On Saturday, April 17, Ellen presented an academic paper entitled, "Through a Magnifying Glass Darkly: Perception and Detective Fiction," at The Doors of Perception: Vision, Imagination, Perception In/To Literature, the New York College English Association (NYCEA) spring 2004 conference, held April 16 and 17 at the University at Albany in Albany, New York. |
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| Abstract of "Through a Magnifying Glass Darkly: Perception and Detective Fiction" by Ellen F. Higgins | |
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| Seeing wholly, rather than darkly, or with a limited perception, is a major theme in detective fiction. The magnifying glass is a symbol of the detective’s ability to see clearly and to examine the text of the crime in order to discover the truth. However, it makes a great difference who is holding the glass and what it is focused on. | |
| The convention of the idee fixe in detection fiction embodies the notion of the limited perception of ordinary folks or law officers (for instance, the bumbling police man). This consequently contrasts with the heightened, special, or superior imagination and perception of the detective. Traditionally, the model and the skills have been identified as male (Poe’s Dupin, Doyle’s Holmes). These super sleuths are continually pointing out the limited perception of their sidekicks or of the police and of the readers. | |
| Right seeing or perception also applies to readers, whether they be critics or students of literature. Readers are just as apt to approach a text with an idee fixe, which limits their perception, vision, and imagination of what that text has to offer. This consequently affects the reception of texts and authors, as well as the acceptance of works and detective characters into the canon, or, indeed, as even part of the same genre. In particular, the definitions of the detective and of crime fiction have worked to exclude female authors and their detectives. | |
| This paper addresses the topic of the idee fixe and of limited perception, discussing how two texts of detective fiction challenge readers to develop new ways of seeing and imagining, not only as detectives, but also as readers and critics of literature. It focuses on Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” and Carolyn Wheat’s “Crime Scene,” two short stories that I use in teaching to show how women writers expand definitions of what it means to be a detective and ultimately what constitutes detective fiction. | |
These stories, by privileging women’s lives and women’s ways of knowing, offer an alternative definition of the detective and detective fiction, effectively revising conventions of the genre. In both stories, characters who see through the traditionally male point of view are unable to solve the crime because they approach it with an idee fixe or with pre-existing assumptions. Thus they are unable to read the real clues and to identify imaginatively with the victim, to see into the person’s character and life and to imagine the (usually female) victim in her own space. More complex vision and perception is possessed by characters who embrace both male and female because they are looking through the lens wholly, rather than darkly. |