WGSS 110 midterm study guide

A study in Scarlet

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. a popular Sherlock Holmes book

Feminism

A female movement for gender equality.

Thames River Police

A private police force created by the West India Trading Company in 1798 that represented the first professional, salaried police force in London.

The 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.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christie (right vs. wrong/ good vs. evil & memory) Characters- Dr. James Sheppard (physician), Caroline Sheppard (spinster sisters), Hercule Poirot (detective feminist), Roger Ackroyd (wealthy buisness man) Plot- The novel is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, a physician in the town of King's Abbott. The story begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, who overdosed on Veronal, a sleeping medication. Mystery of her murdering her husband

Explain the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and social class in the story of Jack the Ripper

All victims were women, each women was a prostitute and part of working class, mutilated their bodies in an unusual manner, indicating that the killer had a knowledge of human anatomy. Whitechapel, London

Bow Street Runners

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

Explain how arsenic played a role in leading to the profession of "medical gentleman"

Arsenic, as a medicine, is generally used in small and frequently

Anne Fausto-Sterling - "The Five Sexes"

Biological diversity among humans - male, female, hermaphrodite, fermaphrodite, mermaphrodite. Not all human children are born clearly distinguishable as simply male or female.

Critical Race Feminism

Brings a racial/ethnic analysis into discussion of sex inequality

Thomas De Quincey

British Romantic, English writer who described the psychological effects of addiction to opium, wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eate. Worked on the ratcliffe highway murders

Whitechapel Season 1, Episode 1

CHaracters- D.I. Joseph Chandle, D.S. Ray Miles, DCI Cazenove, the corrupt Head of the Organised Crime Division, Jimmy and Johnny Kray, the heirs to the legacy of the original Kray twins Plot- in which detectives in London's Whitechapel district dealt with murders which replicated historical crimes. search for a modern copycat killer replicating the murders of Jack the Ripper.

Limehouse Golem

Characters- Lizzie Cree, Dan Leno, John Cree, Inspector Roberts, detective Kildare Plot- Victorian London is gripped with fear as a serial killer is on the loose and leaving cryptic messages written in the blood of his victims

Miss Marple Season 1, Episode 1, The Body in the Library

Characters- Miss Marple (detective), Hercule (detective), Inspector (later Superintendent) Slack, Lake is Slack's colleague and often works with him, Plot- A young woman's corpse is dumped in the library of Gossington Hall. Miss Marple assists her neighbours the Bantrys when a lovely young girl is found dead in their library. The girl is traced to a seaside resort and the desperate family of a wealthy old man.

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

Contradiction on status quo and subversion, no work can fully be completed by subversion, depends on reader.

Explain how the characters in Whitechapel reflect various notions of masculinity

Controlling, judgmental, and racist

detective fiction

Fiction in which a recurring character (not necessarily a professional detective by trade) investigates and solves crime

The male gaze

Focused on event through males perspective

Explain the intersections of gender, race, social class, and sexuality in "Limehouse Golem"

Lizzie Borden did not feel equal and had anger towards her parents. Dressed in males clothing when she killed.

The Fall

Main Characters- Det. Supt. Stella Gibson (Superintendent attached to Britain's major case review team), Peter Paul Spector (father of two, bereavement counsellor), Asst. Ch. Constable Jim Burns (Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI in charge of operations). Plot- The Fall storyline, The cop corruption subplot. Secondary to the serial killer storyline was a tangled web of organised crime, prostitution, drug-dealing and police corruption

List the 5 "canonical" victims of Jack the Ripper

Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly

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

Miss Marple (women detective), Nancy Drew, and Harriet Welsch, Harriet Vane.

Explain how Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot disrupt gender stereotypes

Miss Marple, is a single, old lady who is working as a detective which is thought to be a males job. Hercule is very feminine in the way he stresses and appears.

The Bermondsey Horror

Murdered By The Patriarchy. An unhappy marriage, a love triangle, a lack of finances and a brutal murder.

John Thurtell

Murderer- considered sensational at the time. Was convicted and executed for the murder of William Weare

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.

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

Paul Spector on The Fall screams "Why are you watching this?" into the camera, it's clear that TV has become its own critic as well as its own historian.

Name at least 3 people suspected of being Jack the Ripper

Prince Albet Victor (eddy), Walter Sickert, Jill the Ripper, and Lewis Carol . AND ABOUT 500 others!

List 5 reasons people love murder mysteries and crime dramas

Puzzle to solve, explore our dark side, justice is served, arousal l of powerful emotions, and predictability of outcome

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

She uses her age to the advantage that she's just old, frail and single. Where as we know she is beyond intelligent and good at solving crimes.

List 3 ways violence is eroticized in crime dramas

Targeted towards women (women in background), sexual violence, empowered women are often targeted, specific races engenders, towards children, and physically with guns.

Catherine Crowe's Susan Hopley

The Adventures of a Maid-servant

Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective

The Female Detective is the first novel in British fiction to feature a professional female detective. 1864

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.

The Ratcliffe Highway

The Ratcliff Highway murders (sometimes Ratcliffe Highway murders) were two attacks on two separate families that resulted in seven fatalities.

Maria Marten

The Red Barn Murder was a notorious murder committed in Polstead, Suffolk, England in 1827. A young woman, Maria Marten, was shot dead by her lover

Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White was Wilkies fifth novel to be published.

Explain the decline of the English detective novel in the 1940s and on

The golden age and world war II

National Geographic- "Who was Jack the Ripper"

The mystery of Jack the Ripper began on August 31, 1888, when the body of a dead woman was found in a Whitechapel street. Her throat had been cut and her abdomen gouged open.

Ripperologist

The study of Jack the Ripper, an unidentified serial killer

Murders

Unlawfully killing other people

Explain why detective fiction is a male genre

Viewed through male glaze, highest virtue is objective, "one voice" silence others, protagonist is usually a loner.

Name 5 feminist issues in detective fiction and crime drama

Women Friendships, power relations, womens concerns, womens agency, non straight families.

Madame Tussauds

a French artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum she founded in London.

implicit bias

a hidden, automatic attitude that may guide behaviors independent of a person's awareness or control

Thief-taker

a private individual hired to capture criminals

broadsides

a strong or abusive verbal or written attack

Newgate Novel

a style of writing about thieves, robbers, and criminals

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

Intersectionality

an analytic framework for assessing how factors such as race, gender, and class interact to shape individual life chances and societal patterns of stratification

Queer Feminism

convergence of queer theory and feminism

Sleuth

detective

Golden Age

era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s.

Florence Bravo

famous Victorian Heiress and young widow at 26, her first husband, Alexander Ricardo, died under mysterious circumstances

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

genre fiction is the use of the mystery novel to challenge the traditional roles of women

Gender

in psychology, the biologically and socially influenced characteristics by which people define male and female

List 5 characteristics that make a detective story feminist

liberal feminis (positive images), Assumes women's agency, more focused on feminism as strand of humanism, makes abuse visible, foregrounding gender

Road Hill house murder

real-life Constance Kent murder case of 1860. Constance Kent admits her guilt, but refuses to corroborate Whicher's theory that her brother was also involved in the murder.

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction

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.

hard-boiled detective

street wise and not always on the right side of the law, but honest and good hearted

Sexism

the belief that one sex is innately superior to the other

sex

the biological distinction between females and males

racial essentialism

the idea that supposedly natural and immutable differences separate the races

Name 3 structures that characterize women's detective fiction

women write better detective novels with deeper characterizations and greater empathy, Women are certainly more likely than their male counterparts to have strong female protagonists, and equality