The Diary Of Anne Rodway And The Speckled Band

When Gayle Wald wrote, “Sayers’s career writing detective stories effectively ends with Gaudy Night” (108), she did not present a new argument, but continued the tradition that Gaudy Night does not center on the detective story.  Barbara Harrison even labeled Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter/Harriet Vane books, Strong Poison, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon, as “deliriously happy-ending romances” (66).  The label stretches the definition of a romance, but Gaudy Night indeed has very little to do with crime.  Sayers encrypted the real story within her detective novel.  This story behind the story narrates love and human relationships.  In fact, the crimes in Gaudy Night only supply a convenient way for

241). Therefore it is possible that when a female character displays a lack of empathy, the audience’s response will be more surprising than when a male character would have behaved the same way. Glenwood Irons notes, “The male detective operates outside society’s conventions because that is what male heroes do” (Irons, 1995, p. 12), but female detectives do not experience the same expectations. Irons continues that they would generally not be a detective because she would have to operate outside society’s conventions as well, and that is not what heroines ought to do (1995, p. 12). These conventions have however developed over time, to which film noir had an important role as discussed in chapter 1, and has enabled Lund to be the kind of detective she conveys: bending rules, ignoring superiors, and lacking empathy for her suspects. The audiences perception of what is challenging, ground breaking, or inventive is then based on how the on-screen characters conform to these types of gender

The events recounted in Anne Frank’s Diary took place during World War 11. By 1933, the strongest party in Germany had gained ultimate power with Hitler under their command. Hitler was Germany’s dictator who spread his gospel of racial hatred through politics. While poverty and unemployment were at an all time high he launched a campaign of anti-Semitism. Hitler’s main target was the Jews, claiming that they were “racially inferior.” He developed an idea of a Master Aryan Race, the need to rid Germany of “inferior people”, such as Jews and Gypsies, and the need to expand Germany’s borders. In doing this, he caused many Jews to abandoned their homes and go into total isolation. The Frank family

In Black Widow’s Wardrobe, Gloria Damasco as a Chicana detective transgresses into a traditional masculine profession proving that women are capable to do an equal or better job than men. Historically most protagonists of the detective novels have been male, while female characters are portrayed ether as hysterical or as the damsel in

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.

In The Big Sleep, Marlowe, a white man, shows his personality as he describes the stained-glass panel that shows a “knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree” and the knight was not really trying to rescue the lady. Marlowe is a knight in his society and as any good knight, he is very chivalrous not like the dark knight (other ethnicities) on the panel. He says that he needs to “climb up there and help” the knight to rescue the lady, showing how chivalrous he really is and how others need the help of a white man. In Murder Is My Business, Marino is a lesbian detective with a damsel in distress syndrome. However, she is cautious and smart enough to know that Mrs. Hunnicut’s story “smelled as rotten as a bonito left out in the sun,” but her attraction to Mrs. Hunnicut and her syndrome to help everyone drives her to help Mrs. Hunnicut anyway. In this story the typical white detective is changed, giving a woman the main role and thus the white people’s power. In Devil in a Blue Dress, the detective, Rawlins, is an African American who is fully aware of the racial discrimination that exists towards African Americans. He is captivated or even being manipulated by Daphne, a white girl. Changing the detectives’ ethnicity reveals the position that their ethnicity represents on

The basis of detective fictions is a well-developed and observant character that is able to walk the audience and outside perspectives through the case. In this case, Arthur Conan-Doyle utilizes the observant perspective of Watson to describe the actions of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle characterizes Sherlock through underscoring vocabulary and the first person understanding of Watson. A series of analytical language and descriptive literary devices such as juxtaposition to portray the effects of Irene Adler on the near-perfect character of Sherlock Holmes.

“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.

Claudia Valentine is a character that is an enigmatic and codified by the crime fiction genre. She is cleverly introduced in such a manner which is stereotypical of the traditional hard boiled detective with the alcohol, cigarettes and ‘blonde’ in the bed. These crime fiction conventions re-contextualized her in terms of her gender so to explore a more sinister aspect of humanity and the qualities that she possesses. Within Claudia, Day has created a strong and independent woman, creating a new voice for females in crime fiction. This can be seen in the encounters between Claudia and Dr. Angell, where she contrasts her personalities.

For example, in Paper 1, I discussed how the police were used to illustrate the detective. It seems that The Long Goodbye presents a story about “love and loss,” but in fact, what Chandler tries to depict is the friendships between Detective Marlowe and the mysterious Terry Lennox. In other words, the story is not about love, but about masculinity. For example, Plain points out that even Roger Wade shows his masculinity by “drinking himself into an easily killable stupor” after he feels disappointed and is “refusing to complete a debased cultural product” (p. 81). The main theme of masculinity thus forms the female characters in the novel. The female characters could also be regarded as significant elements for building the traits of the detective and/or the novel, and to differentiate the masculinity that Chandler wishes to illustrate in the

The play version of The Diary of Anne Frank tells the story of one girl who lives in an Annex during the Holocaust along with many other people, including family, friends, and even a dentist. In this play, Anne tries to survive the Holocaust hiding in the Annex of their father’s store, while places all around them get searched for the Jewish Population. Of course, there were many other Jews telling the story of the Holocaust from their perspectives. One of the most popular ones is the book Night, written by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. The book Night was based around the life before and during the Holocaust. It talks about the peaceful life they had before, the beginning of the invasion, the separation in concentration camps, and a death march that would of killed anyone. Although Elie Wiesel and Anne Frank provide different settings, as well as how the fathers feel, both authors provide information about the importance of a father-child relationship, and how the fathers are important figures to them. It shows what the Holocaust looks like in two very differing perspectives, including a peaceful-for-the-most-part Annex and the concentration camps of Buna, Auschwitz, and many more.

In traditional hard-boiled American detective fiction there are many themes that seem to transcend all novels. One of those themes is the concept of power and the role in which it plays in the interaction and development of characters. More specifically, the role of women within the novels can be scrutinized to better understand the power they hold over the other characters, their own lives and the direction of the story. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon exemplifies the varying ways in which female characters attempt to obtain and utilize power in hopes of influencing, manipulating and succeeding.

Title A serpent masks his intentions by obscuring the truth. Once the mask is torn, we see the truth, rather than a perception of truth. Agatha Christie’s, The Moving Finger, relies on the reinforcement of stereotypical ideas about bucolic small towns through the theme of gossip and gender stereotypes, which is used to distort the truth In order too effectively create a mystery.

While American and British authors developed the two distinct schools of detective fiction, known as “hard-boiled and “golden age,” simultaneously, the British works served to continue traditions established by earlier authors while American works formed their own distinct identity. Though a niche category, detective works reflect the morality and culture of the societies their authors lived in. Written in the time period after World War I, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and “The Gutting of Couffignal”, and Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble Is My Business” adapt their detectives to a new harsh reality of urban life. In “hard-boiled” works, the detective is more realistic than the detective in “golden age” works according to the

The falling action prevailed as the ventilator opened, and a creature ensued to emerge from it. Sherlock saw the animal earlier Dr. Watson; therefore he attacked with a cane before his acquaintance understood the severity of what was happening around him. It was after Sherlock hit the snake that a whistle was heard, causing the snake to retreat. Only a moment later though a startlingly loud cry was sounded. With tremendous haste, the detective and the doctor burst into Dr. Roylott’s quarters. They scanned the dwellings for the doctor, only to realize that he had died. Sitting near him in the room was a speckled snake, or as it was known by the duo, the speckled band. The snake had become aggravated when Sherlock assaulted it, causing it to