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The IUP Journal of English Studies

Appropriating a Hostile Genre: Feminist Concerns in Contemporary Indian Women's Crime Fiction

Article Details

Pub. Date	: June, 2022
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of English Studies
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJES130622
Author Name	:Febin Vijay and Priyanka Tripathi
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Arts & Humanities
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 16

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Abstract

A meticulous glance at the history of crime fiction reflects that the genre has gained its strength by insidiously planting and nurturing masculine heritage. However, this study negates the idea that the genre of Indian crime fiction is essentially a male domain by primarily exploring the ways in which the genre has been appropriated by some of the contemporary female writers in deliberating upon issues related to gender within the Indian context. The way in which women writers have reworked on the conventional image of the sleuth, thereby using the genre as a vehicle for subversion against the crimes to which women are constantly subjected, forms a major part of this article, which includes a detailed analysis of Deepanjana Pal's Hush a Bye Baby: The Cradle will Fall, and Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill.

Introduction

In the entire history of crime fiction, masculine heritage dominated the genre. Some of the central characteristics of the genre include, "violence of language and action of the private eye, [...] extensive male chauvinistic traditions of description, attitude and behavior, as well as the complacent acceptance of a patriarchal order [...]" (Knight 2004, 163). Until the twentieth century, detective fiction comprised male protagonists as well as villains, with marginalized female characters who are presented either as being in trouble or in need of help or as seductresses, but never as the ones possessing any sort of real power. As Wollstonecraft opines, "Novels, music, poetry, and gallantry, all tend to make women the creatures of sensation, and their character is thus, formed in the mould of folly" (Wollstonecraft 1992, 61).