Poisoners, larcenists, and the mad chambermaid: Villainy in late Victorian detective fiction【翻译】

ABSTRACT
This thesis seeks to identify patterns of villainy in late nineteenth-century detective
fiction in order to examine middle class conceptions of criminality and the way those models
reflect the values of Victorian society. Through a study of more than sixty pieces of short
detective fiction, this study identifies and focuses on six primary categories: the visual depiction
of the criminal, the criminal class, the jewelry heist, the colonial subject, the violent female
offender, and the domestic villain. The creation of each criminal category and the reinforcement
of that “type” in popular literature functions to establish order and to support beliefs crucial to
Victorian middle class identity and authority. Yet as each story attempts to validate and
reproduce this identity, each criminal simultaneously expresses anxiety about defects in that
culture and about a denial of responsibility in growing social problems and Imperial practices.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract……………………..…………..……………………………...………………..……...ii
Chapter One: Introduction and Background……………………………..……………..……....1
Chapter Two: The Suspicious Hair and the Tell-Tale Hat: Reading the
Visual Villain……………..………………….……………..……..………………...….12
Chapter Three: The Murderous Cook and the Confidence Man: Class and
Criminality…………………………………………………………………………….30
Chapter Four: The Missing Diamonds and the Obnoxious Heiress: The
Jewelry Heist……………………………………………………………………...…...51
Chapter Five: The Ghost of Napoleon and the Snake Charmer: Nationalist and Colonialist
Perspectives in Villainy.......................................................................................................…....66
Chapter Six: The Mad Chambermaid and the Vengeful Wife: Lethal Women
and the Domestic Space……………………………….………...………………...…93
Chapter Seven: The Scheming Husband and the Poison Prescription: Household Crime,
Sensation Fiction, and the Domestic Villain……………………...……..……………116
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..…….135
Works Cited………………………………………………………………...………..………139
Works Consulted…………………………………………………………………….………145
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1 Names, Numbering, and Definitions of the Faculties………………..16
2 Portraits……………………………………………………………..18
3 Imperial Federation “Map of the World”………………………….... 69

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