An Unsuitable Job for a Woman

In detective fiction a key theme is usually how the detective is a part of but apart from society. Characteristic traits include being a loner, adhering to a personal moral code, and using their superior intellect to solve the case. When James was writing and publishing this novel, in the early 1970s, the women’s liberation movement was still in its early stages in America and was little known in Britain. In making her protagonist a woman, James was challenging cultural norms; because she was writing so-called genre fiction, it was less of a transgression than other feminist statements, but it should still be considered in the context of the time and of James’s own struggles to write and publish as a woman in a traditionally male-dominated genre.

Tellingly, Cordelia’s youth and sex are the main ways in which she varies from the standard portrayal of the private eye. She is a bit of a romantic and indulges in theorizing via rhetorical questions, but that behavior is within the boundaries of the traditional role. In every other way, she functions as a private detective should: She is an outsider and a loner; she has few assets beyond her wits; she has a keen intellect; she doggedly pursues the clues she finds; she makes a leap of intellect that allows her to solve the case.