Vere Gordon Childe - Phryne's archaeologist friend?

Today is the one year anniversary of this blog, my digital baby. And in what better way can I celebrate than write a post about two of my favourite subjects: Phryne Fisher and archaeology. The former was actually the subject of the first real blog post I wrote on this blog, a couple of days after the introductory one.

My view on Phryne has changed a little as I have had more time to think about her as a character, but since I started the books I have also started to gain new knowledge about her, so I think an update is needed. However, this post will not be so much about her character as it will be about a mentioning of a friend of hers in the book version of Blood and Circuses. We do not get to know much about this friend other than it is a man and he is an archaeologist who have been bitten by a lion.

Phryne had been told that the moment before the prey was seized by the predator, it went limp. It ceased to fear or care. An archaeologist friend had talked about the moment when a lion's teeth had closed on his shoulder. Dreamy he had said. The world had ceased to matter. The last mercy, he had said to creatures destined to be dinner was that they went down sweetly and gently to death, reconciled to their place on the menu.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses

As an archaeologist myself, I have been wondering about her archaeologist friend and I think I have found a male archaeologist, contemporary with Phryne, that would fit quite well even if I have no clue if he was ever bitten by a lion.

V. Gordon Childe

His name is Vere Gordon Childe and he is viewed as one of the most prominent archaeologists of his generation. He was born in Sydney in Australia in 1892, but througout most of his career he lived in Great Britain.

Childe came to study classics at the University of Sydney, before moving to England to study Classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. During his time at Oxford he became a socialist, active in the campaign against the First World War which he saw as coerced by imperialists and which hurt the European workers.

In 1917, he returned to Australia, but due to his socialist engagement, he could not find work in academia and engaged himself in the Australian Labor Party. However, working for them, he became critical towards their politics and took another step to the left on the political scale and engaged himself in the left political movement called Industrial Workers of the World.

Childe emigrated to London again in 1921 where he got work as a librarian at the Royal Anthropological Institute and he also travelled the European continent and brought home the notion of culture from German archaeology to British archaeology. In his book The Danube in Prehistory from 1929, he defined it as:

We find certain types of remains - pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites and house forms - constantly recurring together. Such a complex of associated traits we shall call a "cultural group" or just a "culture". We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today we would call "a people".

How the notion of culture has been used and is still used (both implicitly and explicitly) in archaeology is a subject I love to discuss and I do think Childe's definition still has more relevance for how archaeologists treat the concept today than contemporary archaeologists in general would like to admit. To express my thoughts on the subject would make up at least ten other posts. One thing about his archaeological influence do I need to clarify though.

There are three major theoretical paradigm that usually come up in archaeological publications and classes and Childe sort of has a foot in all three of them. I will here use a lot of -isms that might be tricky to understand if you are not used to an academic language. In those cases, I have linked to the Wikipedia articles about them. If you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask in a comment or on the link post for this entry.

• Chronologically, the first one is usually call Culture-historical Archaeology, Culture Archaeology or simply Traditional -archaeology. This paradigm has a less explicitly defined theoretical base than the later two, but in short the foundation can be found in evolutionism and diffusionism. The notion of culture (pretty much as it was defined by Childe in the quote above) was central to understand the archaeological material. Bruce G Trigger in his book A History of Archaeological Thought (2006) divides up this paradigm between one earlier he calls Evolutionary archaeology and the later Culture-historical archaeology, but most archaeologists do not seem to make the same distinction and the Culture-historical archaeology is very much based on evolutionism also.
• Because of the misuse of Culture-historical Archaeology in Nazi-Germany, archaeology went into a crisis after the Second World War and came out of it by combining a positivistic philosophical theory with a functionalistic view on society and culture into what is normally called Processual Archaeology or New Archaeology. American archaeologist Lewis Binford is normally considered to be the founder, but Childe actually did "experiment" with a functionalistic approach to archaeology before him.
• Postprocessual Archaeology is the newest of the three major theoretical paradigm in archaeology and does not only contain one single theoretical approach but many, for example structuralism, post-structuralism, hermeneutics, gender theory and marxism. The main thing they have in common is their critic of the rigid positivistic approach of New Archaeology and even here you can glimpse the influence from Childe. He turned to marxism to help him in his studies of European prehistory shortly after his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1935.

This is only a short account of Childe's contribution to archaeology. Describing it all would make this entry far too long, like I said above. Therefore I have decided to focus on his personal life.

