Kerry wrote:
> The strong women in
> Chandler's books, and
> Maltese Falcon and Spillane's yarns were
either
> femme fatales or overlooked.
Part of the problem is that Chandler has become so closely
identified with the private eye genre that he's become the
whipping boy for all the excesses perpetrated by lesser
writers (not to mention a million bad movies and television
shows) in the genre. I see more variety in his women
characters than some of you do. "Chandler's women are
complex, some venal, some drunk, some sex cats, some
gallant," no less an authority on the evil that men do than
Sara Paretsky admits
(mind you, she's read all the books). The same could be said
of Hammett and of many of the other writers of the thirties
and forties
(by the way, THE BIG SLEEP was published in 1939, not the
fifties).
Of course, it's true that in some of the books, she
continues, "the seductress... is at the root of the trouble,"
but so what? In some of the books, she isn't. And most of the
men Marlowe encounters are no prizes, either.
Does this make Marlowe or Chandler necessarily sexist or
misogynist? If so, the same criticism could be directed at
Paretsky herself, whose own books are full of dangerous bad
men, who just happen to have sex drives, and good men who are
essentially dickless (the elderly neighbour, the priest,
etc.).
Both V.I. and Marlowe view the opposite gender with what
amounts to sexual suspicion, and indeed, it's a riff that
runs right through the genre, on both sides of the
chromosome. But in this context, sex is just another
temptation, like money or power. So are V.I. and Phil prudes,
or just prudent? Does Marlowe kicking that flake Carmen out
of his bed make him a misogynist? That's like saying his
refusal to take a bribe makes him into an anti-capitalist or
an anarchist.
Hell, I'd have to be a lot drunker than Marlowe was to boink
Carmen, myself. And I like women. But by that point in the
book, it was pretty obvious that that girl just weren't
right.
And what the hell's a sex cat?
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