[In the following essay, Walton analyzes the notion of feminist empowerment in Grafton's detective novels.]

Sue Grafton launched her alphabetized detective series in 1982, with the publication of “A” Is for Alibi. The author of eleven Kinsey Millhone novels to date, she has produced approximately one book a year since 1982, each of which has enjoyed an enormous popularity. Grafton's success with mystery fiction is such that she is often hailed as an innovator of the Tough Gal Private Eye, and lauded as a re-vis(ion)er of crime writing. Her efforts (along with those of her “sisters in crime,” Sara Paretsky and Marcia Muller) to open the conventionally sexist and exclusive hard-boiled detective mode to include women and women's issues have encouraged the production of a remarkable number of feminist detective novels. Since the bestselling status of Grafton's novels would indicate that her works are read by and appeal to women, I would like to explore the ways in which her writings serve to empower female readers and, hence, contribute to feminist discourse.¹

Although there has been relatively little feminist scholarship devoted to the en/gendered nature of reading practices, that gender operates as a component in interpretative strategies is suggested by readers’ responses to writers like Grafton. Indeed, assessments of feminist detective fiction will often vary according to the gender of the reader. As I have discovered through teaching these works and discussing them with students, friends, and colleagues, female readers often respond favorably to Grafton's Kinsey Millhone novels, where male readers frequently contest the success of her rewriting of hard-boiled male authors. Indeed, in one of the more perceptive articles on Grafton, “‘Reader, I blew him away’: Convention and Transgression in Sue Grafton,” Peter J. Rabinowitz argues that Grafton's “A” Is for Alibi generates double readings which subvert the subversive content of the text. Rabinowitz finds that in this novel Kinsey Millhone can be “interpreted as a woman tamed and a woman punished. But however she oscillates, she never quite finds a new position in which to stand, and this transgressive novel suddenly finds itself springing back into the same familiar trajectories [of traditional hard-boiled detective fiction]” (340). Ultimately, Rabinowitz suggests that Grafton's subversion and conformity run parallel in “A” Is for Alibi and thus exemplify the ways in which a writer—and a character—can become imprisoned in genre. Rabinowitz's analysis of Grafton's novel is sympathetic and discerning, and its sophistication is perhaps most evident in the author's ability to acknowledge that readers of different backgrounds may interpret Grafton differently. Consequently, Rabinowitz concludes his essay by calling for a critique of his critique when he notes, it “would be interesting to see … whether readers who don't share my background as a white male academic apply similar or different strategies to the text” (340-41).

Rabinowitz's ability to position himself and his reading in relation to the female-authored text he examines opens a line of inquiry into an analysis of the ways in which subject positions influence reading strategies. The act of reading is a process which involves the development of an identificatory relationship between the protagonist and the reader. The ways in which one might identify with a character will vary according to one's position in relation to the world of the literary text and to the world at large. When a woman approaches novels like Grafton's, novels that play upon and undercut the sexist proclivities of the male detective “canon,” her position as a woman is affirmed by the resistant text. When a male reader approaches the same text, he does not similarly experience the affirmative process. Although the split in en/gendered reader responses I have noted could be a coincidence, I think that it results from the differences in the cultural spaces that men and women occupy, spaces that influence readerly appreciation of feminist crime fiction—and, arguably, revisionary writings in general.

I would suggest that the diverse and en/gendered responses to Grafton derive from the discrepancy in men's and women's cultural locations. Woman's experience of the world diverges from that of man since her relationship with the world is established on a different basis. I want to stress, before proceeding, that I am not suggesting that all women (or men) read in the same way and hence that all women (or men) are the same; but, rather, I wish to argue that women occupy a cultural site that allows for a generalized explication of woman's experience of the world. I want to draw on Teresa de Lauretis's explication of experience to elucidate my position. De Lauretis explains:

