From Brighton to Bombay: Mobility and the Nineteenth-Century Female Detective

从布莱顿到孟买：流动性与十九世纪女侦探

• 批准号: 2749602
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of St Andrews
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2749602
• 关键词: Brighton; Bombay; Mobility; Nineteenth; Century

Introduction: Historical Background This project examines the emergence of the fictional female detective in mid-nineteenth-century Britain in the context of the transport revolution and other technologies of mobility engendered by large-scale industrialization. In this period the railways transformed the landscape and the very "speed of movement" of human life, standardizing notions of time and activity and becoming synonymous for the next century with progress and "ultra-modernity" (Hobsbawm 153-4). This "circulatory ferment" spilled over into the publishing industry (Freeman 22). The audience's demand for sensation and intellectual engagement was instrumental in the creation of the first literary "petticoated policewom(e)n," Mrs Paschal and Mrs Gladden, in 1864. Although Laura Marcus has commented on the intimate connection between the arrival of the railways and "the new form of the detective novel" (viii), the relationship between female detectives, local and global transport networks, and literary circulation has yet to be fully charted. By looking at 9 English and 4 Bangla texts, from 1863 to 1910, my project will argue that the construction of these fictitious heroines was closely linked to Victorian cultures of mobility. This dissertation will therefore offer a detailed examination of the presence of the fictional sleuth in Britain and in British territories overseas. Given contemporaneous developments in urbanization and police procedures, the popular press in Britain, Australia and India (particularly Bengal) becomes a valuable source for a synchronic reading of the three locations, making the female detective an important conduit for tracing shifts in the domestic and colonial ideologies in these territories as well as in Britain.Research Questions and Critical Survey Although the female detective has received considerable critical attention, foundational critical responses have tended to view the genre's earliest exemplars in a simplistic fashion. More recent scholarship has added a new dimension to the figure of the female detective, historicizing its connection to nascent feminist movements and expanding print markets by scrutinizing the radical potential of the female gaze (Kestner) and the influence of magazines such as The Strand (Clarke). My project builds on this previous work, but goes beyond it by delineating the significance of the female detective both as a representation of female autonomy across the British empire and as gendering the occupation and traversal of national and international spaces, in addition to shedding light on certain aspects of the import of British goods, texts, and technologies into colonies. In these ways, it traces the impact of the global on the national and of the national on the global. Thus, Brighton to Bombay explores the relationship between mobility, women, and detective fiction from a new angle, by posing the following research questions within three larger arcs of gender, class, and race: 1) How did transport technologies facilitate distinctive modes of reading, and what role did they play in the birth of the fictional female detective? How did these narratives develop new forms of female identity and interiority premised on mobility? 2) As these texts and characters crossed international lines, how were they transformed in combination (or tension) with developing transnational print networks and mediatized cultures? 3) How far did the fictional figure of the female detective engage with the professional and migratory opportunities of actual women of different classes involved in forms of detection, from London, through Ballarat, to Bombay/Mumbai?

导言：历史背景本项目考察了19世纪中期英国虚构的女侦探在大规模工业化所产生的交通革命和其他流动技术的背景下的出现。在这一时期，铁路改变了人类生活的面貌和“移动的速度”，规范了时间和活动的概念，并成为下个世纪进步和“超现代性”的代名词(霍布斯鲍姆153-4)。这种“循环发酵”蔓延到了出版业(弗里曼22)。观众对轰动和智力参与的需求在1864年创造了第一部文学作品--《帕斯卡尔夫人和格拉登夫人》。尽管劳拉·马库斯评论了铁路的到来与“侦探小说的新形式”之间的密切联系(Viii)，但女性侦探、当地和全球交通网络以及文学传播之间的关系还没有完全被绘制出来。通过研究从1863年到1910年的9个英语文本和4个孟加拉文本，我的项目将论证这些虚构的女主人公的构建与维多利亚时代的流动文化密切相关。因此，本论文将对虚构的侦探在英国和英国海外领土上的存在进行详细的考察。考虑到城市化和警察程序的同时发展，英国、澳大利亚和印度(特别是孟加拉)的大众媒体成为同步阅读这三个地点的宝贵来源，使女侦探成为追踪这些地区和英国国内和殖民意识形态变化的重要渠道。研究问题和评论调查尽管女侦探受到了相当大的批判性关注，但基础性的批判性回应往往以简单化的方式看待这一流派的最早范例。最近的学术研究为女侦探的形象增添了一个新的维度，通过仔细研究女性凝视的激进潜力(凯斯特纳)和杂志的影响力(如《Strand》(克拉克))，对其与新兴女权运动的联系进行了历史化处理，并扩大了印刷市场。我的项目建立在以前工作的基础上，但超越了它，描绘了女侦探作为整个大英帝国女性自治的代表以及作为对国家和国际空间的占领和穿越的性别的重要性，此外还揭示了英国商品、文本和技术进入殖民地的某些方面。通过这些方式，它追溯了全球对国家的影响以及国家对全球的影响。因此，《从布莱顿到孟买》从一个新的角度探讨了流动性、女性和侦探小说之间的关系，在性别、阶级和种族的三个更大的弧线内提出了以下研究问题：1)交通技术是如何促进独特的阅读模式的，它们在虚构的女侦探的诞生中扮演了什么角色？这些叙事是如何发展出以流动性为前提的女性身份和内在特征的新形式的？2)当这些文本和人物跨越国际界线时，它们是如何在发展中的跨国印刷网络和媒介文化的组合(或紧张)中转变的？3)从伦敦、巴拉拉特到孟买，虚构的女侦探形象在多大程度上参与到了不同阶层的真实女性的职业和移民机会中？