Winter Mini-term: Syllabus for Women’s Detective Fiction: OLLI at Mason

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at George Mason University
Day: Tuesday mornings, 11:50 am -1:15 pm,
Jan 23 – Feb 13
4 sessions On-line (location of building housing the office: 4210 Roberts Road, Fairfax, Va, Tallwood)
Dr Ellen Moody

Pushkin Press, 2022 reprint

Women in and Writing Detective Fiction (a continuation of The Heroine’s Journey)

We will explore the genre of detective stories of the mystery-thriller type from the angle of the woman writer, detective, victim & murderer: our three books will be two classics of the 1930s, and one from 40s years later which in many outward conventions continues the popular and acclaimed type: Josephine Tey’s (Elizabeth MacKintosh) The Daughter of Time (a deconstruction of the history of the stories of mysteries concerning a 15th century British king, Richard III); Dorothy Sayer’s Gaudy Night (set in a real early women’s college, which Sayers attended, it is also feminist academic and publishing satire & a lover story); and P.D. James’s An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (more centrally what readers expected post WW2 from a mystery-thriller, but it takes unexpected directions because the detective is a woman). We’ll also see (outside class) and discuss (in class) J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (as rewritten by Helen Edmunsen and directed by Aisling Walsh) and Robert Altman and Jerome Fellowes’s brilliantly parodic Gosford Park. This is a feminist literary history course, an outgrowth in one direction of the course I taught this past winter: The [archetypal] Heroine’s Journey

Required Texts:

Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time. This exists in many editions (as do the two books below). I have a 1988 copy of the Simon and Schuster Touchstone books, 978-0-684-80386-9; and another by Pushkin Press (a very pretty one), ISBN 978-1782278429

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, HarperCollins Bourbon book, ISBN 978-0-06-219653-8

P. D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, Scribner’s, mostly recently reprinted 2019. ISBN 978-0-7432-1955-6

Required Movies:

An Inspector Calls. Scripted Helen Edmunsen, directed Aisling Walsh, a re-do of J.B Priestley’s original play (1945), adapted into a film in 1954 (featuring Alistair Sims as “Poole” in lieu of Goole). Available at Amazon Prime, Brit-Box, Vudu, and YouTube. Also as a DVD for sale, with an interesting feature by Priestley’s son.

Gosford Park. Directed Robert Altman, scripted Julian Fellowes. Streams on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Vudu, and can be bought as a DVD with interesting features (e.g., voice-over commentary as you watch the film).

Supplementary:

There are audio readings of all three books; and you can buy the plays/scripts for the movies:

Priestley, J. B. An Inspector Calls and Other Plays. NY: Penguin, 2000 reprint of 1947 book. The script does not differ as much as one might think; what is dramatized differs.

Fellowes, Julian and Robert Altman. Gosford Park: The Shooting Script. NY: Newmarket Press, 2002.

Sophie Rundle as Eva Smith/Daisy Renton/Mrs Birling/Alice Grey confronts the “boss,” Ken Stoff as Arthur Birling, about to fire her for leading a strike (An Inspector Calls, 2015)

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion.

Jan 23: 1st week: Introduction on detective versus spy fiction, Scottish literature, Richard III. Then we discuss Josephine Tey and The Daughter of Time.

Jan 30: 2nd week: Women’s detective fiction, Agatha Christie and the 1930s. Then Dorothy Sayers and the first half of Gaudy Night. The 2015 An Inspector Calls.

Feb 6: 3rd week: Carry on with An Inspector Calls and move to the second half of Gaudy Night. The importance of the recurring detective and his or her story.

Feb 13: 4th week: The evolution of the women’s detective novel (some contemporary women writers) and P. D. James’ career. How does An Unsuitable Woman for the Job differ from our expectations. If time permits, I’ll discuss James’s sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley (her last published novel)

Gosford Park, the Manor house as first seen when cars drive up (Gosford Park, 2001)

Recommended outside reading or watching (if you want to go further):

Cavender, Gray and Nancy C. Jurik. Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect. Univ of Illinois, 2012.
Coomes, David. Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life. Illinois: Lion book, 1992.
Craig, Patricia and Mary Cadogan. The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction. NY: St Martin’s 1981. Begins with mid-19th century figures.
Gidez, Richard. P.D. James: the new queen of crime. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Necessarily does not include 2/3s of her (later) career in writing.
Hicks, Michael. Richard III: The Self-Made King. Yale Univ, 2019
James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. NY: Knopf, 2009
Hannay, Margaret P. As her whimsey took her: Critical Essays on the Fiction of Dorothy Sayers. Kent State, 1979.
Henderson, Jennifer Morag. A Life of Josephine Tey. 1988; reprint Sandstone Press, Scotland, 2015.
Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. 2nd edition. Univ of Illinois, 1995. The best single book on women’s detective fiction, with the proviso she deals only with professional police officer-detectives.
Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy Sayers: A biography: her life and soul. NY: St Martin’s, 1993.
Symons, Julian. Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History. Faber and Faber, 1972. The best of all the surveys.
Walton, Samantha. “The Scottish landscape in the crime novels of Josephine Tey,” Crimelights: Scottish Crime Fiction, Then and Now. Triet, 2014.
Worsley, Lucy. The Art of the English Murder. NY and London: Pegasus, 2014
Young, Laurel A. P.D. James: A companion to the mystery fiction. McFarland, 2017

