a crazy woman and a neurotic man
Hello, Internet! I am too cranky to sleep tonight, so I am going to talk about side pairings in detective fiction.
There are undetailed mentions within of rape and emotional abuse, if that bothers people.
I was going to make a post about The Fashion in Shrouds when I first read it, because it made (makes) me want to punch holes in things, but somehow I never really got around to it until now. Turns out I am going to post about it after all, now that I have something else to compare it to.
See, I noticed a while back that Margery Allingham is pretty crap at writing pairings. I think I've read one pairing in one of her books that I really liked; Coroner's Pidgin had a couple in a contentedly unmarried long-term relationship, and part of the plot involved getting the guy out of a betrothal-of-convenience to another girl. I like a lot of things about Albert/Amanda, too, including that they carry on separate careers along with a healthy happy marriage; but the way Amanda's job seems to be an excuse to shuffle her almost entirely out of sight after they get married irks me all the same. (I guess they can be married or fight crime together but not both?) Otherwise, Plucky Man Of The Week meets Plucky Girl Of The Week, they go *_____* at each other a bit, and at the end they get engaged. It's all very similar from book to book; of the ones I've read, the only female protagonist I can think of who stays happily single (and, coincidentally or no, the only one who sticks out as a real personality) is Amanda's Aunt Hat. So, you know, that got to bugging me, but I kept on chugging along and enjoying myself.
And then I discovered I owned The Fashion in Shrouds and had never read it! So I did, and I am so sorry for it, because now I am going to have to make you guys suffer with me.
This book is drenched in casual misogny. Just drenched. There are pages and pages of narration about how women are just naturally more irrational than men, and go ~all to pieces~ when they're in love whereas men can compartmentalize properly. There is a scene where Campion's sister Valentine, of whom he is purportedly quite fond, comes to him to complain about her boyfriend throwing her over for the victim's widow and he tells her that what she needs is "a good cry or a nice rape."
a good cry or a nice rape
a good cry or a nice rape
a good cry or a nice rape
. . . excuse me, I have never wanted to do that so much in my life. It's possible the word might still, in 1939, have meant ~ravishment~ and not actual nonconsensual sex, but either way it's a horrible dismissive line and really, really not the kind of thing you can unread.
At the end, Val's boyfriend, who has been dicking her around and crawling after another man's wife all book, comes back to her! Hooray? He apologizes for making her sad! Hooray! And then he proposes to her and-- I was going to blockquote the whole thing, but it's like a page of type and makes me nauseous to reread. It pretty much goes "I know you're pissed I cheated on you, and I'm not even sorry I did it because the other woman was hot, but will you marry me? And by marry me I mean give up your job and every single scrap of independence and let me completely run your life for you starting right this instant?" The word "possession" is used.
And Valentine, who is a brilliant fashion designer and is specifically referred to as one of the most successful business owners in Europe and has until now exhibited immense common sense, goes "OMG MOST ROMANTIC THING EVER YPLZ *_________*" except, you know, in 1930s British English. And I went "What the fuck" aloud on the bus and nearly threw the book out the window.
I hate that this book exists. I hate that someone wrote it, I hate that a married woman wrote it and thought it was genuinely romantic, I hate that I ever read it, and I hate that it ruined a character and a canon I used to be really fond of. WHY DOES THIS SHIT EXIST, INTERNET.
THE GOOD NEWS IS. Shortly after that, I had my first exposure to Edmund Crispin and Gervase Fen, which I'm sorry to say was Holy Disorders. I mean, not that sorry, because after reading several more Fen novels the chapter about the guy with the pet raven is still one of my favorite scenes in any of them. But I was still really really bitter about The Fashion in Shrouds at the time and the one canon pairing-like-thing in Holy Disorders is terrible. Not as terrible as Val/Alan, but it was boring and silly and made parts of the ending stupidly obvious.
But, after having read The Moving Toyshop and Swan Song and The Case of the Gilded Fly, and starting in on Buried for Pleasure, I have come to the happy conclusion that this is actually not typical of the series. Crispin is actually really good at entertaining, idiosyncratic one-off characters; they're loosely sketched out, sure, as their position demands. But they have personalities, and their relationships have personalities-- have arguments and misunderstandings and reconciliation-- so not only do I not mind them, I actually find them really endearing. I even love the chapter in Gilded Fly in which three or four pairs of characters get engaged in immediate succession, because the scenes all go so completely differently.(And in Buried for Pleasure, two characters have done absolutely nothing but argue vehemently about politics for years, and then all of a sudden Diana goes ROBERT WOULD YOU JUST KISS ME ALREADY and five minutes later they're engaged. Despite my rage at Val/Alan, this is the main reason for this post. ♥)
And then, and then, the ladies who were previously independent career women GET TO KEEP THEIR JOBS AND THEIR MEN. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS I CAN'T EVEN
I mean, Crispin is somewhat faily. Everyone is somewhat faily. Even Dorothy Sayers was sometimes faily, and I worship her incredibly. But this one thing in Crispin's writing really, really makes me happy.
Currently reading, BTW:
Edmund Crispin- Buried for Pleasure (for, well, pleasure)
Alkarim Jivani- It's Not Unusual (for fanfic research)
Nancy Caldwell Sorel- The Women Who Wrote The War (for fic research, but *_________*)
There are undetailed mentions within of rape and emotional abuse, if that bothers people.
