died from being poisoned and it was suspected that his wife could have done it.

Wilkie Collins

English sensation novelist, early master of the mystery story, and pioneer of detective fiction. Developing at once detective fiction and the novel of sensation, Collins' exotic and gripping stories - often involving strong heroines, sinister locales, charlatans, and physical or psychological afflictions - became hugely popular with the reading public.

Explain the inherent contradiction for feminists in the genre of detective fiction/crime drama:

Feminist writers always face the contradiction of the status quo and the subversive (but no work can fully accomplish the subversive). It also depends on the reader. They can offer dominant reading or deconstructive reading.

Broadsides

From the 16th to the mid-19th centuries, the general public looked to the broadside for news of the latest sensational crimes, murders and executions. As one of the most popular forms of street literature, broadsides were the tabloid newspapers of their day, selling near the gallows on execution days for just a penny. Public hangings were virtually a form of entertainment, attracting large crowds eager for a grandstand view of the proceedings, and the broadside vendors were ready to shout their news the moment the accused was "launched into eternity." (Essentially a poster with news)

Whitechapel

In the wee hours of the morning, a police constable discovers the body of a woman lying in a yard. The victim is Cathy Lane and the medical examiner determines she was strangled and that her throat was slit. The attack probably lasted no more than a few minutes but the killer tried to gut her as well. The police, led by newly appointed DI Joe Chandler, at first focus on her husband Rob Lees, a brute of a man who also happens to be a butcher, but he has the perfect alibi: he was in the drunk tank at Charing Cross station at the time of the murder. Ripperologist Edward Buchan suggests to them that this murder is identical to Jack the Ripper's first murder, and that another attack on Emma Jones also matches one from over 100 years ago. DI Chandler soon recognizes a pattern to the killings, much as Buchan suggested. His major problem however is that his squad, led by DS 'Skip' Miles, have absolutely no respect for him and see him as just another fast-track university graduate who knows nothing about policing on the street. Characters- DI Joseph Chandler D.S. Ray Miles Edward Buchan D.C. Fitzgerald D.C. Sanders

John Thurtell

John was was convicted and executed for the murder of William Weare, a notorious swindler. Besides the gruesome details, the murder was also sensational because it exposed the seedy London underworld of gambling and amateur boxing to a public ignorant of it. As more details were published of the underworld which Thurtell and Weare had inhabited, there were increasing calls for something to be done. The crime gained a great deal of attention and was the subject of numerous books and stage plays.

The Body in the Library

Mark and Josie were the murderers. Characters- Miss Marple Dolly Bantry Detective Inspector Slack Colonel Melchett Basil Blake Dinah Lee Conway Jefferson Lorrimer

Peelers

Nickname of officers in Ireland named for Sir Robert Peel. Peelers replaced the existing (and generally corrupt) system of parish constables and night watchmen. This was a derogatory term used for the first professional policemen in London taken from the sponsor of the legislation that created them.

The Fall

Several people try to interrogate Spector, who refuses to talk to anyone but Stella. Sally Ann suffers a miscarriage during interrogation, when informed about the crimes Paul is arrested for. Gibson gets Spector to confess all the crimes he has committed, but not to tell her whether or not he has killed Rose, nor where she or her body is hidden. Spector agrees to take Gibson to a place in the woods in exchange for seeing his daughter. In the woods, Gibson locates a car with a barely alive Rose in the boot. James Tyler followed the police procession to the woods and sneaks up to shoot Paul Spector and Tom Anderson, before being shot himself. -Characters- Stella Gibson, Paul Spector, Katie Benedetto, Jim Burns, Sally Ann Spector

Explain how Miss Marple uses stereotyped expectations of older women to solve mysteries

She can fly under the radar when conducting parts of the investigation. No one suspects that a little old lady can solve the crime. She also asks very simple questions throughout the show that helps her to solve the crime.

Golden Age of Detective Fiction

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. Stories written between the World Wars One and Two, when Agatha Christie, the mystery novel's "Queen of Crime," wrote many of her popular mysteries.

Penny Bloods

The Penny Blood, later called Penny Dreadful, were cheap nineteenth century publications that featured sensational and intriguing stories printed over a series of weeks. Originally, they told stories of pirates and highwaymen, and later focused on crime and mystery. They were popular because they cost buyers a penny and were cheaper than other fiction available The subject matter of these stories was typically sensational, focusing on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities.

The Ratcliffe Highway Murders

The Ratcliffe Highway murders (sometimes Ratcliffe Highway murders) were two attacks on two separate families that resulted in seven fatalities. The two attacks occurred 12 days apart in December 1811, in homes located half a mile apart near the London Docklands district of Wapping. The Ratcliffe Highway murders created greater terror, not only in London but in all of England. Because of improved roads and the newly invented mail-coach system, word about the two sets of killings spread all over England in a couple of days, creating a national panic. This had never happened before.

Feminism

The belief that women should possess the same political and economic rights as men. Feminism is an analytical tool that helps us examine how gender is at work and suggests ways for achieving equity and justice.

Road Hill House Murder

The case is a classic illustration of how early investigations were directed heavily by magistrates, of the influence which well-to-do people could exert over local police officers, and of the importance of immediately searching and questioning the whole household at the scene of a crime, regardless of social status. The story of the shocking murder is laid before the reader: a three-year-old boy, Saville Kent, turns up missing in June 1860. His body is found in the servants' privy, having been murdered. The spectacle of a working class man sifting through the family's soiled laundry to accuse a respectable middle class maiden of brutally killing her younger brother causes countrywide revulsion. Mr. Whicher career is destroyed, though he is able to find work as a private detective a few years later, when Constance Kent confesses to being solely responsible for the murder. Constance spends 20 years in jail.

Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective

The first novel in British fiction to feature a professional female detective. The protagonist is known as "G". She did a lot of physical work when solving the crimes.

Sex

The structuring of gender relations based on perceived biological differences in order to maintain the system of patriarchy. It also has a biological and social context: -Biological: How people use their genitals to reproduce -Social: The way people are categorized and socialized based on socially constructed definitions of male and female.

Ripperologist

The study of Jack the Ripper, an unidentified serial killer active around the Whitechapel district of London in the late 19th century.

Sexism

The system of oppression that assigns people to one of two genders, ranks men/manliness/masculinity over women/female/ femininity, structures hierarchical relationships around gender, and discriminates against women, resulting in systematic and pervasive inequality.

The Male Gaze

The way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view, presenting women as objects of male pleasure. Operates through the male gaze- reader/viewer is forced to see events through the male viewpoint.

Gender

The ways people perform what society has determined as masculine of feminine behaviors.

Newgate Novel

Victorian readers were enthralled by stories dealing with jail, crime, the criminal underworld and gruesome murders—Bleak House and Great Expectations as well as ATOTC and The Mystery of Edwin Drood are good examples.

implicit bias

attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner