Criminal Women in Contemporary French Crime Fiction
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A01=Ciara Gorman
archetypes
Author_Ciara Gorman
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English translation
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female complexity
female criminality
female stereotypes
female violence
female violent transgression
feminist crime fiction
femme fatale
French crime fiction
mere fatale
polar feministe
victimhood
villainy
women's violence
Product details
- ISBN 9781350529410
- Weight: 500g
- Dimensions: 156 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 19 Feb 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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An exploration of representations of female criminality in contemporary French crime fiction, this book offers a literary, sociological and feminist analysis of the stereotypes surrounding women and crime. Surveying how these stereotypes are both invoked and disrupted, it covers Pierre Lemaitre’s Alex, Fred Vargas’s Quand Sort la Recluse (This Poison Will Remain), Leïla Slimani’s Chanson Douce (Lullaby) and Hannelore Cayre’s La Daronne (The Godmother) in their original French and their English translations. Addressing the gap of scholarly interest in legal and cultural representations of female violence in French crime fiction, Ciara Gorman evaluates the subversive ways in which archetypes of female criminality — ranging from the femme fatale to the witch, and from the mère fatale to the ‘bitch’ — are deployed not as reductive shorthands about femininity, but as motors of innovation and resistance. The form and plot of each text is examined for its potential as a polar féministe (feminist crime fiction), a crime novel which incorporates the concerns of feminism — be that the prevalence of sexual and sexist violence in society, or the legacy of misogynist representations of women in the crime genre as a whole. Criminal Women considers the female criminal character as a figure of opportunity, the point at which readers and writers alike may reassess their assumptions about female criminality, and about the feminist potential of crime fiction itself.
Ciara Gorman is Assistant Professor in French and Francophone Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland.