by experience, I do not mean the mere registering of sensory data, or a purely mental (psychological) relation to objects and events, or the acquisition of skills and competences by accumulation or repeated exposure. I use the term not in the individualistic, idiosyncratic sense of something belonging to one and exclusively her own even though others might have “similar” experiences; but rather in the general sense of a process by which, for all social beings, subjectivity is constructed. Through that process one places oneself or is placed in social reality, and so perceives and comprehends as subjective (referring to, even originating in, oneself) those relations—material, economic, and interpersonal—which are in fact social and, in a larger perspective, historical. The process is continuous, its achievement unending or daily renewed. For each person, therefore, subjectivity is an ongoing construction, not a fixed point of departure or arrival from which one then interacts with the world. On the contrary, it is the effect of that interaction which I call experience; and thus it is produced not by external ideals, values, or material causes, but by one's personal, subjective, engagement in the practices, discourses, and institutions that lend significance (value, meaning, and affect) to the events of the world.

(159)

De Lauretis's suggestion that experience derives from social location allows for a theoretical discussion of the ways in which the differences in cultural placement of men and women will generate different reading strategies.

Historically, where man has operated as a subject of discourse, woman has been posited as the object of discourse and, thus, constructed as a passive receiver rather than an active performer. As feminist psychoanalytic critics argue, the feminine “I” has functioned in mimicry of the masculine “I” because patriarchy has not accorded woman a position from which to speak. When woman does assume a subject position, therefore, or tries to perform as the “I” of the discourse, the “I” she adopts is displaced and deferred (Grosz 72). Her “I” serves as a shadow of his “I,” or becomes a transformed “you” in relation to him; she does not—because she cannot—speak as “author,” since she has no author-ity. What this means, in practical terms, is that women have been discursively conditioned to accept a subordinate position, a position that is reinforced through their consistent social disenfranchisement.

This disenfranchisement of female subjectivity has a direct bearing on interpretative strategies. As Laura Mulvey in her 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” argued in relation to film, the position of the viewer is traditionally encoded as male; woman is figured through her “to-be-looked-at-ness,” rather than as the looker (436). Mulvey's argument points to the ways in which woman has been forced to assume the viewing position of man in order to participate as a viewer of film. No space has been accorded to her as subject, and, consequently, she cannot view “as a woman,” since she cannot identify—as a subject—with women on the screen. She watches these cinematic women being watched, a situation that reinforces her own objectification. The process of reading a book is similar to “reading” a film in that female subjectivity remains a contested space in conventional fiction. Grafton and writers like her, I would argue, inscribe a subject position for women, and this inscription allows for female readers to read “as women.” Femininity is affirmed in these texts, not derided or elided.

I suspect that the en/gendered responses I have noticed in relation to feminist crime writing result from woman's affirmation in and through these novels. That is, when a female reader is confronted with a female writer's efforts to counter and subvert the “canonical” conventions of hard-boiled (male) detective fiction, she does not generally read in an effort to subvert the subversion. For her to read Grafton “against the grain,” as does Rabinowitz, would be to undercut herself. Because she has a political stake in accepting the work—her subject position is validated within it—she responds differently from her male counterpart. A man, who has not been cast, consistently, as the object of discourse, might well miss the political ramifications of the inscribed female subjectivity, since it does not diverge from what he has been conditioned to expect for himself. A woman, whether consciously or unconsciously, responds to the female subjectivity that is established in the texts and reinforced through her reading of them.

I want to turn, now, to Grafton to examine the ways in which female subjectivity is implemented in her novels. Kinsey Millhone speaks the “I” of the first-person narration of Grafton's novels, and while this alone would not designate a shift from the expected female “you” to a female “I”/eye (in traditional texts, female characters often simulate a first-person narrative voice, but this does not indicate their exhibition of subjectivity),² her “I” carries with it a subjective authority that is lacking in more conventional works. Kinsey's “I”/eye is supported through the narrative content, which advocates an authoritative feminine subjectivity. Throughout Grafton's series, Kinsey indulges in generalizations that work to affirm the subjectivity of herself and her female readers. For instance, when Kinsey deliberately switches common gender pronoun assumptions, her strategy draws attention to the culturally conditioned expectation that woman will occupy a place subordinate to man's. In “J” Is for Judgment, Kinsey confides: “Every case is different, and every investigator ends up flying by the seat of her (or his) pants” (119). The switch from the expected “his pants,” or the more common contemporary version, “his (or her) pants,” repositions woman and “her” pants as the subject of the sentence; “she” does not function as an occlusion or an afterthought. There is a conscious effort here to establish woman as a primary subject, and this effort is borne out in the ways in which women and women's traditional activities are recuperated and validated in the novels.

