Seeing Emck's "Feminine Detectives and the Challenge of
Hardboiledness"
listed in the
_Dictionary of Literary Biography's_ volume on
the crime novel (#226), I
got a copy. This article, written in opaque
academic jargon, states that the female noir or hard boiled
writer must replace the hard edged rationality of the male PI
with the compassionate, sympathetic behavior of the female, a
world view which has been suppressed through the ages by "the
patriarchy." The writer assumes (IMO begs the question) that
the male in a patriarchal society cannot consider females as
equal to himself, however much he may respect their
abilities. He automatically sees them as "other," and his
desire for them is an unhealthily repressive force.
Because of this patriarchal silencing and
denigration of women, the male
PI or protagonist cannot but find women either
dangerous or inconsequential. All this is "proven" by
references to novels of Paretsky, and by some
mention of the classic PI writers. No mention, of
course, of the strong
and, to the PI, admirable females in Chandler,
Hammett, Goodis, Cain, McCoy. No inkling that male
protagonists speak of their rejection of long affairs or
marriage as a necessary but both compulsive and limiting
aspect of their psyche.
I have no wish to start
up again the discussion of the noir crime novel's approach to
women. My question is simply, can the genre be
considered to subordinate a compassionate,
community centered female solution
to a stoic, aggressive response of the male hero who
must act alone,
outside the law, and in isolation from females,
even those he admires?
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