Resituate, Reimagine and Repair: The Lock novella trilogy as an intervention in historical crime fiction

Abstract

This PhD thesis consists of two parts: creative writing and a critical commentary, exploring the role of women between 1870 and 1920, particularly marginalised women whose lives are often missing from the records. The thesis examines how feminist historical crime fiction in a novella series can help to resituate some of the most hyper-visible bodies of the period in a broader gendered context, lend itself to a feminist reimagining of the position of women and repair the narrative damage done to such women. The creative writing element comprises three historical crime fiction novellas set in Scotland, featuring three generations of women. Each novella explores aspects of male violence against women on an individual level and an institutional level, considering power imbalances, structural inequalities and overcoming the marginalisation of women’s experiences. The critical commentary is split into three main themes which relate to the creative work and draw on relevant examples from both fiction and non-fiction: historical fiction as a genre, specifically the relationship between history and fiction and the concept of ‘poignant trivia’; crime fiction as a genre, focussing on feminist and/or historical crime fiction, and considering resolution and closure, seriality, the detective function, communitas and the idea of the beautiful dead woman; and form and function, looking at the novella form, as well as voice and progression of narrative point of view. My original contribution to knowledge is not only the fiction itself, which provides an entertaining, accessible and publishable read, but also the discourses in the creative work which have been conceptualised and explored in the critical element: the articulation of the concepts of poignant trivia and communitas in questions of genre and representation, and the possibilities a novella series affords in terms of progression of character, plot and voice, while reflecting the gaps in the archives.