In 1927, he became Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and took an interest in the Neolithic period on the Orkney Islands. He did some excavations there, the most famous one of the Neolithic village Skara Brae between 1928 and 1930. From 1947 to 1957 he also worked as director of the Institute of Archaeology, London and together with Stuart Piggott and Grahame Clarke he founded The Prehistoric Society.

Upon retiring, he moved home to his native Australia, where he settled down in Blue Mountains for awhile before commiting suicide there in 1957.

Kerry Greenwood uses real life aviator Herbert Hinkler in Ruddy Gore so she is not opposed to the idea of using real life people in a fictional setting. It is, however, very much unclear if Greenwood even knows about Childe (even though he is one of the more influential archaeologists, he might not be known outside of the field). Considering his nationality, where he was active and when, however, I think it is a possibiltiy that Phryne would actually know him.

As I have said before, I am not so found of the comparisson between Phryne and Indiana Jones and to be honest I think the annonced title of the upcoming Miss Fisher film, The Crypt of Tears to fit much better with the latter than the former (which worries me immensely, but I still hope my worries to be unjustified!), if you see Phryne's archaeologist friend as Childe, they do, in fact, have something in common. After all, I have long thought "Indy" might have read too much of Childe's work and he is mentioned by him in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from 2008.

Edit 27 April 2017: Someone on Facebook made me aware of the fact that the person who was bitten by lion that was referenced in Blood and Circuses was none other than David Livingstone ("I presume.") (1813-1873) and linked to this article about the incident. However, he was not really an archaeologists, mostly considered to be an explorer and missionary.





References

• Bjørnar Olsen 2003. Från ting till text. Teoretiska perspektiv i arkeologisk forskning. svensk översättning: Sven-Erik Torhell, Lund
• Bruce G. Trigger 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought, Cambridge
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._Gordon_Childe 

Photo of Childe was borrowed from here.

Sports teams and Phryne Fisher's age - thoughts about Marked for Murder

"All is fair in love and football Miss Fisher."

~ Jack Robinson, Marked for Murder

 I have written all about my thoughts and feelings about the terrorist attack on Stockholm on 7th April 2017 here and here and this entry will not really be about that. More about thoughts I got from walking on Drottninggatan last week.

I talked about the Jersey barriers in the shape of lions in the latest of my entries about the Stockholm attack. They have become sort of symbols for the attack and almost every single one of them has at least one flower bouquet one its head or body and some of them are almost covered with flowers, flags, candles, teddy bears and text messages.

One of the most powerful things from my walk along Drottninggatan last Wednesday was three of the lions standing in a row just in front of the crosswalk to the departement store Åhléns that the truck hit. Each one of them was completely covered but their faces and on top of their head they had one scarf from one of the three major sports club in Stockholm: AIK, Djurgården and Hammarby. Some of the supporters of those three teams are not always the best of friends and it is not uncommon for matches to end in violence. This is why I find the three lions representing each one of those teams such a powerful tribute. They stand together in all the tragedy. (Unfortunately, due to the big crowd surrounding them, my photos did not turn out good. The lions you see here to the right are others.)

The scarfs and the unification in tragedy of the three sports club in Stockholm, made me think about the episode Marked for Murder in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. The episode's major theme is Australian football and the plot involves the two teams Abbotsford and West Melbourne. As far as I have understood these two teams are fictional, but an Australian friend of mine tells me that Collingwood and Carlton which are mentioned by Phryne and Jack do exist.

 The sport is described as a mix between European football and rugby by Wikipedia and it was founded in Victoria (the state Melbourne is in) in 1858. To be honest I do find the sport a bit confusing just reading about it, but I am sure it all makes sense when you watch a game or play it. I did find a video explaining the rules on Youtube:

You can also read more about the Australian Football League (AFL) here and about the Swedish one (AFL Sweden) here. (I actually was surprised that there were quite a few Swedish teams. I have never heard about it over here. The first Swedish team was, according to Wikipedia Helsingborg Saints, founded in 1993.)

In Marked for Murder the games themselves play minor roles. It is not until the very end that we see the very beginning of a match between Abbotsford and West Melbourne. Instead the plot is all about intrigues behind the football field. Phryne is called in by Bert (an Abbotsford supporter) to investigate the theft of Abbotford's coach, Joe Maclean's lucky hat. When Phryne is there, the team's star Harry "the Hangman" Harper is found (fittingly enough) hanged with a West Melbourne scarf in Abbotsford's locker room. Phryne, of course, calls Jack and he and Hugh arrive to help Phryne investigates.

