Female Protagonists of Detective Narratives

In Trifles, Susan Glaspell debates the roles between men and women during a period where a debate was not widely conducted. Glaspell wrote Trifles in the early 1900s—a time when feminism was just getting started. In this play, Glaspell shows us her perspective on the roles of men and women and how she believes the situation would play out. Trifles seems like another murder mystery on the surface, but the play has a much more profound meaning behind it. Glaspell presents the idea that men and women analyze situations differently, and how these situations are resolved based on how we interpret them. Research shows that women’s brains “may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.” On the other hand, male brains are predominately “optimized for motor skills and actions” (Lewis). In the play, this research shows true when the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, analyze details rather than looking at the apparent, physical evidence, and they find out the motive of the murder. The men, on the other hand, look at broader evidence that does not lead to any substantial conclusion. When Glaspell was writing this play, she wanted the women to be the real instigators, the ones that would end up solving the mystery. While the men in the story laugh at the ‘trifles’ that women worry about, these details mean a great deal in Glaspell’s eyes. Glaspell presents the idea what men and women are different in the way they live their lives through detail.

Among the common peculiarities of film noir, the distinct division between the male characters and the different representations of women reinforce notions of masculinity and gender roles. Furthermore, in the 1940’s film noir was Hollywood’s way to illustrate a world in where pessimism and suspicion dictated people’s lives. Mostly presented as detectives or a lone wolf, the men are portrayed as cold-hearted, disconnected, and cynical to show their hopelessness and disillusionment of the society they lived in. Along this depiction, multiple women are placed into different roles, to either play the seductress and/or a menace to the male protagonist. In the The Maltese Falcon film noir, the male protagonist is characterized as a typical male

“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written by Susan Glaspell in 1917 illustrates early feminist literature. The two female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, is able to solve the mystery of who the murderer of John Wright while their male counterparts could not. This short story had been adapted from Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles written the previous year. The play consists of the same characters and plotline as the story. In both works, Glaspell depicts how the men, Sheriff Peters and Mr. Hale, disregard the most important area in the house, the kitchen, when it comes to their investigation. In the end, the women are the ones who find clues that lead to the conclusion of Minnie Wright, John Wright’s wife, is the one who murdered him. Both of Glaspell’s female characters illustrate the ability to step into a male dominated profession by taking on the role of detective. According to Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, written by Lois Tyson, a reader-response critique “focuses on readers’ response to literary texts” and it’s a diverse area (169). Through a reader-response criticism from a feminist lens, we are able to analyze how “A Jury of Her Peers” and Trifles depict how a patriarchal society oppresses women in the early twentieth century, gender stereotypes confined both men and women and the emergence of the New Woman is illustrated.

The media today, is highly selective in their constructions of offences, offenders and victims. Media representations of crime are moulded and women are portrayed in a way that is entertainment driven and is appealing to the audience. Despite the fact that women seldom stalk, murder outsiders or commit sequential murders- in fact they are rarely vehement, “accounting for only ten percent of convicted violent offenders- those who do so are highly newsworthy because of their novelty” (Jewkes 2011, p. 123) Present day media admits that because fierce women are comparatively uncommon, they are all the more appealing and diabolical to the audience as a result. The essay shall discuss the reason and presentation in the media of female offenders, female victims and women specific crimes.

Lisa Scottoline in the novel, Lady Killer, skillfully illustrates the reality between the law and relationships. Scottoline supports her demonstration by telling the story between Mary DiNunzio, her work, and friendships. Scottoline’s purpose is to capture the reader with realistic events that are normally not talked about in order to grasp the interest of her readers, and reveal the reality of criminal justice. Scottoline writes in a conversational tone for her young readers without previous knowledge about criminals nor law.

The constant portrayal of women as an assistant or helper in prominent is the popular James Bond films. The main goal for “bond girls” as they are called is to “distract, tempt, or assist,” Bond in whatever his mission may be. It is important to note that there had been Bond

Detective stories that have been published over the years all contain dramatic elements that the reader has come to expect. These conventions that Aydelotte discussed in The Dectective Story as a Historical Source are especially ever present in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue and they shed light on the concerns of the people of the time.

