If someone commits a crime, but their intentions are anything but criminal--in their mind their actions are meant as entirely heroic, are they still guilty? I think I know the answer, more or less. That's the question that was on my mind as I was reading "The Heroine" by Patricia Highsmith in Sarah Weinman's short story collection, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense, which I have been eager to read.
A new year, a new short story collection (the choice of which I agonized over by the way), but if all the stories are of the same ilk as this first, it is going to be a most excellent collection indeed. Although some of the stories were written after 1960, the collection as a whole will fit in quite nicely (and be a good companion read) to my Vintage Mystery reading. Aside from the stories themselves Weinman writes a great introduction and offers a list of suggested reading at the end, so it will be a great resource for my ongoing mystery reading.
To give you a taste of the tone of the book, if Persephone Books published mysteries (and they do have the odd mystery/suspense/SciFi title in their backlist), many of these authors would be Persephone authors. Women have had a long and illustrious history when it comes to mystery writing. Look at the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and the Queens of Crime--Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh (all authors I wil be reading this year by the way). Weinman notes and I think I have to agree that women writers are producing some of the best crime fiction out there right now. But it's those women writers who were active between the Great Depression and the mid-1970s that Weinman concerns herself with her. It's these women who have faded from view.
"The crime genre, concerned as it is with the righting of wrongs and playing by rules, is less comfortable with blurred boundaries. It's especially uneasy about stories that feature ordinary people, particularly women, trying to make sense of a disordered world with small stakes, where the most important worry is whether a person takes good care of her children, stands up to a recalcitrant spouse, or contends with how best to fit--or subvert--social mores."
World War II turned social order on its head, and it allowed the rise of "domestic suspense fiction". These stories appealed to a Middlebrow audience and were published in glossy magazines. It was a market where women excelled. And with the 1950s preoccupation with the desire for the perfect life--having all the domestic gadgets that we're told we cannot live without--the stories provided an outlet for both writers and readers. Weinman calls it a "channeling of frustrations of unattainable domestic perfection" of which women understood the anxieties well.
There are fourteen authors included in the collection, which are presented chronologically by order of age of the protagonist--from adolescents through to the elderly--as they deal with issues of great import to women of all ages. They deal with ordinary everyday life.
Patricia Highsmith's "The Heroine" is apparently something of an anomaly to her work, as she tended to deal more with the male perception or preoccupations. She wrote the story when she was a student at Barnard College and it was published in Harper's Bazaar in 1945.
"You're starting all over again, Lucille," she told herself in the mirror. "You're going to have a happy, useful life from now on, and forget everything that was before."
Lucille was formerly a maid, the only job she thought she was fit for, but now she is coming to the Christiansen house as a governess. Her psychiatrist told her she's just like everyone else, but Mrs. Christiansen on more than one occasion tells her she's quite unusual. Not like any of the other governesses she has had. Not peculiar just different. The children love Lucille. They listen with rapt attention when she reads them stories. She's so into the story it comes alive to them, new and fresh even though the stories are not new. When Lucille tells them, they are.
As a matter of fact Lucille loves her job and the children and the family and would like to stay there forever. She thinks the family pays her too much. And she is at a loose ends when her day is over. She would happily check on the children in the middle of the night. She rarely takes her day off. Lucille just wants to do good deeds for this family she loves.
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives is an apt title for this collection. Certainly for this first story. There is something not quite right about Lucille. In a crime story you expect murder, or murderous intentions. Not here. Not in the way you think anyway. Highsmith is a master of the understated. And she slowly reveals aspects of Lucille's history and personality that when taken together form a most interesting picture of Lucille. One that is not quite right. So. The question I asked at the outset. Intentions. Is Lucille criminal? She is certainly responsible for her actions. Then again, when someone is not quite right in the mind? Remember the Talented Mr. Ripley, and you can see where Patricia Highsmith was headed in her writing career!
Next week: "A Nice Place to Stay" by Nedra Tyre. If I had endless reading time I would take each other's story as a starting point and then move into some longer fiction by her. I've already read The Talented Mr. Ripley but would happily read it again. I would love, however, to pick up her first novel, Strangers on a Train, which sits on my reading pile. It may well be bumped up to the top after reading this story! I can see this is going to be a provocative and dangerous story collection to read.