Historically, women in the West have been relegated to the home and then taught to view their occupation as inconsequential and meaningless. Grafton's novels reposition domestic duties as valuable learned skills. Kinsey is not a domesticated or conventional woman, but her references to domestic activities authorize the value of woman's traditional space. In “B” Is for Burglar, Kinsey moves to recuperate the worth of woman's domestic training: “I was going to have to check it out item by item. I felt as if I were on an assembly line, inspecting reality with a jeweller's loupe. There's no place in a P.I.'s life for impatience, faintheartedness, or sloppiness. I understand the same qualifications apply for housewives” (33). Through passages like this, Grafton's novels perform an important function in affirming women who have been taught to trivialize and debase the abilities they have cultivated in their domestication.³

Where the de-valuation of domestic skills is common parlance in patriarchal discourse, Grafton's generous use of domestic analogies serves to substantiate the importance of the duties women have performed in the home. Indeed, the home is posited as a sort of base training camp for coping with the professional world, and the novels demonstrate how woman's domestication has better equipped her to act in the professional world. Often, Kinsey will equate the inner domestic sphere with the outer professional sphere. As she recounts in “A” Is for Alibi:

I did a couple of personal errands and then went home. It had not been a very satisfying day but then most of my days are the same: checking and cross-checking, filling in blanks, detail work that was absolutely essential to the job but scarcely dramatic stuff. The basic characteristics of any good investigator are a plodding nature and infinite patience. Society has inadvertently been grooming women to this end for years.

(27)

This comparison serves to close the patriarchally constructed gap that separates the inner and the outer worlds. Those two spheres are bridged here, and the bridge foregrounds their interdependence—it does not downgrade one at the expense of the other.

Kinsey often contrasts herself with her male colleagues (within novels and media), and highlights the differences apparent in their work on a case. In “F” Is for Fugitive, the P.I. compares the ways in which she operates to the ways in which a male P.I. would function. She bemoans: “I felt like I'd spent half my time on this case washing dirty dishes. How come Magnum, P.I., never had to do stuff like this?” (159). Just as woman has been constructed as an “expert” in the kitchen, so she has been taught that she is helpless outside of it. In “J” Is for Judgment, Kinsey reiterates the patriarchally held view that women are unable to master technical concepts, and highlights the sexism that underpins such perceptions of men's and women's traditional activities: “Boys know about these things: guns, cars, lawn mowers, garbage disposals, electric switches, baseball statistics. I'm scared to take the lid off the toilet tank because that ball thing always looks like it's on the verge of exploding” (206). By juxtaposing the expectations placed on men and on women, Grafton is able to foreground the masculinist construction of those expectations. Where, in the earlier passage, Magnum is not required to wash dishes, women have not been required to learn the “mechanical” skills denoted in the above quotation. The difference between the two constructions, of course, is patriarchally loaded: Magnum does not have to do dishes because it is beneath him (and, presumably, because he can rely on some woman to do them for him), but women do not exhibit technical prowess because it is beyond their comprehension.

Despite her valorization of feminine capabilities, however, Kinsey does acknowledge how little women's skills are valued in the patriarchal world. The inequity of salaries, therefore, becomes an issue in “I” Is for Innocent, when Kinsey discovers that the (male) P.I. on the case before her charged ＄50 an hour. She comments, wryly, “Morley was getting fifty? I couldn't believe it. Either men are outrageous or women are fools. Guess which, I thought. My standard fee has always been thirty bucks an hour plus mileage” (23). While this passage suggests that women are foolish in underestimating their abilities, it also serves as a reminder that women have been conditioned to regard their abilities as second-rate and, thus, taught to participate in their own disempowerment.

