Sherlocking One’s Way into Empathetic and Generic (Re)birth: (In)quests of Mourning in Penelope Lively’s The Photograph (2003)

Abstract

In Penelope Lively’s The Photograph, the protagonist, Glyn, discovers an old photograph which proves that his late wife Kath committed adultery years before she killed herself. As Kath becomes the accused party, Lively both exploits and subverts the formulaic structure of a Sherlock Holmes crime-solving adventure for her novel’s inquiry into an uncertain past. However, the reviving of the detective story genre, taken out of its 19th-century context, seems to take a metaphorical and elegiac turn. While the investigation is off to a reason-oriented start, the characters gradually come to a posthumous empathetic understanding of Kath which also resurrects her ghost and memory. As the investigation appears to mirror a process of delayed mourning, the revival of the detective-story form thus leads to a return to life and ethical (re)birth for its grieving characters, which offers the prospect of elucidating the mystery behind Kath’s life and suicide.