I was going to make a post about The Fashion in Shrouds when I first read it, because it made (makes) me want to punch holes in things, but somehow I never really got around to it until now. Turns out I am going to post about it after all, now that I have something else to compare it to.
See, I noticed a while back that Margery Allingham is pretty crap at writing pairings. I think I've read one pairing in one of her books that I really liked; Coroner's Pidgin had a couple in a contentedly unmarried long-term relationship, and part of the plot involved getting the guy out of a betrothal-of-convenience to another girl. I like a lot of things about Albert/Amanda, too, including that they carry on separate careers along with a healthy happy marriage; but the way Amanda's job seems to be an excuse to shuffle her almost entirely out of sight after they get married irks me all the same. (I guess they can be married or fight crime together but not both?) Otherwise, Plucky Man Of The Week meets Plucky Girl Of The Week, they go *_____* at each other a bit, and at the end they get engaged. It's all very similar from book to book; of the ones I've read, the only female protagonist I can think of who stays happily single (and, coincidentally or no, the only one who sticks out as a real personality) is Amanda's Aunt Hat. So, you know, that got to bugging me, but I kept on chugging along and enjoying myself.
And then I discovered I owned The Fashion in Shrouds and had never read it! So I did, and I am so sorry for it, because now I am going to have to make you guys suffer with me.
This book is drenched in casual misogny. Just drenched. There are pages and pages of narration about how women are just naturally more irrational than men, and go ~all to pieces~ when they're in love whereas men can compartmentalize properly. There is a scene where Campion's sister Valentine, of whom he is purportedly quite fond, comes to him to complain about her boyfriend throwing her over for the victim's widow and he tells her that what she needs is "a good cry or a nice rape."
a good cry or a nice rape
a good cry or a nice rape
a good cry or a nice rape
. . . excuse me, I have never wanted to do that so much in my life. It's possible the word might still, in 1939, have meant ~ravishment~ and not actual nonconsensual sex, but either way it's a horrible dismissive line and really, really not the kind of thing you can unread.
At the end, Val's boyfriend, who has been dicking her around and crawling after another man's wife all book, comes back to her! Hooray? He apologizes for making her sad! Hooray! And then he proposes to her and-- I was going to blockquote the whole thing, but it's like a page of type and makes me nauseous to reread. It pretty much goes "I know you're pissed I cheated on you, and I'm not even sorry I did it because the other woman was hot, but will you marry me? And by marry me I mean give up your job and every single scrap of independence and let me completely run your life for you starting right this instant?" The word "possession" is used.
And Valentine, who is a brilliant fashion designer and is specifically referred to as one of the most successful business owners in Europe and has until now exhibited immense common sense, goes "OMG MOST ROMANTIC THING EVER YPLZ *_________*" except, you know, in 1930s British English. And I went "What the fuck" aloud on the bus and nearly threw the book out the window.
I hate that this book exists. I hate that someone wrote it, I hate that a married woman wrote it and thought it was genuinely romantic, I hate that I ever read it, and I hate that it ruined a character and a canon I used to be really fond of. WHY DOES THIS SHIT EXIST, INTERNET.
THE GOOD NEWS IS. Shortly after that, I had my first exposure to Edmund Crispin and Gervase Fen, which I'm sorry to say was Holy Disorders. I mean, not that sorry, because after reading several more Fen novels the chapter about the guy with the pet raven is still one of my favorite scenes in any of them. But I was still really really bitter about The Fashion in Shrouds at the time and the one canon pairing-like-thing in Holy Disorders is terrible. Not as terrible as Val/Alan, but it was boring and silly and made parts of the ending stupidly obvious.
But, after having read The Moving Toyshop and Swan Song and The Case of the Gilded Fly, and starting in on Buried for Pleasure, I have come to the happy conclusion that this is actually not typical of the series. Crispin is actually really good at entertaining, idiosyncratic one-off characters; they're loosely sketched out, sure, as their position demands. But they have personalities, and their relationships have personalities-- have arguments and misunderstandings and reconciliation-- so not only do I not mind them, I actually find them really endearing. I even love the chapter in Gilded Fly in which three or four pairs of characters get engaged in immediate succession, because the scenes all go so completely differently.(And in Buried for Pleasure, two characters have done absolutely nothing but argue vehemently about politics for years, and then all of a sudden Diana goes ROBERT WOULD YOU JUST KISS ME ALREADY and five minutes later they're engaged. Despite my rage at Val/Alan, this is the main reason for this post. ♥)
And then, and then, the ladies who were previously independent career women GET TO KEEP THEIR JOBS AND THEIR MEN. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS I CAN'T EVEN
I mean, Crispin is somewhat faily. Everyone is somewhat faily. Even Dorothy Sayers was sometimes faily, and I worship her incredibly. But this one thing in Crispin's writing really, really makes me happy.
Currently reading, BTW:
Edmund Crispin- Buried for Pleasure (for, well, pleasure)
Alkarim Jivani- It's Not Unusual (for fanfic research)
Nancy Caldwell Sorel- The Women Who Wrote The War (for fic research, but *_________*)