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Popular Culture Review
for their husbands, families, and to some extent - in supporting functions - for
their communities. Feminists have often commented on this dichotomy: on the
one hand feminism encourages women to focus on their individual goals and de
sires; on the other hand, feminism has also highly valued the importance of com
munity: the women’s movement itself, of course, is rooted in the importance of
collective action within communities of women. But community has also been
valued in other forms, and the influence of feminism can now be seen in a variety
of living and discourse communities: an increased emphasis on collaboration in
classrooms and workplaces (work and learning communities), the renewed impor
tance of ethnic, neighborhood, church communities, etc. - all of these counter the
American tradition of individualism. In other words, feminism has worked in two
directions at the same time: encouraging women to pursue traditionally male ac
tivities, and re-valuing traditional female characteristics, such as relationships and
connections with others.
In the area of mystery and detection, the male detective - especially in hardboiled detective fiction - has traditionally been a loner and individualist, emotion
ally and financially independent, usually solving the crime single-handedly or per
haps with a sidekick or buddy. Women in these texts often play the role of the
femme fatale, in some cases even luring the detective hero into a sexual relation
ship, before he notices, in time, that she is implicated in the crime he investigates.
Instead of challenging the detective’s power and professionalism, as Patricia Johnson
argues, this scenario actually underscores his heroism, because “First, the femme
fatale is granted a Circe-like power over men, relieving them of responsibility for
their actions, and second, the man who can break the grip of that power, like Ulysses,
is granted an heroic status” (99). Despite his individualism, the traditional male
detective does combine aspects of both the official and the outlaw hero: after all,
he puts criminals behind bars - and, even if he sometimes takes the law into his
own hand, ultimately works on the side of law, order and the community. It is
interesting to examine what happens to this outlaw/official hero combination once
the detective becomes female; and indeed, the female hard-boiled detective, such
as Kinsey Millhone or V.I. Warshawski, has received much critical and popular
attention. Opinions among feminists are divided: some argue that the qualities of
the hard-boiled detective run counter to both feminism and humanism (Johnson
98), while others see a subversive element in these writers’ attempts to re-energize
and re-write the traditional formula.
My concern here is not the female hard-boiled detective, however - it is the
female academic detective, who generally has more in common with “cozy” than
with hard-boiled detectives, but who raises the question of individual versus com
munity in other interesting ways. These amateur detectives are professors or col
lege teachers, usually feminists, whose research is not only academic, but also