The Queens of Crime
46 pages • 1-hour read
Marie BenedictThe Queens of Crime
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Themes
Challenges Facing Women in 20th-Century Europe
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of gender discrimination, rape, sexual violence, graphic violence, and death.
In The Queens of Crime, the lives of Dorothy Sayers and May Daniels reflect the many challenges that women faced in early 20th-century Europe. Powerful men take advantage of both Dorothy and May, preying upon their vulnerability, and both struggle with the question of having children. As a young woman, Dorothy accepted social expectations for virginity in women and abstained from sex. The first man she loved abandoned her when she refused to have sex with him, and Dorothy was “heartbroken.” After the breakup, feeling “vulnerable and lonely,” she had “too many glasses of wine” (194), and a neighbor she barely knew pressured her into sex, resulting in a pregnancy. When the man learned of the pregnancy, he “ran for the hills […] never to be seen or heard from again” (210). This episode suggests that the father of Dorothy’s child, after taking advantage of her vulnerability, easily escaped responsibility and shame when she could not.
Similarly, powerful men preyed on May Daniels, with tragic results. In her final letter, May writes that she “naïvely accepted” her boyfriend Louis Williams’s desire for secrecy about their relationship and was “enraged and hurt” (232) when she learned he was married with a family. Her emphasis on her naivete and her emotions reflects her sense that he took advantage of her. The letter also describes how her “innocence was taken from [her] in an act that brought [her] great shame” (232) when an unnamed man launched a “surprise assault against [her] will” (232). The novel later reveals the rapist as Sir Arthur Chapman, a powerful member of the aristocracy who describes May as “repayment for the chorus line of actresses” (286) he provided for Louis. Louis and Sir Arthur’s treatment of May reflects their belief that women are interchangeable and disposable.
Both Dorothy and May struggle with the decision to have children. When Dorothy’s husband, Mac, suggests that they have a baby together, Dorothy feels “both possibility and trepidation” (44). She argues that “much would need to be resolved beforehand” (44), including a promise that she can continue writing. At the time, attitudes about working mothers were divisive. As May’s letter notes, “[P]regnant women aren’t allowed to keep working in any job even if they are married, and if they are single, well, they are practically run out of the workplace” (233). The novel suggests social prejudice against working mothers as another structural challenge facing women in 20th-century Britain.
Problems in the Criminal Justice System
Throughout The Queens of Crime, Dorothy’s amateur investigation gives her firsthand insight into problems in the criminal justice system. The novel suggests that the sensationalism in crime media and the exclusion of female detectives can prevent justice from being served. While investigating the May Daniels disappearance alongside her journalist husband, Mac, and his colleagues, Dorothy realizes that the goal of crime journalism is “sensationalism instead of justice” (45). Mac and the others publish unfounded rumors about May, accusing her of living a “loose life” as a “naughty nurse” and suggesting that she died in a “drug den” (84). Dorothy grows increasingly disturbed by the media’s willingness to “make headlines out of [May’s] terrible demise—in the name of their own gain” (76). In addition to finding this attitude “terribly upsetting” (137), Dorothy acknowledges that this sensationalistic coverage helps “police to excuse their failure in solving May’s disappearance and finding her killer—by laying the blame at her feet” (85). Her analysis of the relationship between the police and crime reporters suggests that sensationalist reporting can prevent justice from being served by inefficient departments.
The success of the female amateur detectives suggests that one cause of police inefficiency is the exclusion of women from police departments. Early in the novel, Dorothy theorizes that “a woman’s fate often poses such complex problems that it requires other women to find the solution” (35), and the novel proves this theory true. Dorothy and the others twice notice clues that the novel suggests would be inaccessible to male investigators. Upon discovering expensive and fashionable clothes among May Daniels’s belongings, Dorothy immediately recognizes that something is wrong. She wonders whether “a run-of-the-mill policeman” (225) would have “recognized the brand and realized how irregular it was for a nurse to own not one but two of these garments” (117). Later, Dorothy finds a key in a small compartment at the bottom of May’s purse. As she steals it, she realizes that “the police had no idea the key was there in the first place” (225). The novel suggests that, as women, Dorothy and the others can see details that male investigators might ignore. The fact that the women solve a crime that men can’t (or won’t) solve indicates that the exclusion of women from the criminal justice system presents a serious problem.
Class Expectations in British Culture
The Queens of Crime suggests that the concept of class was a powerful influence in 20th-century British culture and that societal expectations differed dramatically depending on one’s class. The years between World War I and World War II were a time of intense social change. As Dorothy notes, “[M]oney and land had gone hand in hand with title and rank since time immemorial, but taxes and death and the economic depression have eroded the status quo” (164), making it easier than ever before for people to cross the strict class structures that had long governed British society.
Jimmy Williams makes significant sacrifices to maintain his family’s place in the British upper class. Even though he has “made quite the name for himself” (165) in the London business world, his working-class background and the scandal of his illegitimate birth exclude him from the elite of London society. Having proven himself financially, Jimmy is desperate to ingratiate his family among the social elite, so he arranges for his son Louis to marry “the daughter of [a] broke baronet who could give him a tangential tie to the aristocratic class” (272). When the Queens of Crime threaten to expose Louis’s infidelity in the local press, Jimmy decides to admit to May’s murder rather than risk his son’s place in the aristocracy. Jimmy’s willingness to sacrifice his freedom to secure his family’s position in the upper class reflects the importance of social class in British culture.
While Jimmy is desperate to leave his working-class roots behind, Dorothy benefits from her ability to speak to people of all classes. In particular, her willingness to interview working-class witnesses allows her to pursue threads ignored by police who didn’t believe that their words were “worth recording” because of their class. The waitress known as Madame Brat provides valuable information about May Daniels’s final day in Boulogne, leading Dorothy to conclude that “the police were fools to dismiss her” (67). Later, a young woman working as an assistant in a hat shop provides more information about May and tells Dorothy that the police “didn’t even take my statements about the girls seriously” (71). Ultimately, Dorothy and the others take interviews from three working-class witnesses “who interacted with the nurses but whose names aren’t referenced in the police report” (99). The fact that these testimonies are excluded suggests that prejudices against working-class people could have tragic results.
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