The Seduction of Detection

by Emily Kay Brookhart

The detective story has fascinated readers for over a century and a half. Generally accepted to have been popularized, if not invented, by Edgar Allan Poe, detective fiction has become what John Irwin calls the dominant modern genre (xvi) as one of the most highly read genres in fiction today. The success of the modern detective story can be directly traced to its seduction, the allure that causes people to continually write and read these masterpieces of fiction. The source of that seduction and the cause of the popularity have received a great deal of examination by various authors. These authors have suggested that the popularity of detective fiction comes from the profound truths it contains, the psychoanalytic theories that it applies, and the pure narration that it employs. However, upon careful consideration of one of the stories that started it all, Poes The Purloined Letter, it is clear that the primary seductive nature of detective fiction lies in its ability to reflect the reader in the character of the detective. The source of the popularity of the detective fiction has been studied extensively and can generally be divided into three categories. The first of these categories is the profound truths found deep inside the workings of the fiction. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe provide the first of these profound truths by stating that detective fiction is a symptom of a certain stage in the development of capitalism (xiii). This has been evident with the development of detective fiction closely linking to the onset of industrialism and with the complete lack of detective fiction in socialist nations (xiv). Most and Stowe posit that detective literature reflects the capitalist climate in which in thrives detective fiction is most popular in times of economic freedom and growth. Richard Alewyn presents similar arguments to those of Most and Stowe. He states that detective fiction showcases an expression of democratic civic consciousness (65). At its core, detective fiction is about the triumph of the law and the downfall of the criminal. This is in direct contrast to the crime novel, which sympathizes with the criminal rather than the detective (64). Alewyn also cites the same geographic spread, stating that detective fiction has been popular in England, the United States, and France, and less popular in Southern and Eastern Europe. He suggests that the nature of detective fiction to promote democratic ideals of good leads directly to the inclination of democratic countries to enjoy it. These authors provide accurate correlations between democracy, capitalism, and detective fiction in society as a whole but fail to explain exactly what it is about detective fiction that attracts the democratic, capitalistic man individually. The second major theory of detective fiction popularity is the psychoanalytic approach. Richard Alewyn summarizes this process by stating, Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are (64). This theory can be broken down into two parts, the first of which is the primal nature of man as presented by Geraldine Pederson-Krag. Pederson-Krag states that every detective story contains three elements, beginning with some secret wrongdoing between two people (14). She likens this secret wrongdoing to the primal sexual scene, the most basic human nature. Every wrongdoing between two people is just a precursor to sex. The other two elements of detective fiction a detective whose perception isacute and a series of observations and occurrences (14)add to intrigue and insatiable lust. Pederson-Krag suggests that the seduction of detective fiction is just that: seduction. The other psychoanalytic theory of detective fiction is drawn from another primal need of human nature: violence. Richard Alewyn suggests that detective fiction offers a school of crime, allowing individuals to give into their violent criminal nature in a safe, legal fashion. Real criminals, he states, read no detective novels; they have no need to. Conversely, the readers of detective novels have no need to become criminals, since their readings permit them to rid themselves of their dormant criminal instincts innocently and harmlessly (64). Detective stories, then, are seductive because they offer a glimpse into the forbidden worlds that exist within the reader himself. Both of these theories,

however, suggest that readers of detective fiction identify more closely with the criminal than with the detective, directly in contrast with the theory of democratic good and the frequent idolization of the detective himself. The third major theory of the popularity of detective fiction is its purely narrative fashion. Most and Stowe state that the detective story is almost pure narrative. Niceties of setting and characterization add charm, it is true, but the real power of the genre derives from its manipulation of stories and of the ways they can be told (xii). John T. Irwin supports this theory, stating, As a character, Dupin is as thin as the paper hes printed onThe interest of the story moved from heart to head (1). The characters in detective fiction are purposefully left mostly flat and mostly static. Though some may have certain idiosyncrasies, the majority are simple, and the text focuses on the movement of the story. Though Dupins intellect and logic are closely examined, his personality and behavior are loosely defined, creating a character who could easily be molded into another with only minor additions. However, this lack of character and setting places the story in a precarious position, potentially losing its appeal after only one reading. Glenn W. Most summarizes this phenomenon by stating, The mystery of the crime is, in essence, simply a riddle, a question that seems obscure before it is answered but oddly simple afterwards, a puzzle for which there is always allegedly one and only one solution (342). If this is the case, then what could convince a reader to revisit a story whose solution he or she already knows? Albert D. Hutter explores this dilemma and states that the seduction of detective fictions lies in its ability to circumvent this loss of appeal by limiting pure puzzle within their pure narrations. The solution of the story is important but far less important than the process through which the solution is reached. The essential interest, he states, is not so much in a solution as it is in recognition, testing the limits of rational deduction in a world of subjectivity and deceit, a world ultimately irrational (232). Though the reader may know the outcome of a story, it is the superior logical capabilities of the detective that attract him or her, a cool and collected reasoning that the reader wishes to find within himself. Geoffrey Hartman confirms Hutters theory