There was a Margaret Sutton who herself wrote the Judy Bolton series (1932-67)

OLLI at AU: Autumn Syllabus: Trollope’s The Way We Live Now

David Suchet as Melmotte defying Parliament (2001, TWWLN, scripted Andrew Davies)

A fall syllabus for reading Trollope’s The Way We Live Now

Online at: https://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/2023/09/16/olli-at-au-autumn-syllabus-trollopes-the-way-we-live-now/

For a course at the Oscher LifeLong Learning Institute at American University
Day: Tuesday early afternoon, 1:45 to 3:15 pm,
F406Z Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now
10 sessions online (location of building: 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20016)
Dr Ellen Moody

To begin the process of registration go to:  https://www.olli-dc.org/

Description of Course:

We’ll read & discuss one of Trollope’s masterworks with an iconic title, The Way We Live Now. It’s a prophetic mirroring of our own era. Our aim is a close reading of this novel against the background of its own era & our own. Trollope dissects a crook financier who rises to the top of his society & wins a parliamentary election. We’ve an acutely insightful satire on literary marketplaces then (& now). The multiplot patterns includes a separated independent American widow, & a group of spirited women, whose stories bring in a host of women’s issues. We glimpse venture capitalism over railways in the southwest US, and by extension the post-colonial world. The core of this Trollope novel like are psychologically believable vividly alive characters. You could regard it as another face to other 19th century great novels (e.g., Middlemarch and Bleak House), an ethnographic milieu study. We’ll also discuss the fine 4 part serial scripted by Andrew Davies featuring David Suchet.

Required & Suggested Books:

Trollope, Anthony. The Way We Live Now, ed., introd, notes. Frances O’Gorman. NY: OxfordUP, 2016. Or
—————————————–——————————–, ed., introd, notes Frank Kermode. NY: Penguin Classics, 1994.
There is a readily available relatively inexpensive audio-recording of the novel read by Timothy West reproduced by audiobook as 2 MP3s.

There is a also a brilliant film adaptation in 4 parts, scripted by Andrew Davies, directed by David Yates. Featuring David Suchet, Cillian Murphy, Mirando Otto, Matthew Macfayden, Shirley Henderson, Anne-Marie Duff, Maxine Peake. BBC One, WBGH, 2001. Prime Video but not available in all locations. It’s on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+way+we+live+now+full+movie. You can find as a DVD for sale for $8.99 used. It used to be available on Netflix as a DVD. Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6wzlev

Cheryl Campbell as Matilda, Lady Carbury (TTWLN)

Format: The class will be a mix of informal lecture and group discussion. You don’t have to follow the specific chapters as I’ve laid them out; I divide the books to help you read them, and so we can in class be more or less in the same section of the book. This part of the syllabus depends on our class discussions and we can adjust it.

Sept 26: 1st week: Introduction: Trollope’s life and career. The context. Read for next week Chs 1-11

Oct 3rd: 2nd week: TTWLN. The immediate characters and their relationships. Read for next week Chs 12-23

Oct 10th: 3rd week: TWLLN. Wider themes of money-making and class, the literary marketplace. Read for next week Chs 24-35

Oct 17th: 4th week: TWWLN. The use of letters, places, treatments of males; the male career. Read for next week Chs 36-47.

Oct 24th: 5th week: TWWLN. The women in the novel. Their relationships with one another as well as men. We begin our discussion of the film adaptation. Why does Davies switch the presentation of the two main storylines? Read for next week, Chs 48-59; see part 1 of Davies’ TWWLN.

Oct 31st: 6th week: TWWLN. Is the book prophetic? what is relationship of our present situation to the Eurocentric colonialist past? How does the modernization of the sexual behavior of these characters affect the storyline? does it? Read for next week, Chs 60-71. Again, if possible see Part 3 of the film adaptation. If possible, see the 2nd quarter of the film adaptation (Part 1).

