Criminal Women in Contemporary French Crime Fiction: Gender, Genre and the Polar Fministe

(Hardback)

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Description

An exploration of representations of female criminality in contemporary French crime fiction, this book offers a literary, sociological and feminist analysis of the stereotypes surrounding women and crime. Surveying how these stereotypes are both invoked and disrupted, it covers Pierre Lemaitres Alex, Fred Vargass Quand Sort la Recluse (This Poison Will Remain), Lela Slimanis Chanson Douce (Lullaby) and Hannelore Cayres La Daronne (The Godmothe) in their English translations. Addressing the gap of scholarly interest in legal and cultural representations of female violence in crime fiction, Ciara Gorman evaluates the subversive ways in which archetypes of female criminality ranging from the femme fatale to the witch, and from the mre fatale to the bitch are deployed not as reductive shorthands about femininity, but as motors of innovation and resistance. The form and plot of each text is examined for its potential as a polar fministe (feminist thriller), a crime novel which weaves the concerns of feminism be that the prevalence of sexual and sexist violence in society, or the legacy of misogynist representation of women in the crime genre as a whole. Criminal Women considers the female criminal character as a figure of opportunity, the point at which readers and writers alike may reassess their assumptions about female criminality, and about the feminist potential of crime fiction itself.

Reviews

In exploring female criminals across a number of crime fiction genresvigilante narrative, police procedural, domestic noir, and hardboiledGorman makes important and timely arguments, teasing out the implications of traditional and more subversive depictions of female criminals. Elegantly written and theoretically compelling, this is a must-read for scholars of French crime fiction and of feminist detective fiction. * Pamela Bedore, Associate Professor of English, University of Connecticut, USA *

Author Bio

Ciara Gorman is temporary modular lecturer and senior tutor in the Department of French at Maynooth University, Ireland.