The episode is tied in with the overarching plotline about Jack's ex-wife Rosie and her family and there is some quite interesting use of foreshadowing. You can argue, that you already at the end of Murder Most Scandalous starts to see what man George Sanderson really is, but in this one he really shows his true self. As a West Melbourne fan, he oppose Jack bringing in the West Melbourne star Stan Baines and he does not hesitate using his personal knowledge of Jack being an Abbotsford supporter for personal gain.

Jack: "Rosie, I thought you'd returned to the West Melbourne fold"
Dot: "Yes, father would have loved that, but unfortunately for him, Sidney's a fervent Abbotsford man. Another one."

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Marked for Murder

I disussed how conservative Rosie is in my entry about her and Jack back in November 2016 and this is expressed again in what team she supports. Her father is a West Melbourne fan, but the quote above indicates that she changed alliances to Abbotsford while married to Jack and now she is back as an Abbotsford supporter because her new fiancé, Sidney Fletcher is. This, women changing loyalty to their husband's team is further developed by the discussion Bert and Dot are having later in the episode.

Bert: "Lucky I didn't tell him you're a West Melbourne girl. Until you hook up with Hugh Collins, that is."
Dot: "If Hugh marries me, I don't see why I should convert."
Bert: "No choice. He'll want to take his kids to the game."
Dot: "I'll divide them up. Just like my mum did. Girls for the West and boys for Abbotsford."
Bert: "It's people like you who bring footy clubs down, Dottie!" 

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Marked for Murder

This makes me think that women were not thought of as real sports fan but needed to be loyal to whatever sports team their fathers/husbands supported. When seeing Phryne at the entrance to the Abbotsford locker room, Jack also seems surprised ("A football ground Miss Fisher? The last place I'd expect to find you.") also indicating that sports are not really meant for women. Phryne then tells him that she has been a football fan since she was little, but that she is a lapsed Collingwood supporter since their game against Carlton 1910. This conversation and the addition to it at the end of the episode containing the explanation to why she is lapsed.

I have long wondered about TV-Phryne's age. In the books she is born 1900, and is therefore 28 at the time the books start. TV Phryne seems to be a bit older (Essie Davis is all beautiful and does look younger than her real age of 46-47, but I do not really think she can pass for 28...) and a lot of other plotlines indicates this as well. However in Marked for Murder she states that she was 10 years old at the time her mother forced her to leave her football interest when she tried smuggling Carlton's newest recruit a beer at their game against Collingwood in 1910. This is the most concrete example of Phryne's age we get in the show I think and it indicates that TV- and book-Phryne are the same age.

Ruddy Gore - TV vs Book

While Ruddy Gore is the 7th book about Phryne Fisher, it is the 6th episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. Like in most cases this far, the plot has been reduced and changed somewhat for the TV adaptation. To be honest, I really do find part of it to benefit the pacing of the story. The theatre felt quite overcrowded in the book and, like I said in my book entry about Ruddy Gore, I did have some problems taking an interest in all the cast and crew. They are all quite egocentric and in love with each other.

I found the best part with the book to be Phryne's date with Lin Chung and the issues it provoked with interracial relationships at the time. This issue was treated by the TV show in the episode of The Green Mill Murder and I was pleasantly surprised to see Phryne contemplating it as much as she did. Same goes for her finding it sad that she is going to lose one of her lover, Dr Mark Fielding,who returns from Flying too High, to the nurse-trained actress Mollie Webb.

Phryne with Bernard Tarrant and Lin Chung

I do love that Phryne is adventurous and reckless and sort of does whatever she wants and does not care about what people think. However, I do find those moments when she gets emotional. Especially in regards to her relations to other people. It keeps her grounded. Makes her human. Even though she only has loose liasons with men, she does care about them. This caring for her lovers is taken out of the TV show almost entirely except for in the case of Lin Chung. (Again on the subject of recurring characters and plots that is evident in the book, but not on the show.) Besides Lin (and Jack Robinson of course), we do not get to see any of her "gentlemen callers" ever again. The case does rattle Phryne in a slightly different way though. When a sand bag falls, Jack saves her and it falls on Gwilym Evans (the actor Dot Williams has a celebrity crush on) instead, killing him. This incident happens in the book too, but in a slightly different way and for different reasons.

