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Hard-boiled femininity in contemporary crime fiction
Author(s)
Date Issued
2019
Conference
Citation
Davies, F. M. R. (13 Jun 2019). Hard-boiled femininity in contemporary crime fiction. Captivating Criminality 6, D’Annunzio University of Chieti Pescara, Italy.
Type
Conference Paper
Abstract
The hard-boiled is a genre associated with pulp fiction of the twenties, and has been described, albeit
rather reductively, as ‘books about tough guys’. Pioneered in novel-form by Raymond Chandler, many
critics argue that the hard-boiled is ‘inflected with a particular straight, white, male way of seeing’. It is
true that ‘western pop culture… continue to celebrate the ‘he-man’’, however, ‘certainly since the
1970s there has been a strong hint of parody, even dysfunction, in the portrayal’. It is said that ‘genre
fiction articulates cultural conflicts’, therefore, it is no surprise that the Eighties, a decade heavily
concerned with issues of gender, saw a spike in the introduction of female leads and detectives in
hard-boiled crime fiction. The female sleuth, such as Paretsky’s “Vic” Warshawski and Grafton’s Kinsey
Millhone, dominated the pages of crime fiction best sellers, and it seemed as though ‘After generations
of peeking through their knitting and over their pots and pans, the new female sleuths are more
intellectually vital [and] more physically capable.’ What is the function of the female hard-boiled
detective in a genre which is considered ‘traditionally masculinist’. What happens when a genre which
is usually the ‘preserve of straight, white, male writers’ is appropriated by women? This paper seeks to
examine the ways in which contemporary crime fiction has appropriated the hard-boiled aesthetic;
repackaging and reinventing it as an oppositional ‘hard-boiled’ femininity in order to explore social
and cultural issues of its day.
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