Kinsey refuses to re-imprison woman in a sexist fashion by trivializing her domesticity, and rather attacks the areas where woman is patriarchally constricted. Clothing, which women have been conditioned to value, is devalued in Grafton's texts. Kinsey herself wears jeans and turtleneck sweaters, and has, for more formal occasions, an “all-purpose black dress” which is: “black with long sleeves, in some exotic blend of polyester you could bury for a year without generating a crease” (“I” [“I” Is for Innocent] 216). Traditional feminine footwear is disparaged when Kinsey notes that she has never been able to wear high heels: “I have friends who adore high heels, but I can't see the point. I figure if high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them” (“I” 216). Where that which has been forced upon women (and then used to trivialize them) is ridiculed, however, articles of clothing which are unmentionable/s in patriarchal discourse—as well as the object of much male humor—are not only mentioned, but are constructed as multipurpose garments. Kinsey's references to feminine underclothing—and their bizarre usages—provide for comic relief in several of Grafton's texts. Trapped in a hotel room, in “G” Is for Gumshoe, listening to the lovemaking of her neighbors through the wall. Kinsey acts as follows: “[I] stuffed a sock in each cup of my bra and tied it across my head like earmuffs, with the ends knotted under my chin. Didn't help much. I lay there, a cone over each ear like an alien, wondering at the peculiarities of human sex practices. I would have much to report when I returned to my planet” (87). This move to recuperate an aspect of femininity that has been derided serves as a means of reappropriating the trappings of femininity and re-positing them in a favorable light.

Perhaps most importantly, throughout her novels Grafton works to assert the value of femininity. In an age where the single white female has been vilified as the target of a backlash against women, in general, and feminists, in particular, as Susan Faludi so aptly argues in Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women, Kinsey's delight in her single state serves to endorse the status of growing numbers of single women. In “D” Is for Deadbeat, Kinsey notes: “I love being single. It's almost like being rich” (21). In addition, Kinsey makes it clear that she likes women and takes pleasure in the appearance of women's bodies. “C” Is for Corpse provides a meaningful example of the ways in which Grafton repositions the female body, a body that has been the object of scrutiny by men from time immemorial. Rather than objectifying women, Kinsey watches women in a women's locker room and comments approvingly on their shapes and sizes: “women paraded back and forth in various stages of undress. It was a comforting sight. So many versions of the female breast, of buttocks and bellies and pubic nests, endless repetitions of the same forms. These women seemed to feel good about themselves and there was a camaraderie among them that I enjoyed” (108). This is an important passage, particularly in light of the ways in which women have tried and continue to try to live up to male standards of female beauty, a situation that has led to an epidemic of anorexia and bulimia as well as to a rise in self-destructive “beautification” measures—like liposuction and plastic surgery. There are no impossible standards of feminine beauty outlined here; indeed, there are no “standards” set at all. Kinsey simply enjoys the look of femininity—whatever shape or size it happens to assume.

Grafton not only takes pains to critique male standards of feminine beauty, she also works to delineate positive interaction between women and, hence, to undermine the sexist notion that women perceive each other as competitors for men. Rejecting the position of the envious woman, Kinsey takes delight in her best friend's attractiveness. Woman's appearance is also re-visioned through an undercutting of the patriarchal truism that “men don't make passes at women who wear glasses,” since Kinsey's friend, Vera, sports glasses with “tortoiseshell rims and big round lenses tinted the color of iced tea. She wore glasses so well it made other women wish their eyesight would fail” (“B” [“B” Is for Burglar] 64).

