“Bluebeard” versus Black British Women’s Writing: Criminal-authors, reader-detectives, and deadly plots in Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox

A story about St. John Fox’s flailing marriage to Daphne Fox and purported adultery with Mary Foxe, Helen Oyeyemi’s 2011 novel Mr. Fox artfully remasters the age-old “Bluebeard” fairytale. Set in the U.S.A. of the 1930s, the mecca of hardboiled detective fiction during its Golden Age, Oyeyemi’s metafictional novel reads like a murder mystery. Both her readers and her characters are expected to decipher the hidden meanings behind Mr. Fox’s narrative foul play and, in doing so, they turn into detectives. Drawing on Heta Pyrhönen’s Bluebeard Gothic take on reader-detectives and criminal-authors and Peter Hühn’s association of reading and writing motifs with detective fiction, the present article puts the love triangle between author St. John, muse Mary, and wife Daphne under investigation. It is suggested that Oyeyemi’s ménage à trois can be interpreted as an anthropomorphic metaphor for the on-going power struggle between the patriarchal literary canon, established feminist literature, and up-and-coming woman writers, such as Black British author Helen Oyeyemi herself. With the writing of Mr. Fox, Oyeyemi appears to mirror the assertiveness and inquisitiveness of Bluebeard’s last wife, whose disobedient questioning of Bluebeard’s canonical authority leads her to discover, denounce, and warn other women about his murderous nature.

Jaar van publicatie:2020

Toegankelijkheid:Open