Kevin:
<<This feminist academic says women weren't taken
seriously in detective novels in the past, you say men aren't
taken seriously now.>>
No, I am not saying it. People who have studied contemporary
society are saying it. I was not basing my assertion on
personal experience. I've been lucky in that respect. From
early on, the feminists identified the questions of power
quite precisely and accurately.
What to do with the situation has proven very difficult for
both men and women. Certainly, legal equality and fair
opportunities regardless of sex can be and have been
legislated. But people's intimate lives are a lot more
complicated. They are not run by proclamations and
laws.
Our times may be more enlightened theoretically, but in
practice the problems have not gone away. Maybe they are
intrinsic, or of such a societal nature that individual
efforts are doomed. The modern couple and even the nuclear
family are quite new concepts (by a historical time
scale).
But the point of the discussion, as brought up by Jay, is
literary: how does the PI novel portray relations between the
sexes, and does it portray them realistically?
As you mention, the modern PI novel does try to give a more
realistic view of male-female relations. This is part of the
fleshing out of PI characters (concomitant with the bulking
out of the PI novel...). The realism is open to question, of
course. And on and on...
Best,
MrT
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