In film noir, the principal characters are almost always male, whereas females are still central to film noir storylines and plots. Women in film noir are generally either the social ideal - dutiful, reliable, and trustworthy or they happen to be a trap, a dangerous associate who conceals murder with her attractiveness. These stereotypes of dangerous women in film weren’t anything new, although the classic femme fatale took risk, crime and danger to completely new heights. There are essentially three main, each different and unique female character archetypes, as each serves a different purpose to develop and unravel the plot and to set the mood and tone of each film. They are the “Femme Fatale”, the “Good Woman”, and the “Marrying Type”.

Females in recent fictional crime shows have been merely token representations of women. While the number of women law enforcement agents are increasing, they are still shown as the ‘token’ woman character who maintains the traditional female characteristics of being nurturing

This critique then develops into a standpoint with the emergence of the Final Girl trope, where a female character is shown to take characteristics which are typically masculine and makes them her own, becoming then a figure of empowerment. Just as society at large attempts to repress individuals into, as Wood explains it, “predetermined roles within that culture,” the horror film uses the killer to repress the final girl into a victimized, annihilated state. In Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was with the subversion of classical family values with the male-dominated, cannibalistic household who tried to objectify Sally. In Carpenter’s Halloween, repression of sexuality and bisexual characteristics in Laurie Strode by Michael Myers led her to become the Final Girl as the film world knows today. Finally in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling takes a step further into the role of the Final Girl by facing head on the “wound culture” state while inhabiting the male-dominated world of law enforcement. With the role of the final girl as the self-empowered figure of the hero who pushes back against her oppressors and by the film’s end, defeats her oppressors, the horror film takes on a more feminist

Sveistrup’s creation of Sarah Lund is in this dissertation considered to be a revised, postfeminist, noir heroine. Lund seems to have also evolved after British TV heroines in a way where she does not seem to experience the same glass ceiling that for example Tennison in Prime Suspect had to battle with. When she enters a room filled with men, she does not stand out as delicate or vulnerable, as a woman in a ‘man’s world,’ but rather blends in with her masculine body language and unsmiling face. It is noticeable, especially in Sarah Lund’s case, that most of her colleagues are in fact men, reminding that the police force is still predominantly male. The first episode of season one of The Killing presents some reminiscent shots where Lund’s

Going to explore the topic of women's gender roles in today's television drama shows, focusing more on how they are becoming less and less traditional male heroines to this more of women heroines through this exploration. With regards to this I'm going to take a look at the television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-) but I decided to take a deeper look at the shows underline message. To investigate this argument by the show’s creators and the purpose of the show with this in mind, I’m try and conduct analysis of the series as whole,, omitting episodes that did not deal directly with violence against women. Where the women characters didn't know play a big role in solving the cases that portrayed throughout the show. James Clapp

Women are a part of the present, the past and the future. They are leaders, mothers, creators, healers, believers, heroes, teachers and muses. They are from different race, origins, beliefs and education. Underated and put on the side from the beginning since the idea of “founding fathers”. However, we all acknowledge now that they did just as much as the men during the revolution. For example, they were soldiers, camp followers, couriers, spies, a community organizer, a newspaper publisher, nurses, defenders of their homes, a political philosopher, poets and propagandists. The following introduces to you some of the women and their stories.

According to John Fiske, “Television as a culture is a crucial part of the social dynamics.” Indeed any television genre is based on apparent similarities, differences and on expectations as well as assumptions shared by the viewers. It is also a cross-cultural translatability as it is understood in a diversity of contexts and markets. According to Graeme Burton (2000), the genre study leads to understanding of audience pleasures and revelation of cultural myths. Also an understanding of finance and marketing within television and finally an understanding of intertextuality and postmodernist forms of television. However audiences are aware of the codes and conventions that distinguish one genre product from the next. Genre has to be what

Whilst it would seem at face value that the portrayal of a strong female heroine is empowering for all women in a society of unequal gendered stereotypes, the explanations as to why the female heroine is so strong, seems only to be justified through motivation instead of ‘natural’ strength. To many theorists this motivation can only be explained through a woman’s maternal instincts, or a female link to the power and dominance projected by men which is portrayed through a female’s identification with herself and the ‘lack’, leading to a sense of heightened power through the phallic. In this essay I will be analysing whether a heroine is personally empowered through self-determination as a strong women, or instead motivated by external situations such as maternal instincts, or problems associated with gender differences.