by suggesting that the puzzle within a detective story is less riddle and more oracle or mime. It contains far more than a simple answer to the question Whodunit? Rather, it pushes the limits of what can be accomplished by observation and intelligent thought. Hartman goes on to state that the seduction of the detective novel is in the fact that it allows the reader to test his or her own limits of rational deduction by involving [him or her] in the interpretation of a mystery (215). Hartman presents the valid theory that detective fiction allows the reader to play along, solving the mystery alongside the detective and testing his or her own capabilities. However, Hartman does not take the theory far enough. The fact that a reader attempts to solve the mystery on her own showcases the role of the reader in the story as far more than just an idle accomplice. The true seduction of detective fiction falls where the line blurs between the reader and the character, fiction and reality, and the reader is able to see himself in the detective. This blurring of roles seems like a purposeful action on the part of the author, as detective authors frequently fail to fully create the world in which the narration occurs. All fiction allows the reader a certain amount of license to construct the world in which the narration takes place by bringing his or her personal experience and understanding to the text. Tzvetan Todorov states that when a reader encounters a text, he or she subjects it to a particular type of reading in order to construct an imaginary universe (67). He suggests that fiction authors frequently attempt to solidify their own imagined worlds in the readers mind by using three main elements: time, point of view, and mode (70). However, detective fiction makes loose use of these three elements. In Edgar Allan Poes The Purloined Letter, time is only fleetingly mentioned. Barely noticeable, small signal phrases, such as In about a month afterwards (Poe 716), offer the only sense a reader has of how much time has elapsed in the narrative. This is because time does not matter to the narrativewhether the proceedings had taken one month or twenty, the focus of the story would still be the antics of the detective. Point of view in detective fiction is used primarily as simply a method of presenting the narration. Though unreliable first person narrators are key to some detective stories, such as Agatha Christies Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, much

detective fiction, including The Purloined Letter, uses point of view as a clear lens, not a distorting filter. Although first person, the narrator in The Purloined Letter plays no part in the action. He does not aid the Minister in committing the crime, and he does not aid Dupin in solving it. He merely provides the lens through which the action can be described. His role is important, for given the conversational nature of the action, the story requires someone to whom the conversation is directed. However, his participation ends there. The mode of delivery is perhaps the most important element of construction differently used in detective fiction. As mentioned, the narrator in The Purloined Letter plays a role only to listen to remarks of others, and those remarks make up the entire story. In the beginning of the tale, the Prefect speaks in great detail about the crime and what has been done to solve it. In the end of the tale, Dupin speaks in great detail about the true solution to the crime and how he discovered it. The narration between the two great monologues is brief and punctuated with smaller pieces of dialogue. This extensive use of conversation plays a role in advancing the plot but does little to provide any context of character or setting, much as suggested by other critics. However, other critics have focused too much on the excess of narration and not enough on the lack of character and setting. Without extensively defined characters, Poe, like all authors of detective fiction, opens his detective to intense interpretation and construction by his reader. And given Alewyn and Pederson-Krags theories of the psychoanalytic appeal of detective fiction and Hartmans theories of the reader interpreting the mystery alongside the detective, it is likely that the imaginary universe constructed by the reader will center on that reader himself. Consider the detective character of Dupin in The Purloined Letter. At the beginning of the story, he is introduced simply as my friend C. Auguste Dupin (Poe 711). The two sit quietly together, and though the narrator indicates that he (the narrator) is engrossed in thought regarding the murders of Rue Morgue, the reader has no indication of the preoccupations of Dupin. At this point, the narration moves immediately into dialogue with the Prefect of Parisian Police. When the Prefect returns to the scene a month later, the reader again encounters Dupin but with