'Don't make the mistake of thinking their emotions are all put on. They're real people underneath, just exxaggerated. They talk to me', she observed, 'because I care for them. They call me Mum. The're quivering little things under all that glamour. They're always afraid that no one really loves them, that they're going to fail. But they're addicted to applause.'

~Miss Pomeroy, Ruddy Gore

The ghost of Dorothea Curtis

Even though I do prefer the simplification of the plot in the TV episode in this case, I do find it sad that they have left out one of the central themes of the book: wanting/needing to be seen. I really think this is a basic human instinct. Not that everyone does need to stand on a stage to fulfill it, but I think everyone feels a need to be acknowledged and taken seriously from time to time. The setting of the plot in a theatre and also to a certain extent the apperance of "a ghost" work well to enhance this theme.

'I bet none of you have ever handled stage machinery.'
The murmurs increased.
'Of course not, we're actors, not technicals', said Cameron Armour. 'If I'd wanted to be a tradesman, I wouldn't have done ll that voice training.' Phryne began to understand Mr Brawn's rage and scorn.

~Ruddy Gore

Phryne and Dot

It is not that the show does not deal with this subject. In fact it does so to a larger extent than the books seem to be doing actually. Phryne's employed taxi driver Bert Johnson tells his partner Cecil Yates that he is hopless when it comes to collecting strays in Cocaine Blues which is a trait also true of their employer. Both in the books and in the TV show, Phryne has an ability to really see people who needs it. She cares for them and encourages them to reach their full potential. She does not ever pamper them, which can be seen by the way she treats the female star of the theatre production Leila Esperance in the book.

Finnish author Tove Jansson is considered one of the giants in the children's litterature of the Nordic countries and her works about the Moomins are known worldwide. I have not talked about her before on this blog, because I have long felt a need to reread her books before I do so. However, one of her short stories, Det osynliga barnet (The invisible child) is very much worth mentioning here.

In the short story the character Tooticki brings the girl Ninni to the Moomin family. Ninni has been taken care of by a horrible older lady who did not like her. Because of this, she has lost all her confidence and turned completely invisible and the only way to know she is there is by the sound of the little bell, the lady had put around the girl's neck. Ninni is placed under the care and love of Moominmamma and little by little she becomes visible again.

I feel like there are certain similarities in Moominmamma's treatment of Ninni and how Phryne handles Dot in the TV show. When she first meets the younger woman in Cocaine Blues, Dot is mainly invisible. She works as a maid at the Andrews's house, but you cannot say that she draws much attention to herself. As she comes to work for Phryne however, Dot starts to develope as a person. She finds her confidence and role in life without giving herself away at the same time. And Phryne is there, nudging, caring and encouraging. You can see her become surprised by Dot's strict religious reasonings of the modern world in Cocaine Blues, but she never judge her.

"When I came to work for you, Miss, I was afraid of everything. And you taught me so many things, and you made me brave, and you made me happy."

~ Dot Williams, Death do us part

Dot is quite different in the books. She is much more timid and not as active in Phryne's cases as she is on the TV show. With Phryne's mentoring, TV-Dot starts learning the detective skills and from time to time ends up solving the crimes to a certain extent. In a way I think Dot is the main character who develope most throughout the show. I prefer the more active TV-Dot over the passive book one. The friendship between the two women in the books is just wonderful and they certainly love and respect each other (even so much that Phryne continue to wear the St Christopher medal that Dot gives her before she goes away to the circus in Blood and Circuses). However, I do miss Dot doing her own sleuthing and Phryne teaching her the ways of the detective. She does participate from time to time (like helping Phryne go through all the dressing rooms at the theatre in Ruddy Gore) but it is just not the same and the character does not go through the same evolution in the books as in the TV series.


The image of the cover of Det osynliga barnet, did I borrow from here.

Kerry Greenwood - Ruddy Gore

Ruddy Gore is the 7th book about Phryne Fisher in which Phryne goes to the theatre to watch Ruddigore and celebrate the aviator Bert Hinkler who has flown from Croydon to Darwin.

The Bert Hinkler of the book is probably Herbert John Louis Hinkler the first man to fly solo from England to Australia, reducing the flight record of 28 days to 15. This all happened in February 1928, which had me somewhat confused about the timeline of the books, so I did a little bit of sleuthing through the books I have already read as to what dates are mentioned.

