Abstracts Womens Studies

Mysteries of the Gothic Heroine: The Case for a Feminist Tradition of American Detective Fiction

by Dorothy Calabro

This dissertation makes a case for an intersectional feminist tradition and critique of American detective fiction. Moving from the detective novel's beginnings in the mid-19th century and into major late 19th and early 20th century participants in the genre, my archive highlights the underexplored connections between domestic fiction and detective fiction, African American writers' hybridization of the trans-racial Gothic and detective fiction, and the significance of queer readership communities and fandoms to the genre of detective fiction. This project grew out of my sense that, for all the revision the canon has undergone to make it more inclusive and reflective of numerous viewpoints and identities, academic discussion and pop culture representation of detective fiction retains a distinctly masculinist bias rooted in a male-centric critical tradition and in the preoccupations of popular fan studies. Women authors and detectives, particularly those offering a further marginalized perspective through race and queerness, have a position akin to outsiders in the genre, which has left us with a skewed understanding of both detective fiction as a mode and nineteenth and twentieth-century American literature more broadly. My dissertation seeks to uncover this neglected history of female investigators and their authors, as well as their shifting motivations, identities, and strategies. In the process, I explore the hidden histories of women's detective fiction and their female detectives, the female detective as an intrinsically intersectional figure, the American Gothic as a mode of exploration of the detective genre, and the underexplored possibilities of critical race, queer, and feminist approaches to detective fiction. I posit that reorienting the familiar macro-narrative of detective fiction can bring to light alternative strategies for unpacking the relationship between the figure of the detective and issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Ultimately, my dissertation positions women's detective fiction as a battle ground concerning women's rights, and ideas on femininity and feminism. The Gothic girl detective's transgressive performances of (white) womanhood and heterosexuality dramatize the bifurcations of the first-wave feminist movement on the basis of marriage and family, establish gender, race, and sexuality, as social and political constructs, and reappropriate the domestic sphere as a space of autonomy for women. A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. July 10, 2023. Aaron Jaffe, Professor Directing Dissertation; Katherine Mooney, University Representative; Trinyan Mariano, Committee Member; John McCoy Kilgore, Committee Member.