UVM Theses and Dissertations
Format:
Print
Author:
Murphy, Kiley
Dept./Program:
English
Year:
2013
Degree:
M.A.
Abstract:
We are seeing a reverse in society. Betty Friedan argued that women were unhappy seeing themselves as destined to only be housewives and mothers, but now it seems that women are leaving their professions and returning to the home. We see this in the detective fiction of Dianne Mott Davidson, Joanne Fluke and Susan Wittig Albert. I would focus on how the female amateur sleuths in these works are redefining the domestic. Each of the female characters, except for Goldy in Dianne Mott Davidson's Catering Series, are coming back to the home from working in a professional setting, such as a law firm or college After making the decision to go home that food is the gateway to the protagonists staying in the domestic and making a business out of it.
China Bayles, in the Herbalist Mysteries, was a criminal lawyer when she decided to leave and go home and do what she always loved, growing plants, specifically herbs. She turned her love of gardening in to a shop in the murderous town of Pecan Springs, TX. In this light they are still keeping their professionalism, but through something that has been viewed as the domestic. From there I would like to include Anthony Bourdain's fiction to show the difference between the "cozy" culinary jobs that the progatonists have, such as baking, and the professional kitchen. Bourdain's female chefs I'm also thinking of looking into how the professional kitchen became a male dominated sphere, where as the home kitchen remains prodominately female. In addition to that I want to look gender and sleuthing and how normally that is a man's profession and if there is a female sleuth the crime remains in the domestic.
China Bayles, in the Herbalist Mysteries, was a criminal lawyer when she decided to leave and go home and do what she always loved, growing plants, specifically herbs. She turned her love of gardening in to a shop in the murderous town of Pecan Springs, TX. In this light they are still keeping their professionalism, but through something that has been viewed as the domestic. From there I would like to include Anthony Bourdain's fiction to show the difference between the "cozy" culinary jobs that the progatonists have, such as baking, and the professional kitchen. Bourdain's female chefs I'm also thinking of looking into how the professional kitchen became a male dominated sphere, where as the home kitchen remains prodominately female. In addition to that I want to look gender and sleuthing and how normally that is a man's profession and if there is a female sleuth the crime remains in the domestic.