Women and violence from the crime writer’s perspective

Karin Slaughter, in Friday’s Financial TImes, writes about the growing trend of female crime writers like Mo Hayder, Denise Mina and Tess Gerritsen–as well as herself–who explore the effects of violence against women in a more up-front way than was considered the norm not so long ago. Even when people ask (and keep asking) how she could write so graphically about sexual assault and its aftermath, Slaughter has an answer ready for them:

In Blindsighted, my first novel, Grant County coroner Sara Linton investigates some gruesome rape cases, and the secret violence in her own past comes to light in the course of the plot. As I toured the country with it, I was often questioned about my motives for writing about sexual assault in such a frank way. I wanted to show violence for what it is. I made a conscious decision to not gloss over the events that affect my characters’ lives. Similarly, the character Maureen O’Donnell, introduced in Garnet Hill, Denise Mina’s award-winning first novel, speaks to women’s experiences in a refreshingly realistic way. Maureen was sexually abused by her father as a child. Like many adult survivors, she anaesthetises herself with drugs and alcohol. Her family have turned their backs on her, refusing to face the fact of her abuse. The rawness of Maureen’s need, and her furious self-destruction, key into the silent rage of child sexual abuse, opening a door that has been tightly closed in fiction until now. Maureen does not need a man to save her. She needs truth and clarity, and the only way she can move forward is if she finds these answers on her own.

This focus on recovery – wanting to understand the “why” – is something that defines women’s crime fiction. While men are certainly capable of writing about women’s issues in sensitive ways, there is something about a woman’s perspective on violence against women that cuts closer to the core. If anything, I think male writers as well as readers benefit from this perspective. Family, friends, fathers, brothers – all the people in a victim’s life are touched. Violent crimes rarely leave just one victim.

A lot of what Slaughter has to say ties into the sometimes-spoken, but usually implicit, notion of “what’s a nice girl like you doing writing about such graphic themes?” It’s certainly not expected of women, and yet the irony is that it’s the female crime writers who almost tend to overcompensate for this. BLINDSIGHTED, IMO, was an example of such, and I don’t think Slaughter really created an effective balance between the violence and the storytelling until her third novel, A FAINT COLD FEAR (where Lena’s self-destructive behavior truly goes into overdrive) and especially with her new one, INDELIBLE. Hayder’s BIRDMAN was widely considered to be overly graphic, but her standalone TOKYO has been mostly lauded in the UK world. Mina’s Garnethill trilogy really struck a good balance, and the result were such visceral reads that’s hard to return to them, but it’s easy to recognize their beautiful quality that cuts right to the heart of the issue of aftermath.

I hope that as more women writers make themselves heard in the genre and take similar chances that they learn from these writers and strive for further balance and nuance with their work. There’s no question that the issue of violence against women can be explored even further, but the danger is that if women writers are seen to be too graphic about it, that they diminish the impact even further than when a man writes about brutality. It’s always saddened me that the ones who are the likeliest to undercut and undermine women are other women–and the same would certainly apply to those reading and writing crime fiction as well.

(spats nod: Euro Crime)