Why do we so enjoy reading about female detectives?
Part of the enjoyment, I suspect, lies in the satisfaction
that we derive from seeing women, who have suffered
so much from male arrogance and condescension,
either outwitting men or demonstrating that they are
just as capable as men of doing something that may
have been seen as a male preserve. We live today in a
society in which gender equality has been, to a very
large extent, realised. At the time at which The Female
Detective was written, in 1864, of course, things were
very different. The relegation of women to a subservi-
ent position within society. -a position in which they
were outsiders to the male-dominated worlds of work
and affairs- meant that for women to be involved in
the investigation of crime was a novel thing. Today one
might expect that novelty to have faded, as women do
all the jobs previously monopolised by men. Yet the
idea of the female detective as being special or unusual
still persists in literary and cinematic treatments of
criminal investigation. [...]
There are other factors, though, that I suspect lie behind
the popularity of the female detective. One is that the
woman sleuth is often portrayed as the outsider in the
male world of policing and criminal investigation.
This operates in two ways: one where the woman is
a member of a police force, and one where she is the
Pédagogie différenciée
TRAIL A
1 Pick out words and phrases referring to
women in the first part of the text (I. 1-19).
Classify them in two columns: past and present.
Explain the situation of women in the past.
2 Focus on lines 14 to 19 and say whether
women sleuths are still seen as special today.
3 Focus on lines 20 to 33 and explain why
women detectives are often seen as outsiders.
freelance who operates either at the request of the
official investigators or as a well-meaning bystander.
In the case of the female detective who is part of a
police team, the outsider status results from the fact
that women police detectives frequently operate in a
male-dominated force. They are frequently portrayed
as having to deal with sceptical and sexist superiors
who are only too eager to detect weakness [...].
Alexander McCall Smith, The Independent, 3011
is found being more clever than s inferiors diminished
s are the hidden causes of
whe
FEMALE DETECTIVE
Culture Tip
With The Female Detective,
published in 1864, British
writer James Redding Ware
created the first profes
sional female detective
character, opening the way
for other famous female
sleuths such as Miss Marple
and Nancy Drew.
TRAIL B
1 Compare the life of female detectives in the
past and in the present. Focus on lines 1 to 19.
2 Explain whether the "novelty" has "faded"
(1.15).
3 Explain which factor behind the popularity
of female detectives is mentioned at the end of
the text (1. 20-33).
Meet up! "We live today in a society in which gender equality has been, to a very large extent,
realised." (1. 6) Write a short paragraph to explain how this is true in detective fiction.