• Cocaine Blues: No dates mentioned at all as far as I could discern. (If you have noticed any indication as to any dates, please tell me in a comment.) 
• Flying too High: Amelia McNaughton mentions that her father wanted to marry her off like it was unbelieveable to happen in 1928. The date for her brother Bill's trial is set to 17th August 1928 as well and there is a mention of it being a winter's day, which for Australia would mean a day somewhere between June and August. 
•  Murder on the Ballarat Train: The murder of Anne Henderson took place on the night of 21th June 1928 and at the end of May that same year, Bobby Matthew's Megatherium Trust crasched, ruining Anne Henderson.
• Death at Victoria Dock: Bert and Cec are invited to dinner and mention that there will be a strike on 10th September and Phryne says it is the 1st September that day. Like Amelia, Phryne cannot believe someone was shooting at her because it is 1928.  
• The Green Mill Murder: No year is mentioned, but it seems to be set in October which is mentioned as Phryne is flying up to the mountains to meet Victor Freeman. 
• Blood and Circuses: The date is stated already in the beginning as Mr Christopher's body is found at the boarding house in which he lives. Jack Robinson, Constable Harris and Sergeant Grossmith also talks about the society getting harder and colder in 1928, so a police strike would not be so easy as it had been before. Also, when Phryne feels like her persona is slipping back to its primitive roots, her contemporary identity is refered to as "1928 Phryne". 
• The dates in Ruddy Gore are somewhat diffuse. 1928 is mentioned and based on what the boy Herbert Cowl (I wonder if he is named Herbert because of the other references to Hinkler.) who becomes Phryne's assistent tells her, it sounds like it would be a little before christmas. Phryne also tells the theatre manager Bernard Tarrant that she has had enough performance for a while and tells Dot Williams that this is not going to be like her time at the circus and she will come home every night. Phryne also have the St Christopher medal that Dot gave to her as she was leaving for the circus. So the book is definitely supposed to be set after Blood and Circuses.

Based on the preface of the book, there was a production of Ruddigore in Melbourne in 1928 (but it did not include any murderers). After a lot of hard googling I have not been able to deduce if there where a gala performance of the play for Hinkler for real and books on 1920's theatre in Australia has turned out to be pretty rare here in Sweden. Therefore my thoughts about the timeline will remain what it is. They might just have waited with celebrating Hinkler until November/December?

Anyway, Phryne and her friend Bunji Ross (one of those recurring characters of the books that I have talked about before) are at the theatre to celebrate Bert Hinkler's triumph. However, the performance is cut short when one of the main actors and then his understudy are poisoned. Phryne starts to investigate, but the main suspect seems to be the ghost of the late actress Dorothea Curtis who died playing Ruddigore in London thirty years prior to the events in Ruddy Gore.

'Could you call up a spirit for me? I've been trying to find one lately and she is very difficult to locate.'

~Phryne Fisher, Ruddy Gore

It is also in this book that we meet the character Lin Chung for the first time. On the way to the theatre, Phryne and Bunji helps him and his grandmother out of a fight and they are cleaned up at the Lins's house before they are off to the theatre. Throughout the entire book, Chinese men are following Phryne and she seems a bit worried about it.

Not only is the timeline between the books a bit confusing, but at the theatre history seems to be repeating itself with resemblances to thirty years prior. Phryne is also thinking how her life has turned into a comic opera. There are a lot of references back to Dorothea and Phryne is sure that her death was not an accident.

Hitherto I have liked each book about Phryne Fisher more and more, but this is a break in that trend. I prefer both Blood and Circuses and The Green Mill Murder over this one. I liked the plot and the theatre milieu and the world around the production of Ruddigore, but even though it was depicted just as thoroughly as the circus in Blood and Circuses which I really enjoyed, I thought this a bit tiresome. I also had problems connecting to all the people at the theatre. Everyone seemed to be quite full of themselves and they were all in love with each other and also left each other heartbroken. It was like a drama series on TV. Adding the Chinese and it got a bit messy. I still liked the book just fine. It was a fun read and it did not put me off the books.

Phryne and Jack - the first meeting

I have already written my thoughts about this on Facebook, but I thought I should write it here as well.

In the TV version of Cocaine Blues, we see Phryne Fisher meet Detective Inspector Jack Robinson for the first time in Lydia Andrews's bathroom where her husband John Andrews has been found murdered. I really do think their reaction to each other here is very interesting and it sets up the tone for the entire show in regards to their relationship.

