'Toutes des salopes': representations of women in French crime fiction
Abstract
089 'Toutes des salopes': representations of women in French crime fiction SAGE Publications, Inc.1999DOI: 10.1177/095715589901002806 Stephen F. Noreiko In English-language detective fiction, women crime-busters are as likely also to be mould-breakers. Their authors and authoresses seem to be seeking striking originality, the character with characteristics which will fire the imagination, fuel the fantasies, and stick in the memory, so that the public will read and return. In genre fiction, the author's name is a trademark, but crime fiction additionally tries to cultivate brand loyalty to its heroines and heroes. V. I. Warshawski is one obvious example, a tough woman in a man's world, on men's terms, with a masculine name and delicate Italian shoes.' Penny Wanawake, black and over six feet tall, is another.~ Stephanie Plum, erstwhile lingerie buyer bounty hunting to pay the rent and keep her hamster, is a third.3 Perhaps the most unlikely sleuthette is a modern languages lecturer from Hull,4 but even Miss Jane Marple, that archetypical village spinster, by the very fact of her detecting, signals refusal to conform. Their Gallic sisters are much less up front and in your face. They are in fact almost invisible, and one has to wonder why.