Darcey Lovell, English Department
April 2, 2025, 1pm
Hoffman Room, Swan Hall and Livestreamed

Lovell’s talk seeks to examine the early development and publication of detective fiction that features female detective characters, to investigate how the character of the “lady detective” developed at a time when the roles and expectations of women were shifting amid a rapidly changing world. Lovell will consider the depiction and treatment of female detective characters and their bodies in the texts – including their treatment in comparison to male detective characters of the time and in relation to their real-world female counterparts. In the sensation novels and other fiction that worked as precursors and early explorations of detective fiction, female characters were often depicted as the virtuous “angel of the house” or as femme fatale villains, as well as being the victims of the crimes to be solved by the detectives (with the primary function of simply being a body). In each of these roles, female characters and their bodies receive different treatment depending on the function of their roles – from how they are described and perceived to how they are able to act in their roles as investigators. Female detective characters were able to operate differently from other women in these texts, in different spaces and spheres, and they had particular ways of navigating social conventions of the time. By examining these texts and their depiction of female detective characters in the context of the social and cultural developments occurring during the Victorian era and at the beginning of the twentieth century, Lovell’s work aims to consider detective fiction featuring female protagonists as important both to the development of the detective genre and to changing social perceptions of boundaries of space and place applying to women at the time.

This presentation encompasses Lovell’s primary line of inquiry for the dissertation project that she is currently working on. For the presentation, Lovell will be considering the development of her central argument and the consideration of early female detective characters in the Victorian era and long nineteenth century.