Nov 7th: 7th week: TWWLN. Is this a tragic book? or a satire? Why does it feel so large and rich and even global? How does Davies present the men in the film adaptation so as to make them sympathetic to modern eyes? In what ways are the women stronger in the film adaptation than the book? Read for next week, Chs 72-83. If possible, see the 3rd quarter of the film adaptation (Part 2)

Nov 14th: 8th week: TWWLN. Suicide in the 19th century. Read for next week, Chs 84-95. If possible, have seen the last part of the film adaptation (Part 3) Now having seen the film, it may strike you as alluding to modern politics. Where are some places it’s close and where is it far?

Nov 21st: 9th week: How do you feel about these endings? is the conventional nature of them go against the grain of the book or with it? Did you like the endings of the film couples better? why? Can we imagine sequels? Next week, Chs 96-end and “Christmas at Thompson Hall,” at available online at:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58558/58558-h/58558-h.htm or
https://books.google.com/books?id=2C4WAAAAYAAJ&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false

Nov 28th: 10th week: Last thoughts on TWWLN? Does Paul not really love Winifred? Why should all these people marry? Trollope’s short stories, attitudes towards Christmas, and “Christmas at Thompson Hall” .

Lionel Fawkes, “You are, I think, Miss Melmotte” (from the original illustrations to TWWLN)

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Suggested supplementary reading & handbook

Anthony Trollope, An Autobiography and Other Writings, ed, introd., notes Nicholas Shrimpton. NY: Oxford Classics, 2014
—————-. “A Walk in the Woods,” online on my website: http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/nonfiction.WalkWood.html
Gerould, Winifred Gregory and James Thayer Gerould. A Guide to Trollope: An Index to the Characters and Places, and Digests of the Plots, in All of Trollope’s Works. 1948: rpt Princeton: Princeton UP, 1987 (a paperback)

If you want to go further, some recommended outside reading:

Gates, Barbara. Victorian Suicide: Mad Crimes & Sad Histories. Princeton UP, 1998. Very readable.
Heineman, Helen. Mrs Trollope: The Triumphant Feminine in the Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio UP, 1979. This is the best of several recent books. See also Fanny Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, ed. Pamela Neville-Singleton. NY: Penguin, 1997.
Mill, John Stuart, The Subjection of Women. Broadview Press, 2000. Online at: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645s/
Green, Mark. “Trollope’s Children: Matilda Carbury,” The Trollope Jupiter, August 25, 2018. https://thetrollopejupiter.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/trollopes-women-lady-matilda-carbury/
Herbert, Christopher. Trollope and Comic Pleasure. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
McMaster, R.D. “Women in The Way We Live Now,” English Studies in Canada, 7:1 (1981):68-80.
Moody, Ellen. “On Inventing a New Country: Anthony Trollope’s Depiction of Settler Colonialism,’ Antipodes: Journal of Australian and New Zealand Literature, 31;1 (2017):89-119
————-. “Epistolarity and Masculinity in Andrew Davies’ Trollope Adaptations,” Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015. Pp 79-95
Overton, Bill. The Unofficial Trollope. NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982.
Scharnhorst, Gary. Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth Century American Journalist. Syracuse UP, 2008. See also Kate Field, Hap-Hazard. Bibliolife, 2010 (facsimile of 1883 book of essays): Ten Days in Spain. BiblioLife, 2010 (facsimilar of 1875 travel book).
Snow, C. P. Trollope: An Illustrated Biography NY: New Amsterdam Books, 1975. A fairly short well written biography, profuse with illustrations and a concise description of Trollope’s centrally appealing artistic techniques.
Steinbach, Susie. Understanding The Victorians: Culture and Society in 19th century Britain. London: Routledge, 2012.
Stone, Donald. “Trollope as a Short Story Writer,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 31:1 (1976):26-47.
Sutherland, John. Trollope at Work on The Way We Live Now,’ Nineteenth Century Fiction 37 (1982-83):472-93.
—————–. “Is Melmotte Jewish,” in Is Heathcliff a Murderer?. Oxford UP, 1996
Surridge, Lisa. Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction. Athens: Ohio UP, 2005. Includes a chapter on He Knew He Was Right.
Tanner, Tony. “Trollope’s The Way We Live Now: Its Modern Significance,” Critical Quarterly 9 (1967):256-71.
Tosh, John. Manliness and Masculinity in Nineteenth Century Britain. London: Longman, 2005.
Vicinus, Martha. Independent women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850-1930. Virago, 1985. See my summary and analysis: https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2019/01/11/martha-vicinuss-independent-women-work-community-for-single-women-1850-1930/

Cillian Murphy as Paul Montague, at Lowestoffe with Mirando Otto as Mrs Hurtle, waltzing with Paloma Baeza as Hetta Carbury at the Melmotte ball