Course

ENGL-401 - English Senior Inquiry

Document Type

Student Paper

Publication Date

11-25-2024

Disciplines

English Language and Literature

Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement

While critics have often assumed that cozy mysteries are detached from the real world, the case of Charlotte Murray Russell shows that her novels are actually an insightful reflection into how women were treated by authority figures during Russell’s life. Although some may think the cozy mysteries of Charlotte Murray Russell only serve as cheap entertainment, when analyzing these novels at a deeper level, we can find changes in how women were treated in the period between the 1940s and 1950s. When comparing the police officer George Hammond’s interactions with the amateur detective Jane Amanda Edwards in The Message of the Mute Dog to his interactions with her in Cook Up a Crime, we see that his progressive refusal to work with her can serve as a parallel to women in the post-World War II era facing hostility in the workplace.