Re-shaping crime fiction in Alison Taylor's 'Simeon's Bride'

Catherine Phelps

doi:10.18573/ipics.28

Abstract

Crime fiction is a genre bound by strict laws and conventions. Early literary commentary often focused on analysing these rules and classifying it into sub-genres. The strict patterns and structures of crime fiction are reflected in the work of the narratives themselves, which, with the detection and punishment of those who transgress society’s rules, seek to re-establish order on the world. As such, crime fiction has been described as a masculine genre, despite its increasing female authorship, for it supports and restores a patriarchal world after the anarchistic act of crime. Nevertheless, there are some interesting developments appearing in crime fiction which challenge conventional structures. This paper proposes that Alison Taylor’s Simeon’s Bride uses themes from an older genre, the Female Gothic, to create a new hybridised genre in which gender constructs are challenged and subverted, and, in doing so, moves crime fiction away from its masculine strictures.

Highlights

Genre and Gender: Re-shaping Crime Fiction in Alison Taylor’s Simeon’s Bride Catherine Phelps (Cardiff University, UK). In his 1995 study of crime fiction, Marty Roth argues that the detective story is ‘classically, a masculine genre even when authored by women’,1 and that ‘gender is genre and genre is male’
I would like to examine how crime fiction came to be defined in this way, and how one author, Alison Taylor, rewrites gender roles within crime fiction through the use of another genre, the Female Gothic, and subsequently to call into question Roth’s assertion
While there are few happy marriages in Taylor’s narrative, it is this interpretation of the Female Gothic that I wish to apply to my reading as it best reflects the gender balance and values of co-operation within Simeon’s Bride

Summary

Introduction

Genre and Gender: Re-shaping Crime Fiction in Alison Taylor’s Simeon’s Bride Catherine Phelps (Cardiff University, UK). Taylor’s novel, Simeon’s Bride (1995) reintroduces certain Gothic elements, for instance the supernatural, and in doing so demonstrates the hybrid nature of crime fiction.

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Conclusion