Decoding%20the%20Detectives

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Decoding the Detectives
Kate Roach
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• Work on popular representation of science
  dominated by mad scientist
• Common emblems, bubbling vials, white coat
• Often scripted as an over-reacher like Victor
  Frankenstein

Cartoon from British Guardian newspaper in Turney
(1998)
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• different type of scientist visible in crime and
  detective genres
• forensic psychologist, pathologists and
  detectives join forces in a script that reverses
  the over-reacher and restores moral order
• studies of detective fiction acknowledge the
  importance of science, often within a Foucauldian
  framework. Studies of the representation of
  science do not acknowledge detectives as
  scientists

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Detectives and Mad Scientists
How do the representations themselves
intersect? Is the detective an alternative
model of science to that associated with the mad
scientist?
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The Moonstone Wilkie Collins (1868)

• A seminal work of detective fiction very
  influential for later novelists
• detective fever infects a whole cast of
  characters, including Sergeant Cuff, the Scotland
  Yard detective, and Ezra Jennings, the
  scientist/medical assistant

Left, Sergeant Cuff, middle, Gabriel Betteredge.
Illustration by Arthur Fraser (active 1865-1898)
for The Moonstone (London, 1890)
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The celebrated Cuff
when it comes to unravelling a mystery, there
isnt an equal in England In appearance he is
a grizzled, elderly man, so miserably lean
with a face sharp as a hatchet, skin as
yellow and dry as a withered autumn leaf and
eyes that had a very disconcerting trickof
looking as though they expected something more
from you than you were aware of yourself. His
walk was soft his voice melancholy his long
lanky fingers were hooked like claws. He might
have been a parson, or an undertaker The
Moonstone
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The irrepressible Jennings

• provides a vital key to the final solution in
  The Moonstone
• the most remarkable looking manHis fleshless
  cheeks had fallen into deep hollowsHis nose
  presentedfine shapeHis forehead rose high and
  straight from the brow. His marks and wrinkles
  were innumerablehis eyes, stranger still, of
  the softest brown looked out at you, andtook
  your attention captive at their willhis hair
  had lost its colour in the most startlingly
  partial and capricious manner
• a man with a secret, My story will die with me
• The Moonstone

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The Gothic Scientist-Magician

• William Godwins alchemist in St Leon (1799)
• feeble, emaciated and pale, his forehead full of
  wrinkles and his hair white as snow. Care was
  written into his faceyet his eye was still quick
  and lively
• Mary Shelleys (1818) Frankenstein has grown
  pale with study, andhis personemaciated with
  confinement
• George W Reynolds (1844) anatomist in Mysteries
  of London was pale, but good-looking, with light
  hair, and a somewhat melancholy expression of
  countenance. He was attired in deep black his
  voice was mournful
• Mary Braddons (1861) scientist-magician Laurent
  Blurroset in Trail of a Serpent is a pale, thin
  studious-looking manseated amongst
  papers..familiar to the pale student whose blue
  spectacles bend over the pages of crabbed Arabic

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The aesthetic of the knowledge seeker

• pale, thin, wizened looks, claw like hands,
  mesmeric, or sparkly eyes give them an aura of
  magic, or secret knowledge common to many
  fictional scientists
• features associated with the wizard/alchemist,
  witch/old hag, gothic scientist and detective
  indicate a nexus of
• knowledge ? secrecy ? power
• this is the heritage of the modern mad
  scientist
• Cuff and Jennings share this aesthetic as well

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Schutz phenomenology of the social world

• features of the knowledge-seeker commonly recur
  - an example of typification
• a thinking construct, or schema, that allows
  individuals to understand the world and
  communicate in terms of socially embedded stock
  knowledge
• typifications are variously detailed, vague,
  familiar and precise and they are always open to
  change - they are not stereotypes
• they encompass inherited stock knowledge and
  personal experience

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Typifying the Detectives

• Dickens (1850-52) in Household Words writes of
  detectives steadily pursuing the inductive
  process, thoughtful as though engaged in deep
  arithmetical calculations and have suspicion
  directed by careful inference and deduction
• In four reports of their work, Dickens details
  tracking a known offender entrapment of a known
  offender undercover work and a lucky break no
  deduction or induction in evidence
• Dickens detectives work in the picaresque
  tradition, they are of the people, with more
  brawn than brains

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Cuffs success

• Cuff is able to negotiate the London streets and
  their people in similar style to Dickens
  Inspector Field (1851) who has coiners and
  smashers droop before him pickpockets defer to
  him etc
• Cuffs success materialises in picaresque-styled
  scenes, as hero of the people, following examples
  Richmond, the Bow Street Runner (1827) and
  Vidocq, the French detective (1828 in English)
• Dickens and Collins sanitise the picaresque
  retaining the heroic element but dispensing with
  the criminal

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A Novel Typification of the Detective

• Cuff fails as knowledge seeker and where
  Jennings succeeds
• Cuff doesnt live up to his image as knowledge
  seeker
• Collins reflects dichotomy in contemporary
  culture where detective department is variously
  eulogised and castigated
• two typified traditions combine the knowledge
  seeker and the picaresque

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In height he was rather over six feet, and so
excessively lean that he seemed considerably
taller. His eyes were sharp and piercinghis
thin hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an
air of alertness and decision. His hands
invariably blotted with ink and stained with
chemicals, yet he was possessed with
extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently
had occasion to observe when I watched him
manipulating his fragile philosophical
instruments A Study in Scarlet (1887)

• Holmes modelled largely on the knowledge-seeker,
  also has a peculiar talent for disguise, a truly
  picaresque skill

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Detectives and Mad Scientists
Share the aesthetic of knowledge-seeker The
detective shares heritage with the mad
scientist and the picaresque hero