Constructive portrayals of women, in whatever walk of life, abound in the Kinsey Millhone novels. What is perhaps most striking here is that Kinsey frequently crosses class boundaries and shows a marked appreciation of women working in traditionally marginalized spheres. In “A” Is for Alibi, Kinsey engages in conversation with Ruth, the secretary in a law office. This passage invokes the strength of female bonding, and also subverts expectations of “feather-brained” secretaries. Kinsey appraises Ruth's abilities and comments on the skills involved in secretarial work (reminiscent of her positive re-evaluation of housewifery):

Her husband had left her for a younger woman (fifty-five) and Ruth, on her own for the first time in years, had despaired of ever finding a job, as she was then sixty-two years old, “though in perfect health,” she said. She was quick, capable, and of course was being aced out at every turn by women one-third her age who were cute instead of competent.

“The only cleavage I got left, I sit on,” she said and then hooted at herself.

(23)

Ruth's story also highlights the plight of middle-aged women who have been cast on the rag heap because their aging appearance supposedly renders them useless. Kinsey's assessment of the aging Ruth's usefulness, therefore, provides a significant commentary on the patriarchal belief that when women can no longer bear children, their purpose in life is over.

In “C” Is for Corpse, the “aging” woman makes another appearance and this time provides Kinsey with the opportunity to contrast the changes that have taken place in women's acceptance of other women. In this case, Lila, the older woman Kinsey encounters, has unquestioningly accepted her patriarchal training and perceives other women as threats. Kinsey notes: “I like older women as a rule. I like almost all women, as a matter of fact. I find them open and confiding by nature, amusingly candid when it comes to talk of men. This one was of the old school: giddy and flirtatious. She'd despised me on sight” (13-14). In this novel, Lila is attempting to bilk Kinsey's neighbor, Henry, of his life savings, and it is interesting that it is the older woman's distrust of women that renders her suspect. Women who like women are appraised favorably.

Kinsey never takes gratuitous pleasure in demeaning women or condemning lifestyles different from her own. In “E” Is for Evidence, she reflects on the lifestyle of the wealthy—and traditional—Olive Kohler, and acknowledges: “I'd begun to feel very charitable about Olive, whose life-style only yesterday had seemed superficial and self-indulgent. Who was I to judge? It was none of my business how she made her peace with the world. She'd fashioned a life out of tennis and shopping, but she managed to do occasional charity work, which was more than I could claim” (110). While Kinsey may learn to appreciate Olive's position, however, that position is undermined in the text. Killed by the husband who wishes to possess her, Olive figures the dangers of leading a patriarchally inscribed life. Olive's choice of lifestyle is dignified by Kinsey, but it is nonetheless dramatized in the novel as a risky, if not fatal, undertaking and contrasted with the more fruitful possibilities envisioned through feminine independence.

Perhaps one of Kinsey's most appealing characteristics is her fiercely independent nature. Glenwood Irons, in his essay, “New Women Detectives: G Is for Gender-Bending,” perceives Grafton as less feminist than Sara Paretsky because her novels conform to the ethos of American individualism:

If Grafton has created a feminist detective, it is to the extent that Kinsey Millhone fulfils Marty Knepper's definition of feminists as “women capable of intelligence, moral responsibility, competence and independent action … [who reject] sexist stereotypes.” Unlike Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski, Kinsey is not interested in the power of female bonding, rather, she has “engendered” the macho tough-guy detective with a woman's perspective, a project quite different from the strength-from-bonding created by Paretsky.

(135)

While I do not, by any means, wish to deride the radical undercutting of sexist hard-boiled detective fiction I believe Paretsky's writings to manifest,⁴ I also believe that Irons's argument points up the problems of assuming that what is problematic in the hands of white male writers carries the same negative overtones when transcribed in the hands of women or members of minority groups. Cultural placement must be taken into consideration, here, in that feminine independence has repercussions different from those of male individualism.

