The Web of Iniquity

Catherine Ross Nickerson

ISBN 10: 0822322714 / ISBN 13: 9780822322719

Published by Duke University Press, 1999

About this Item

: Sumérgete en el fascinante mundo de la ficción detectivesca de la posguerra civil estadounidense, escrita principalmente por mujeres. Esta obra analiza la relación entre este género y otras formas de ficción sentimental y doméstica, ofreciendo una perspectiva única sobre la literatura del siglo XIX. Descubre cómo estas autoras pioneras abordaron el misterio y el suspense en sus relatos. EAN: 9780822322719 Tipo: Libros Categoría: Literatura y Ficción Título: The Web of Iniquity Autor: Catherine Ross Nickerson Editorial: Duke University Press Idioma: en Páginas: 275 Formato: tapa blanda.

Seller Inventory # Happ-2026-02-24-81768e34

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Web of Iniquity
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822322714
• ISBN 13: 9780822322719
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Muy bueno

About this title

Synopsis

The Web of Iniquity is a study of detective fiction written by American women between the Civil War and World War II. Refuting the idea that no American detective fiction of substance was produced between the times of Edgar Allan Poe and Dashiell Hammett, Catherine Ross Nickerson shows how these women writers blended Gothic elements into domestic fiction to create a unique and all-but-ignored subgenre that she labels “domestic detective fiction.”
This subgenre allowed women writers to participate in postbellum culture and to critique other aspects of a rapidly changing society. Domestic detective fiction combined elements of sensationalist papers, popular nonfiction crime stories, and the domestic novel. Nickerson shows how it also incorporated the gothic tropes found in the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and Charlotte Brontë and influenced the work of Pauline Hopkins. Mid-nineteenth-century writer Metta Fuller Victor, who represented such important areas of cultural conflict as the role of professions in the formation of class identity and the possibility of women's independence and self-determination, paved the way for the appearance of women detectives in the late-nineteenth-century fiction of Anna Katharine Green. Nickerson credits Mary Roberts Rinehart, in particular, for bringing sophistication to the subgenre by amplifying the humorous, terrifying, and feminist elements inherent in earlier detective novels by women. Throughout the volume, Nickerson focuses on the narrative qualities of the domestic novel tradition and the ways in which it reflected ideologies of domesticity and gender. Also included are a discussion of various rewritings of the Lizzie Borden scandal in this tradition and an afterword on the relation of domestic detective fiction to the hard-boiled style.
The Web of Iniquity places the detective fiction written by women between 1850 and 1940 into ongoing discussions regarding women, culture, and literature and will appeal to scholars and students of women's studies, American studies, and literary history.

About the Author

Catherine Ross Nickerson is Associate Professor of American Studies and English at Emory University.