I have talked a lot about Phryne as a character before and how complex she is in regards not least to gender norms (The latest was in the entries Blood and Circuses - TV vs book and Phryne and the gender norms of the 1920's.) and in this particular scene in the bathroom we actually get to see her using both her feminine and her masculine sides.

Phryne is good at charming people. She usually either does it with her "feminine" flirty, seductive side or her "masculine" cleverness and cunning. She is also good at knowing when to use which. The fact that she is not so good when it comes to Jack in this scene tells a lot about what a special place he will come to have in her life after this first meeting. Jack is not exactly like other men in  Phryne's life and because of this she often ends up hurting him by treating him like she would any other men.

Phryne first tries flirting with Jack. This action gives us a small glimpse at her past as a poor girl in Collingwood and also how she has been dealing with the police before. This comes up again in for example Blood and Money when she tells Jack about the swallow brooch and she gives us a much more thorough view about it.

Phryne: You know, the first thing I ever stole, the police let me keep. 
Jack: Really? 
Phryne: This little brooch in the shape of a swallow. I saw it in the pawnbroker's window, and I coveted it for a whole year until I seized the opportunity.
Jack: And you were caught? 
Phryne: Well, someone lagged. 
Jack: Ah. Then you talked your way out of it. 
Phryne: Well, I told the police that my grandmother had given it to me and my father had hocked it for a bottle of beer.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Blood and Money

Unlike Constable Hugh Collins, who she wins over straight away in the bathroom scene in Cocaine Blues, Jack turns out not to be so easily charmed. Therefore, we see Phryne changing tactics using her cleverness and cunning side instead. But, before giving a thorough analysis of the crime scene. Interestingly enough, she at the same time, also jokes a bit about the stereotype Jack seems to think she is.

Jack: Miss Fisher, I appreciate your curiosity for crime.
Phryne: Well, every lady needs a hobby.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Cocaine Blues

It is evident by the looks Hugh and Jack give each other that they did not expect her competence, but Jack still will not let himself get charmed by her. So Phryne tries again, going back to the flirting and finally makes him give her his card...

Phryne and gender norms of the 1920's

As I have said in my previous two entries there is a lot to talk about Blood and Circuses. However, I felt like the entry about Phryne's character was so long, that I could not discuss everything in one entry. This entry will therefore more or less be considered "left overs" from the Blood and Circuses TV vs book one.

In both TV episode and book, a transexual person is murdered. On TV, the person is called Miss Christopher and has met up with a doctor who promised to help her become a woman. In the books however, he is called Mr. Christopher and seems to want to be treated like a man even though the magician Robert Sheridan falls in love with him and wants to treat him like a woman (Christine). The book also involves Miss Molly Younger who is engaged to Mr Christopher and is as it turns out also transsexual.

Mr. Christopher and Miss Younger. Man-woman and woman-man. They were made for each other and no one else would fit.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses (book)

Interestingly enough, transsexuality sort of fits well into the time period. During the first world war one can say that women broke through a gender wall. They proved that they could drive cars and aeroplane, repair them when needed and also replace them in industries and other businesses. This, more than anything, led to women gaining their democratic rights in many countries. But it also created a new ideal for women.

This first wave of emancipation gave women access to a new world and the ideal symbolised their new freedom and confidence. They were no longer only restricted to the home, but could take their place in the public as well. This clashed against the earlier gender segregations of Western society and the gender norms became visible and could therefore be discussed and renegotiated.

In 1922, Victor Margueritte published the book La Garçonne* which became immensely popular among young women. The book moves around in the borderland between the gender norms. It tells the story of Monique Lerbier who handles her fiancé's infidelity by living a free, hedonistic life-style with multiple sexual partners. The book sold in over one million copies and became a cult book for young women who wanted to rebell against the older gender norms and Victorian prissiness which had sort of trapped their mothers and grandmothers. It created a fashion in which women should dress either in clothes traditionally considered male or in figureless dresses and wear cloches. They were also encouraged to cut their hair short (The winter of 1926 had over 50% of the women in Stockholm short hair.). Margueritte's book is not mentioned (as far as I have read) the Phryne Fisher books, or in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, but it still makes me think about both Phryne and her best friend Elizabeth Macmillan (Mac). I also wonder if it created the so called "lesbian subculture" in Paris that is mentioned in Cocaine Blues (book) when Phryne wonders about Lydia Andrew's sexuality.

Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan

But not only did the female role change, the male did as well and while the woman became more masculine, the men turned to a more feminine style. One might wonder how this all came about. To make a long story short, I think it has a lot to do with a chaning lifestyle in general due to democratisation, urbanisation and industrialisation, but mostly I think it had a lot to do with the first world war. Both Kerry Greenwood's books and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries brings up how society to a large extent was thrown into a feeling of despair after the Great War. In a way I find the above quoted (and by me translated) part of Swedish contemporary singer Karl Gerhard's song Jazzgossen (Jazz boy) fitting. It talks exactly of those old, traditional gender values with the knights in shiny armour who fight over the fair maidens. A violent culture that can be seen as having culminated in the war. In this way, the ideals became a rebellion against those who were in place before the war and which was held responsible for it. What we can see during the 1920's is a renegotiations of the gender roles. Women became more masculine and men more feminine. In a way this makes a story bringing up transexuality fitting into this world.

 This is just a short overview and I probably will have reasons to go back to it in future entries to the blog as I progress in my reading of Kerry Greenwood's books. Phryne is, after all, the personification of the new woman of the 1920's.

Sources:
Andersen, Jens 2015. Denna dagen, ett liv. En biografi över Astrid Lindgren, Swedish translation: Urban Andersson.
Hirdman, Yvonne & Lundberg, Urban & Björkman, Jenny 2012. Norstedts Sveriges historia 1920-1965.
The photo of Phryne was borrowed here and the one of Mac here.

*I have not read this book myself. Only a general description in Jens Andersen's Astrid Lingren biography Denna dagen, ett liv. This is what I base my knowledge of it on.

Blood and Circuses - TV vs Book

"Justice, not money, determines the cases worthy of my attention."

~Phryne Fisher, Blood and Circuses (TV)

As I said in my entry about the book, there are a lot of different thoughtprovoking issues in Blood and Circuses and I probably get back to it in the future. It was however one issue that was more prominent than others to me and it was how both versions of the case at the circus sort of got to Phryne Fisher herself, but in different ways.

Phryne, Dot and Jane sneek a taste.

I had really decided I was going to leave Phryne as a character pretty much alone until I had read through all the books, but after reading this book (and to some extent also after a person I like said Phryne was only a shallow James Bond character), I figured I needed to address her character pretty much immediatelly, but first I will do a recap of the plot of the TV episode and how it deviates from the book one.

Just like the book, the TV episode starts with Mr Christopher (here called Miss and is considered a woman) and the episode starts with her being found strangled, stabbed and with a python around her neck in the magician’s vanishing cabinet (overkill as Phryne calls it) during the circus Farrell’s show and not in his bed at the boarding house where he lives in the book. Not pleased with Senior Sergeant Grossmith who has been assigned to the case, Phryne’s old friend Samson (Sam) seeks Phryne out to try getting her to help. For once, Phryne is rather reluctant to go back to Farrell’s since it was there that her little sister Jane disappeared while Phryne was too caught up in the magician perform a vanishing act in the same cabinet (at least I think it is) that Miss Christopher is found dead in. 

Jack and Elsie share a moment.

The TV episode is not one of my favourites. It is quite messy and it is not made clear exactly who made what and why. However Elsie Tizzard is probably my absolute favourite among the minor characters. I love her special relationship with Jack, but also how she bonds with Amelia Parkes in the cell. The latter is just one of all the amazing depictions of female friendships that we can see throughout both TV and book series.

Another aspect I really enjoy as an archaeologist is how they have used how memories (even unwelcome ones) are triggered by materialities. Phryne is extremely reluctant to go (back) to Farrell's circus to investigate and it is not until Jack (for once) gives her a definite no that she agrees to Samson's request and takes on the case. When she gets to the circus, the memories become even more prominent and we get much longer flashbacks with Jane and Phryne at the circus. Correct me if I am wrong, but I also think this is the first time we really get to see Janey Fisher's blue ribbons.

We have seen Phryne vulnerable before, but the memories of Jane are humbling in a new way. They seem to give her new insights into what happened to her sister and the episode itself sort of works much more as a build-up to the two that follows it.

'Tonight you shall share my luxury', she said, pulling off the dress and the scarf and shedding battered undergarments, 'because tomorrow I shall share your poverty.'

