they had a man to support them they should direct their energies to the proper sphere of interest for their sex. I cannot think of a single detective story written by a woman in the 1930s which features a woman lawyer, a woman surgeon, a woman politician, or indeed a woman in any real position of political or economic power.
One notable exception to the way in which women were perceived as wives, mothers, useful little helpmeets such as stenographers and secretaries,is Margery Allingham’s Lady Amanda Fit-ton. Another Allingham heroine who has a professional job is Val Ferris, Albert Campion’s sister, who has been unhappily married but now works singlemindedly to establish herself as a leading dress designer. She and the actress Georgia are in love with the same man, and the book
The Fashion in Shrouds
explores the emotional pressures on women who dedicate themselves to a career but also want fulfilment in their emotional lives, a problem which is also one of the themes of Dorothy L. Sayers’s
Gaudy Night
. Val and Georgia are described in the novel as “two fine ladies of the modern world,” but both are aware of their inner dissatisfaction as they drive home alone to their bijoux, hard-earned houses. The novelist says: “Their several responsibilities are far heavier than most men’s and their abilities greater,” but their femininity—“femininity unprotected from itself”—is presented as “a weakness, not a strength.” And when Alan, Val’s future husband, proposes to her, he sets out his terms unambiguously. He wants to take “full responsibility” for Val, including financial responsibility, and expects in turn that she will yield to him “your independence, the enthusiasm which you give your career, your time and your thought.” Shedoes this almost with a sigh of relief. It is very difficult to imagine a modern writer of detective stories, particularly a woman, thinking that this is a satisfactory solution to Val’s dilemma. It is even more difficult to imagine a modern female reader tolerating such blatant misogyny.
Ngaio Marsh is also of her age in the ingenuity of her methods of murder, and surprisingly ruthless and robust in her despatch of victims. In
Died in the Wool
, set in a sheep station, Florence Rubrick is stunned and then suffocated in a bale of wool. The victim in
Off with His Head
is decapitated. In
Scales of Justice
, Colonel Carterette, after being struck on the temple, is killed by the point of a shooting-stick which the killer actually sits on to push it home. She knew too the importance to a novel of the heart-stopping moment when the body is discovered. In
Clutch of Constables
we share Troy’s horror as she looks down at the body of Hazel Rickerby-Carrick bobbing and bumping against the starboard side of the river steamer, “idiotically bloated, her mouth drawn into an outlandish rictus grinning through discoloured foam.” Death is never glamorised nor trivialised by Ngaio Marsh.
If Ngaio Marsh worked largely within the conventions of the detective novel of her age, inwhich way did she transcend these conventions, and transcend them so successfully that her novels are still read with pleasure while so many of her contemporaries are only named in the reference books of crime? Firstly I suggest it lay in her power of characterisation, not only in the sensitive and attractive portrayal of Alleyn and his wife, Troy, but in the rich variety of characters who people her thirty-two novels. Her eccentrics are never caricatures. I remember particularly the president, The Boomer, in
Black as He’s Painted
, poor deluded Florence Rubrick in
Died in the Wool
, Nurse Kettle in
Scales of Justice
, the distinctive Maori Rua Te Kahu in
Colour Scheme
, the Lamprey family depicted in
A Surfeit of Lampreys
with love but with insight and honesty. It is because in a Ngaio Marsh novel we can believe in the people and enter for our comfort and entertainment into a real world inhabited by
One notable exception to the way in which women were perceived as wives, mothers, useful little helpmeets such as stenographers and secretaries,is Margery Allingham’s Lady Amanda Fit-ton. Another Allingham heroine who has a professional job is Val Ferris, Albert Campion’s sister, who has been unhappily married but now works singlemindedly to establish herself as a leading dress designer. She and the actress Georgia are in love with the same man, and the book
The Fashion in Shrouds
explores the emotional pressures on women who dedicate themselves to a career but also want fulfilment in their emotional lives, a problem which is also one of the themes of Dorothy L. Sayers’s
Gaudy Night
. Val and Georgia are described in the novel as “two fine ladies of the modern world,” but both are aware of their inner dissatisfaction as they drive home alone to their bijoux, hard-earned houses. The novelist says: “Their several responsibilities are far heavier than most men’s and their abilities greater,” but their femininity—“femininity unprotected from itself”—is presented as “a weakness, not a strength.” And when Alan, Val’s future husband, proposes to her, he sets out his terms unambiguously. He wants to take “full responsibility” for Val, including financial responsibility, and expects in turn that she will yield to him “your independence, the enthusiasm which you give your career, your time and your thought.” Shedoes this almost with a sigh of relief. It is very difficult to imagine a modern writer of detective stories, particularly a woman, thinking that this is a satisfactory solution to Val’s dilemma. It is even more difficult to imagine a modern female reader tolerating such blatant misogyny.
Ngaio Marsh is also of her age in the ingenuity of her methods of murder, and surprisingly ruthless and robust in her despatch of victims. In
Died in the Wool
, set in a sheep station, Florence Rubrick is stunned and then suffocated in a bale of wool. The victim in
Off with His Head
is decapitated. In
Scales of Justice
, Colonel Carterette, after being struck on the temple, is killed by the point of a shooting-stick which the killer actually sits on to push it home. She knew too the importance to a novel of the heart-stopping moment when the body is discovered. In
Clutch of Constables
we share Troy’s horror as she looks down at the body of Hazel Rickerby-Carrick bobbing and bumping against the starboard side of the river steamer, “idiotically bloated, her mouth drawn into an outlandish rictus grinning through discoloured foam.” Death is never glamorised nor trivialised by Ngaio Marsh.
If Ngaio Marsh worked largely within the conventions of the detective novel of her age, inwhich way did she transcend these conventions, and transcend them so successfully that her novels are still read with pleasure while so many of her contemporaries are only named in the reference books of crime? Firstly I suggest it lay in her power of characterisation, not only in the sensitive and attractive portrayal of Alleyn and his wife, Troy, but in the rich variety of characters who people her thirty-two novels. Her eccentrics are never caricatures. I remember particularly the president, The Boomer, in
Black as He’s Painted
, poor deluded Florence Rubrick in
Died in the Wool
, Nurse Kettle in
Scales of Justice
, the distinctive Maori Rua Te Kahu in
Colour Scheme
, the Lamprey family depicted in
A Surfeit of Lampreys
with love but with insight and honesty. It is because in a Ngaio Marsh novel we can believe in the people and enter for our comfort and entertainment into a real world inhabited by
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