Criminal Femmes Fatales in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction [electronic resource] /
Jaber, Maysaa Husam.author.
This book fills a gap in both literary and feminist scholarship by offering the first major study of femme fatales in hardboiled crime fiction. Maysaa Jaber shows that the criminal literary figures in the genre open up powerful spaces for imagining female agency in direct opposition to the constraining forces of patriarchy and misogyny.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1 The " Mad-Bad" Criminal Woman; Part I: Pre-War Criminal Femmes Fatales; 2 Narratives of the Underworld: Violence and Dangerous Femininity in Dashiell Hammett's Labyrinthine Criminal World; 3 Narratives of Detection: Femme Fatality and the Detective "Hero" in Raymond Chandler's Fiction; 4 Narratives of Seduction: The Criminal Femme Fatale and the "Forbidden Box" in James M. Cain; Part II: Post-War Criminal Femmes Fatales; 5 Crime, Sex, and Paranoia in Post-War Hardboiled Paperbacks; 6 The Duality of David Goodis's Criminal Femmes Fatales
7 Mickey Spillane's C riminal Femmes Fatales and the Cold War Vendetta Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
This book fills a gap in both literary and feminist scholarship by offering the first major study of femme fatales in hardboiled crime fiction. Maysaa Jaber shows that the criminal literary figures in the genre open up powerful spaces for imagining female agency in direct opposition to the constraining forces of patriarchy and misogyny.
Literature, Modern-20th century.
Fiction.
Sociology.
Literature-Philosophy.
Culture-Study and teaching.
America-Literatures.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Fiction.
Gender Studies.
Literary Theory.
Cultural Theory.
North American Literature.