ABSTRACT
Title: ‘Choppy Waters: Sara Paretsky’s Feminism, From Second to Third Wave’
By Prof. Cynthia Hamilton
Sara Paretsky is recognised as one of a group of detective fiction writers who transformed what had been a very masculine form, that of the hard-boiled detective novel, into one capable of carrying a feminist message. But the question remains: what was the nature of the feminism incorporated in Paretsky’s novels and how did this message—and the reaction to it—change with time. Paretsky’s novels span over thirty years of social change. She was part of a generation shaped by the ideology and assumptions of what Betty Friedan identified as the ‘feminist mystique’, whose consciousness, once raised, often through involvement in other reform movements of the 1960s such as the Civil Rights struggle and the anti-war movement, prompted efforts toward self-liberation in every sphere of experience—personal, political, economic and social. She was part of a generation whose agenda and actions produced bewilderment, ridicule, resentment, and open hostility both toward the individuals involved and to the goals they articulated and promoted. She was part of a generation whose hard won gains were taken for granted by the next generation, prompting indifference and even hostility to feminism, but also a new style of feminist activity often denominated as the third wave. Feminists of this younger generation built on the achievements of the second wave, but critiqued the production of feminist master narratives by their elder sisters. The younger generation were more attuned to the politics of feminist discourse. They also reacted to the realpolitik of the Reagan years, and to the implications of global corporations, the revolution in information and communication technology, and the critiques and analyses of the post-industrial and post-modern climate that surrounded them. It is against this fractured, complex and ever changing historical background of evolving perspectives that Paretsky’s work must be examined.