Sex, Lies, and Murder: Feminized Detective Fiction and the English Estate Novel

In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Ian McEwan’s Atonement, the protagonists unravel the events of egregious crimes and their own complicity with the central tragedies. Set against the backdrop of crumbling English estates, the crimes highlight the erosion of the British ruling class at the onset of the 20th century. The unnamed narrator of Rebecca and Briony, the narrator of Atonement, are bound by their youth, age, and gender in their respective investigations into the sinister events that plague the history of Manderley and the Tallis estate, respectively. We see how the English estate is a hotbed of illicit affairs, sexual predation, and the grisly demise of its inhabitants through the eyes of our naive narrators. This stark contrast of naivete and immorality subverts the traditional image of the country estate as a place of restraint and virtue within English literature. This essay argues that Du Maurier and McEwan infuse their versions of the English estate novel genre with the elements of detective fiction to destabilize the traditional idealization of the English aristocracy within literature