Kinsey's assumption of a loner status is not the same as an imposition of masculine selfhood, a subtlety that is emphasized in Grafton's novels through Kinsey's carefully constructed autonomy. Not surprisingly, Kinsey's independence is dearly bought, and comprises her defensive stance against a patriarchal world which seeks to subordinate her. In keeping with the problematics of heterosexual relationships, feminine in/dependence becomes a troublesome strand in “G” Is for Gumshoe, when Kinsey falls in love with her hired bodyguard, Robert Dietz. Like many women, Kinsey becomes dependent on Dietz, and her dependence is particularly disturbing because Grafton has taken such pains, throughout the series, to maintain the self-sufficiency of her protagonist. Indeed, as the following passage indicates, Kinsey begins to bow to Dietz's “superior” judgment:

On our way to the firing range, we stopped by the gun shop and spent an hour bickering about guns. He knew far more than I did and I had to yield to his expertise. I left a deposit on an H&K P7 in 9-millimeter, filling out all the necessary paperwork. I ended up paying twenty-five bucks for fifty rounds of the Winchester Silvertips Dietz had insisted on. In exchange for my compliance, he had the good taste not to mention that all of this was his idea. I'd expected to find it galling to take his advice, but in reality, it felt fine. What did I have to prove? He'd been at it a lot longer than I had and he seemed to know what he was talking about.

(185)

Kinsey's submission to Dietz's judgment does not go unmarked in the text, however. Cleverly, Grafton contrasts Kinsey's dependence on Dietz with that of Irene Gersh's dependence on her husband, in the textual subplot. Irene is dependent to the point where she is helpless without the guidance of others and is immobilized by the prospect of filling out her mother's death certificate by herself:

She seemed to collect herself. She nodded mutely, eyes fixed on me with gratitude as I moved into the adjacent room. I gathered up a pen and the eight-by-eight-inch square form from the desk and returned to the couch, wondering how Clyde endured her dependency. Whatever compassion I felt was being overshadowed by the sense that I was shouldering a nearly impossible burden.

(233)

Grafton contrasts the two forms of dependence in this novel and problematizes both. Where the independent Kinsey comes close to surrendering her selfhood to Dietz, Irene's loss of selfhood constitutes a trap for dismissive readers. Irene is dependent because she has been traumatized as a child, a trauma that has gone undiscovered—and even led to her construction by the male medical establishment as an untreatable hysteric—until Kinsey begins to investigate a twenty-year-old murder. Kinsey unearths the reasons behind Irene's fears, reasons that presumably will enable Irene to function more purposefully, but the P.I. seems unable to save herself from the dependent relationship she has developed with Dietz. Dietz leaves for Germany at the end of the novel, thereby removing the threat of dependency from Kinsey, and their interaction highlights the difficulties resulting from the intricate power balances always at play in heterosexual relationships.

Iron's failure to distinguish the political difference between male and female independence is a miscalculation to which many critics fall prey. The shift in subject positioning must be taken into consideration when readers and critics approach Grafton, or the subversion and affirmation embodied in her fiction will get lost. Ward Churchill, for example, perceives the recent innovations in detective fiction (feminist and Other-wise) as ideological justifications for a repressive social system. In relation to Grafton, specifically, Churchill charges that: “Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone … is more of a ‘tried-and-true granddaughter of Marlowe and Spade,’ demonstrating that in the new American sensibility, it's sometimes okay for women (but never men) to comport themselves like macho thugs” (285). Churchill's appraisal of Kinsey as a “macho thug” may seem rather harsh to (female) readers who have taken pleasure in the alternatives they find her to offer to “canonical” hard-boiled detectives like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but if the divergent cultural sites the detectives occupy are ignored, the differences in their political positions are rendered inconsequential. Since Kinsey does not operate in a literary vacuum, her actions are more appropriately viewed as a re-action, for she is performing in response to her sexist forefathers.

Where Churchill, like Irons, does not place Grafton in a cultural and historical context, other critics do, and yet find her novels troublesome. Disturbingly, Grafton has been criticized by female critics who contend that her texts violate feminist principles. Kathleen Gregory Klein argues that female characters who validate traditional social structures demonstrate

the primacy of the conventional private-eye fictional formula over the feminist ideology which falsely seems to signal a change in the genre. Ironically, Grafton, McCone, and Steiner's novels demonstrate a triumph of the genre over feminist ideology in much the same way that patriarchal/sexist ideology triumphs over the genre in most of the preceding novels.

