Abstract
There are many aspects of criminality dependent upon ‘performance’ and ‘theatre’ that are related to traditional notions of gender identity. Some of these are explored in this chapter through examples taken from the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries: the Victorian swellman, the Victorian female criminal, the prostitute, the mid-twentieth-century gangster and ‘hard-boiled’ women.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See, Homi Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, in Modern Literary Theory ed. P. Rice and P. Waugh (1989; rpt London: Arnold, 2001 ), p. 381.
Lynn Pykett, The Sensation Novel from The Woman in White to The Moonstone (Northcote House, in association with the British Council, 1994), p. 7.
See, for example, Barry Godfrey et al., Comparative Histories of Crime ( Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2003 ), p. 63.
See, for example, Robert Connell, Masculinities ( Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995 ), p. 45.
For a wider consideration of masculinity from a criminological perspective, see, Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries 1870–1930 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1997) and Carrabine et al., Crime in Modern Britain 29–34, 67, 76–77, 116, 117–18, 137, 139, 144.
Alison Adburgham, Shops and Shopping 1800–1914 ( London; Barrie and Jenkins, 1989 ), p. 174.
Susan Casteras, Images of Victorian Womanhood in English Art ( London and Toronto: Associated University Press, 1987 ), p. 159.
According to Dudley Edwards this aspect of Holmes may have been introduced after Doyle met with Oscar Wilde. O. Dudley Edwards, The Quest for Sherlock Holmes ( Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984 ), p. 55.
Anna Pukas, ‘Torture and Terror by the English Goodfellas’, Daily Express, 29 October, 2005, 40–41.
The article publicises Eddie Richardson, The Last Word ( London: Headline, 2005 ).
George Orwell, The Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays (1944 rpt Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), pp. 70, 76.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity ( London and New York: Routledge: 1987 ), p. 128.
Lew Louderback, Pretty Boy, Pretty face—I Love You: the Gangsters of the ’30s and their Molls ( London: Coronet, 1969 ), p. 8.
Michael Hatt ‘Muscles, Morals, Mind: The Male Body in Thomas Eakins’s Salutat’, in The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance ed. K. Adler and M. Pointon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 ), pp. 57–9.
Edwin Woodhall, Jack the Ripper or When London Walked in Terror ( London: Mellifont Press Ltd., 1937 )
and William Stewart, Jack the Ripper: A New Theory ( London: Quality Press, 1939 ).
Copyright information
© 2006 Linden Peach
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Peach, L. (2006). Gender and Performance in the Criminal Masquerade. In: Masquerade, Crime and Fiction. Crime Files Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625402_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230625402_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28245-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-62540-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)