equal ignorance of Dupins true character. Dupin produces the stolen letter and bids the Prefect farewell. He then tells the narrator the story of his success in finding the stolen letter. The reader understands Dupins thought processes, so simple once explained, but still lacks a basic understanding of the man himself. With the understanding of the process but no true character to which to tie it, the reader turns the focus inward and sees him- or herself in place of the detective. The reader is unlikely to transpose his or her own image on other characters, however. Despite the fact that Dupin is the only character with a name, he is also the character with the least development. The narrator, though almost invisible to the plot, offers some insight into his personality by describing his idle thoughts. The Prefect of Police narrates his actions, and by doing so, presents an image of a man very intelligent, very methodical, but very set in his own ways. The Minister is presented as intelligent but duplicitous, willing to blackmail his queen. Even the king and queen have some characterization: the stalwart noble and his coy, coquettish wife. Dupin, however, lacks much of this characterization. His process for solving the mystery is made clear, but his idle thoughts and actions are ignored. He presents the perfect blank slate, one that reflects like a mirror. Albert D. Hutter states that the success of a detective falls in his ability to impersonate, to identify with, and to reproduce the idiosyncratic behavior of the criminal (235). Dupin regains the stolen letter not just by using simple intellect but instead by understanding the process through which it was stolen. However, by doing so, the detective fails to present his own individual character, just the assumed character of the criminal. The reader can then easily impersonate, identify with, and reproduce the idiosyncratic behavior of the detective. Perhaps the reason the detective story so easily reflects the person reading is that it also reflects the person who wrote it. At their core, detective stories focus around one character each, the detective, and the individual who created him is often also the individual after whom they were modeled. Just as the reader reads detective fiction to place himself in the detective, the author creates detective fiction for the purpose of imagining him- or herself in the action.

Dupin was, in fact, Edgar Allan Poes alter-ego of sorts. He pictured himself as the cool, collected detective and wrote his detective stories to bring to focus that ego. John Walsh presents a narrative of another of Poes detective tales, The Mystery of Marie Roget. However, unlike all his other works, this tale is based somewhat on the solution to a real crime mysterythe death of a New York girl, Mary Cecilia Rogers (1). Using only newspaper accounts as evidence, Poe attempted to truly solve this crime, through his character Dupin. Poe claims to have succeeded in this attempt, solving the mystery when no one else could. Walsh states that decades of critics have argued against this success, stating that Poe did not actually solve the murder or that Poe himself was the murderer (5), but the fact remains that Poe attempted to place himself inside the mind of his famous detective. In The Purloined Letter, Poe presents a similar vision of himself as C. Auguste Dupin, the detective who started it all. Stephen Bretzius points out, however, that the character of Dupin is not the only character in whom Poe presents himself. Bretzius suggests that Dupin is Poes most exalted sense of self (679), that indeed, he fancies himself as the great detective. However, Bretzius also directs the reader to another character about whom little is known. While Dupin tells the narrator of his exploits in stealing the letter, he speaks of a lunatic or a drunkard who created a disturbance with a musket in the street (Poe 723). That lunatic was hired by Dupin to create a disturbance. Bretzius suggests that the intellectual man who hired the lunatic was indeed the same man as the lunatic, for while Dupin is Poes highest alter ego, the lunatic or drunk is his most diminished (679). Because Poe wrote himself into his stories, his characters are designed to reflect those other than just the character. The detective story is popular because it reflects the reader in the detective, and that character blurring occurs because of the character blurring that existed when the story was first penned. Detective fiction has been popular ever since it was invented by Edgar Allan Poe in the first half of the 19th century. Stories of crimes, but more important, those who solve them, have grown in popularity over the past 150 years to the point where John Irwin considers them the genre defining this era, an age dominated by science

and technology, an age characterized by mentalwork-as-analysis (xvi). For that is primarily what detective fiction presents: mental work as analysis. It is that careful analysis that attracts readers, but not, as some have suggested, because of its truths of about the nature of society, the psychoanalytic theories that it emulates, or the pure narration around which it is based. The true seduction of detective fiction is the detective, an individual with skills in observation and analysis. Because each detective contains the hidden desired personalities of his or her author, he or she also contains the hidden desired personalities of his or her readers, drawing those readers through the most subtle of seduction.

Works Cited
Alewyn, Richard. The Origin of the Detective Novel. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 62-78. Print. Bretzius, Stephen. The Figure-Power Dialectic: Poes Purloined Letter. MLN 110.4 (1995): 679-691. Web. 27 Sept. 2011 Hartman, Geoffrey H. Literature High and Low: The Case of the Mystery Story. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 210229. Print Hutter, Albert D. Dreams, Transformations, and Literatures: The Implications of Detective Fiction. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 230-251. Print. Irwin, John T. The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Print. Most, Glenn W. The Hippocratic Smile: John le Carre and the Traditions of the Detective Novel. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 341-365. Print. Most, Glenn W., and William W. Stowe, eds. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. Print. Pederson-Krag, Geraldine. Detective Stories and the Primal Scene. The Poetics of Murder: Detective Fiction & Literary Theory. Ed. Glenn W. Most and William W. Stowe. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. 13-20. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Purloined Letter. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter Seventh Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. 711-724. Print. Todorov, Tzvetan. Reading as Construction. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Ed. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. 67-82. Print. Walsh, John. Poe the Detective: The Curious Circumstances Behind The Mystery of Marie Roget. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1968.