(221)

Klein offers an important critique of Grafton, and she astutely points out the uneasy relationship that exists between the author and her feminist sympathies. On a textual level, the killers in the Kinsey Millhone novels are as often female as male (six of the eleven novels depict female murderers), and as a result, the texts work to reinforce a stereotype of murderous women that has no basis in statistical reality.

In addition, the ideological impetus of the novels wavers, perhaps reflecting Grafton's own discomfort with feminism. In a 1989 interview with Bruce Taylor, published as “G Is for (Sue) Grafton,” the author confided, “I am a feminist from way back” (11); but she retracts her statement in a 1992 interview with Daniel Richler for the TV Ontario program Imprint and contends:

To me, writing is not about gender. And to me to imply that women are in any way at a disadvantage seems incorrect. … I don't see women as victims. I don't see women as one down. I don't believe we need to herd together in order to have power in the world. So what I prefer to do is to operate out of my own system, wherein, in some ways, I think I'm doing just as much for women by being out on the front lines by myself.

Grafton's inconsistent adherence to feminist politics when interviewed is distressing, and even convenient in light of the current backlash against women. (Her statement also provides a marked contrast to Paretsky's response to the same question: “You know, any more, when people ask me if I'm a feminist, I'm sort of tempted to say: ‘Call me a strident bitch and smile when you say it’” [Imprint interview]). But, as a friend and colleague pointed out to me, to dismiss Grafton as a result of her statements is also convenient, since it is to hold the author to account for the situation that has presumably led her to retract her feminist sympathies. In that Grafton is a writer in the public eye, who must publish novels in order to support herself, her position must be placed in the context of bestselling fiction, which depends upon a large and diverse audience. Before one condemns a female writer for her political stance, that writer's position as a working woman should be figured into the assessment, since her statements may derive from her fear of alienating a wide audience.⁵

I also think that the politics of formula fiction should be weighed when evaluating the success or failure of the subversion of genre conventions in feminist crime writing. As John G. Cawelti has noted, formula fiction, in particular, depends upon well-established conventional structures that contribute to its formulation and “reflect the interests of audiences, creators, and distributors” (124). Mass-market fiction relies upon its formula to generate readership. It therefore cannot subvert generic conventions to such an extent that it becomes unrecognizable to readers of the formula, since to do so would be to estrange the audience on which the fiction depends. And, when Cawelti draws attention to endemic characteristics of formula fiction, he also, by extension, illuminates an aspect of Grafton's writing that is particularly important. Cawelti argues that formula fiction has the ability to assist in the process of assimilating changes in cultural values. He observes, in relation to westerns:

The western has undergone almost a reversal in values over the past fifty years with respect to the representation of Indians and pioneers, but much of the basic structure of the formula and its imaginative vision of the meaning of the West has remained substantially unchanged. By their capacity to assimilate new meanings like this, literary formulas ease the transition between old and new ways of expressing things and thus contribute to cultural continuity.

(143)

Grafton, as the author of formula novels, who writes within a rigidly delineated genre, is—at least to a certain extent—necessarily caught within the problematics of her narrative form. But, given the cultural anxiety that feminism has generated in the last twenty years, the writings of Grafton (and female authors like her), provide a venue for assimilating some of the cultural changes that have taken place. It therefore need not follow that Grafton's adherence to the genre conventions of hard-boiled fiction renders her writings supportive of patriarchal constructions, or mars their contribution to feminist practice. I would argue that Grafton's texts enable readers, and female readers in particular, to explore the dynamics of gender constructions. Indeed, Grafton's fiction may well be extremely reflexive of woman's concerns precisely because they embody a compromise. Mimetically, the novels mirror woman's position in the world, for they deal with the world constructed through the hard-boiled mode and work to feminize it. Grafton's fiction does not attempt to create a new textual world, but rather deals with the problems inherent in the one with which her character is faced. The end result is of course a compromise—but, then, is not feminist practice, itself, always/already a compromise?