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and circuses (book) 

Phryne and Samson

In the book, Phryne goes through an even more humbling journey. She is forced to leave her luxurious lifetotally behind as she goes undercover as Fern Williams, the trick rider at the circus. Like Peter Smith, the anarchist, does in the Death at Victoria Dock book, Mr Burton questions what she does at the circus and Phryne gives him a similar answer that she is tired of being said not to understand or being able to manage a more simple life because of her otherwise privileged lifestyle. Because the Janey Fisher/Murdoch Foyle plot was made up for the TV show, the circus does not provoke as many bad memories for Phryne as in the TV show, but it does turn out to be a very hostile environment.

Little Phryne and her sister Jane in one of the flashbacks.

Like the TV episode, the book works a lot with materialities, but instead of connecting them to memores, it connects them to Phryne's self-esteem and confidence in a way that had me thinking of the song Wig in a Box from the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

The musical is about trangendered Hedwig who goes through sex reassignment therapy, but the surgery goes terribly wrong and she is left with an "angry inch" and in a state of not belonging to either of the binary sex/gender construction that is still considered norm in today's Western society. As you might understand, this can in many ways be related to the transgender theme of both book and TV episode (In the TV episode, we even get to know that Miss Christopher pays a surgeon to have her "additional appendage" removed.), but in many ways it can also be related to Phryne as a character.

Kerry Greenwood made a cameo at the circus in this episode.

As I have said before, I do not like the comparisson of Phryne to James Bond. I actually find it a bit degrading of her character. Phryne is so much more than just a female version of the action male archetype. Yes, she is wild, adventurous and reckless, active in every scene she is in (traditionally male traits), but she is also empathetic, compassionate and kind (traditionally female traits). She does not show many emotions (male trait), but she is sensitive to other people's needs (female trait). (I admit the latter does not always apply to Jack, but in that case it has much more to do with him not behaving like a traditional male way.) She is cunning and clever (male traits), but also flirty and seductive (female traits). She also uses violence and reacts to it in a very different way than Bond (or for that matter Indiana Jones who she is also compared to). Even though she often brings her golden pistol with pearl handle and has a dagger in her garther, she does not use them other than when it is totally necessary to save herself or others. I agree that her wild, reckless and sexual side is far more conspicuous, but I think we more should ask ourself why that is instead of only calling her a female James Bond/Indiana Jones.

Her overall apparence is also totally female with her beautiful, often very feminine clothes, hats and red lipstick. This is also where the relation to Hedwig and the song Wig in a box becomes most apparent. Like Hedwig, Phryne has a dark past which has been made clear at this point in the TV series, but not in the books, so I will leave it until it is brought up. Both of them also hits rock bottom, but they decide to turn their life over and they both sort of find exuberance in fashion. This is also how the book points to the material aspect of Phryne's identity and how important it is to her.

She was feeling of balance. Deprived of her usual props and stays and allies, and having to speak with the accent of her childhoo, she was losing confidence. No one seemed to like her, and she was used to being liked, or at least noticed. She closed her eyes.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses (book)

Jane asks Samson for stories about Phryne.

In a way the circus makes her time-travel back to her childhood in poverty in Collingwood, leaving her feeling self-concious and lonely. When the clown Matthias/Jo Jo does her make up for her performance in the circus show, she does no longer recognise her face, seeing only a stranger in the mirror.

But again it is a material object that destroys her identity all together. When she is discovered by Jones and his men and they are about to rape and kill her, they take away both her clothes and the belonings she has hidden underneath and inside them. Among those is the St Christopher medal Dot gave her right before she was leaving her home.

She made no sound until he broke the thong which held the holy medal and pocketed it. Phryne gave a pitiful cry. Her last link with her own self was gone.
~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses (book)

The medal triggers a basic instinct inside of Phryne, making her fight the men. Because she is no simple "damsel in distress", she manages to avoid rape, but she does not win her freedom. Instead Jones and his men locks her in an animal case calling her a "wild beast".

This is actually not the first time in the book where humans have been compared to other animals.This is actually a theme also woven into the plot. Trapped in the animal cage and naked, Phryne's identity travels even further back in time (The mentioning of her friendship to the archaeologist being extremely fitting in all of this). Her fear of the lions was established already as Dulcie showed her around the circus and is already then said to enhance a primitive version of herself. She, however, remains quite active, trying to get herself out. In the end though, she realises she might need help from a friend or two. Humans are, after all living in hoards by nature...