RAZVOJ SUBVERZIVNIH STRATEGIJA I DEMITOLOGIZACIJE U ŽENSKOM DETEKTIVSKOM ROMANU: CROSS, MULLER, GRAFTON
DEVELOPMENT OF SUBVERSIVE STRATEGIES AND DEMYTHOLOGIZATION IN WOMEN'S DETECTIVE NOVEL: CROSS, MULLER, GRAFTON

Summary/Abstract: This article is concerned with the procedures female authors use to rewrite detective fiction, and especially the traditionally male hardboiled detective style. By applying various feminist theories I intend to chart the process of overtaking this, until then an exclusively male zone of detective profession and literary subgenre by female detectives and their authors through the analysis of three novels which constitute the beginning of women’s detective fiction having an emancipated woman as the main character. These are the following novels: In the Last Analysis (1964) by Amanda Cross, Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977) by Marcia Muller, and „A“ is for Alibi (1982) by Sue Grafton. In this analysis I will emphasize the subversive acts the author and her characters apply to female stereotypes such as “formlessness, instability, confinement, piety, materiality, spirituality, irrationality...“ (Ellmann 55); attempts to destabilize binary oppositions in which woman is represented as “nature, night, mother, emotions, sensitive, phatos“ (Cixous 101); subversion of biological essentialism which is „a theory that reduces all behavior to inborn sexual characteristics“ (Moi 13) according to which women are naturally subordinate while men are naturally dominant (Millet 203); demythologization of the character of femme fatale; Since the novels subjected to analysis range from the 60’s to the 80’s, it will be shown that the authors and their heroines approach the issue of women’s submissiveness more frequently and more decisively with an intention of subverting such notions as that “women could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity” (Friedan 15).

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