Grafton's novels do offer affirmation to the women to whom they are addressed. Hence, while the author may not radically subvert the detective formula, and while her politics may be problematic, she nonetheless works to implement female subjectivity in and through her writings, and affords women an opportunity to experience the assumption of a subject position. These aspects of Grafton's writings constitute a profound achievement, and when they are linked with positive depictions of woman's traditional roles, and with a character who actually likes other women, the end result manifests a powerful valorization of femininity. This woman writer's woman detective provides her women readers with a refreshing change from conventional depictions of femininity. And such a change is not only important to the world of detective fiction, in particular, it is also crucial to feminist movement in general.

Notes

1. Many of the ideas developed in this essay have arisen out of discussions with Manina Jones in relation to our book-in-progress, “Detective Agency: Women Re-Writing the Hardboiled Tradition.” I am also indebted to Jamie Barlowe for her invaluable input into this article.

2. The Turn of the Screw provides an excellent example of the ways in which a female character may attempt to assume a subject position, but is disenfranchised within the narrative. See my essay “‘What then on earth was I?’: Feminine Subjectivity and The Turn of the Screw,” in Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism: The Turn of the Screw, Bedford Books, 1994.

3. Grafton's texts inscribe a generalized white middle-class reader. This is not to suggest that they cannot be read by women outside of that cultural site, but rather that the values and the lifestyle they reflect are predominantly white and middle-class. Kinsey is a working woman, with pretensions to lower-class sensibilities, but her lifestyle is firmly in line with middle-class conventions.

   It should also be noted that Grafton's treatment of race is disturbing. There are few women of color in her novels, and those characters belonging to minority groups—particularly those of Hispanic background—are depicted in a condescending fashion that veers on the judgmental. In “H” Is for Homicide, for example, Grafton posits a particularly troublesome view of Mexican-American culture. Ultimately, the “success” of the novel lies in the recuperation of Bibianna Diaz into a white middle-class superstructure through her alliance with a white police officer, an alliance that involves her rejection of the “criminal” element embodied in men of her own culture.

4. See my article, “Paretsky's V. I. as P.I.: Revising the Script and Recasting the Dick,” in Literature/Interpretative/Theory 4 (1993): 203-13.

5. My thanks to Neal Ferris for this insight.

Works Cited

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Churchill, Ward. Fantasies of the Master Race. Ed. M. Annette Jaimes. Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1992.

De Lauretis, Teresa. Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.

Grafton, Sue. “A” Is for Alibi. New York: Bantam, 1987.

———. “B” Is for Burglar. New York: Bantam, 1986.

———. “C” Is for Corpse. New York: Bantam, 1987.

———. “D” Is for Deadbeat. New York: Bantam, 1988.

———. “E” Is for Evidence. New York: Bantam, 1989.

———. “F” Is for Fugitive. New York: Bantam, 1990.

———. “G” Is for Gumshoe. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1990.

———. “H” Is for Homicide. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1991.

———. “I” Is for Innocent. New York: Henry Holt, 1992.

———. “J” Is for Judgment. New York: Henry Holt, 1993.

———. “K” Is for Killer. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction. London: Routledge, 1990.

Irons, Glenwood. “New Woman Detectives: G Is for Gender-Bending.” Gender, Language, and Myth: Essays on Popular Narrative. Ed. Glenwood Irons. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992.

Klein, Kathleen Gregory. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Ed. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991. 432-42.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. “‘Reader, I Blew Him Away’: Convention and Transgression in Sue Grafton.” Famous Last Words: Changes in Gender & Narrative Closure. Ed. Alison Booth. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1993. 326-46.

Richler, Daniel. “Interview.” Imprint. Toronto: TV Ontario, 1992.

Taylor, Bruce. “G Is for (Sue) Grafton: An Interview with the Creator of the Kinsey Millhone Private Eye Series Who Delights Mystery Fans as She Writes Her Way Through the Alphabet.” Armchair Detective 22.1 (1989): 4-13.