Freeman Wills Crofts, The British Library and Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery

Included among the recent reissues of Golden Age detective novels by the British Library are a pair of tales by Freeman Wills Crofts, Antidote to Venom and The Hog's Back Mystery.  In Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery (2012) I provide the longest and most substantive analysis of Crofts' detective fiction to date (the other two "Humdrum" authors I analyze at length are Cecil John Charles Street, aka John Rhode/Miles Burton, and Alfred Walter Stewart, aka JJ Connington), so I am pleased to see his cause taken up by the British Library.

I am a strong admirer of The Hog's Back Mystery (1933), one of the greatest logistical detection Golden Age mysteries, a form of which Crofts was the period's leading practitioner. The thematically ambitious Antidote to Venom (1938), however, is more problematic for me, though it definitely has strong points of interest to a student of the genre.

As I explain in great interpretive detail in Masters, Crofts, like a number of other detective fiction authors in the 1930s, moved away from the pure puzzle mystery toward novels aimed at providing greater emotional engagement for the reader.  Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh deservedly are much celebrated for doing this through the so-called "manners mystery" (although they were not alone in this), while for Crofts the process involved designing detective novels and short stories as religious parables providing moral instruction for his audience (see The Golden Age in Modern Memory for a blog take by me on these matters).

the British first edition

Antidote to Venom, an inverted mystery with an explicitly religious narrative framework, is the premier example of this tendency in Crofts' work, though there are other examples as well, discussed in Masters. I provide a discussion in Masters on Antidote to Venom specifically, wherein I treat the novel as of interest primarily on social history grounds.

I suspect that what may have been a major mover in motivating the British Library to choose to reprint Antidote to Venom was John Norris' eloquent and enthusiastic review of the novel on his fine blog at Pretty Sinister Books. John mounts a detailed case on behalf of the plot of the book and its pull on the reader (he also shows how the original American hardcover edition has a killer endpaper map).

In my view Crofts' ability to depict complex characters is too slight to make this novel work as it should on the emotional level, but, as John's review indicates, others may well differ with me on this matter. Harriet Devine's Blog says of the novel, "modern readers of different [religious] persuasions [from Crofts] may find [the ending] a little jarring." For me, what makes the novel interesting historically does not make it a compelling or convincing novel of character, but, as always, readers will differ in their takes on a book and they should see for themselves what they think.

The Hog's Back Mystery, on the other hand, is one of my favorite Golden Age detective novels, although there might be some who think it overly analytical. Personally, I think it's a beaut of a book (there's an endpaper map too, as well as a clue key). To be sure, it's less thematically ambitious then Antidote to Venom, but it's also a perfect example of the deliberate pure puzzle English mystery at which the "Humdrums" (as Julian Symons termed them) excelled.

One could have paired it, for this reprinting outing, with its twin logistical detection masterpiece, Crofts' railroad mystery Sir John Magill's Last Journey (1930); however, I see that on his blog Martin Edwards, who I believe writes all of the introductions for the series, was not taken with the book (Martin's view of Crofts generally has improved since, however). Then there is Crofts' most famous inverted mystery, The 12.30 from Croydon (1934), which has always had its advocates.

I also have highly praised the boat puzzle tale Mystery in the Channel here.  Readers interested in Crofts are urged to check out Masters of the Humdrum Mystery for my takes on all Crofts' other works (it's rather dear, I know, but there are always the libraries).

I mention my book here on my blog because I think people who read and enjoy Crofts through the British Library series should have some chance to hear about Masters, which in my view is the master source on so-called "Humdrum" British mystery.  Jon L. Breen called Masters "an important book of detective fiction history and criticism, with all the scholarly care and rigor of a first-rate academic study, combined with an enjoyable literary style,"  while Martin Edwards declared, on his blog, "This is a book to which I will, I'm sure, return again and again."  I do hope Martin keeps returning to it, and that perhaps other interested readers may find their way to it for the first time.

A Daring Thought: What if the Library of America Went Screwball?

I've been publicly airing ideas of late--wildly, even madly, ambitious, I know--for hypothetical Library of America volumes that might include what we might term "classical" mystery fiction from the Golden Age (roughly 1918-1939). With my previous list of 30 detective novels I've received some suggestions for alternate titles and some for additional writers.  Only one person so far has criticized the inclusion of a specific writer.

No one mentioned Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure Man Dies (1932),which I would have included, but for the fact that it has already been taken for LOA's writers of the Harlem Rennaissance series.  I did add a couple of authors, however, taking the total up to thirty, and switched a couple of titles (the added authors were Virginia Rath and Hugh Austin).

Jeffrey Marks, biographer of Craig Rice (Who Was That Lady?), has mentioned her exclusion from the list, but before 1940 she had published only one mystery novel, 8 Face at 3 (1939), not at the level of her best in my view.  I think ideally she should be represented in a two-volume series called American Screwball Mystery: Eight Novels from the 1930s and 1940s.  What say you to these choices as possible selections?

The Blind Barber (1934), by John Dickson Carr 
Headed for a Hearse (1935), by Jonathan Latimer
The Annulet of Gilt (1938), by Phoebe Atwood Taylor
The Cut Direct (1938), by Alice Tilton

Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (1940), by Elliot Paul
The Case of the Kippered Corpse (1941), by Margaret Scherf
Trial by Fury (1942), by Craig Rice
The Mouse in the Mountain (1943), by Norbert Davis

The trick here is that Phoebe Atwood Taylor was also Alice Tilton, so she shows up twice, in the same year.  She was quite the prolific crime writer in the 1930s and 1940s, and one of the preeminent American representatives of both screwball and local color fiction fiction.  She was a true American original, a Grandma Moses of murder (except, well, a heckuva lot younger).

The cause of Margaret Scherf has been taken up by Rue Morgue Press, a great advocate for the zany mystery. John Dickson Carr was better known for his frights than his chuckles, but any Carr fan will tell you that there is plenteous humor in Carr's books.  The Blind Barber has long been considered a classic of mirthful mystery.  Jonathan Latimer and Norbert Davis (and to some extent Craig Rice) represent the more hard-boiled side of screwball.

There's probably another set that could be devoted to "Couples" mystery, what do you think?  Of course The Thin Man is already in the Dashiell Hammett set, but there are other notable examples.

There also should be, ideally, a 1940s set of detective novels, because the classical tradition was still strong in that decade.  Represented here should be authors like Elizabeth Daly, as Dean James mentioned on the previous post, Hake Talbot (1944), whose Rim of the Pit is widely-loved by locked room mystery fans; and Craig Rice yet again, for her wonderful Home Sweet Homicide (1944).

At least we now have LOA a-twitter!  I've known that someone connected to LOA, in addition to Sarah Weinman, reads this blog, because my discussion of Dashiell Hammett's short stories is sited here.

Elizabeth Fenwick in Pictures: From Detective Writer to Mainstream Novelist

I've gathered some more material on Elizabeth Fenwick (1916-1996), the 1940s-1960s crime writer discussed in some of my recent blog posts.

Here are the jackets to her early detective novels:

All three novels were published by Farrar & Rinehart, between 1943 and 1945. Biographical information is nil, with war messages occupying the entire back covers of the dust jackets:

However, the publisher emphasizes on the jacket flaps Fenwick's merit as a novelist.  With The Inconvenient Corpse we're told that Fenwick's novel "combines lively characterization with clever plotting" and thus "isn't just another mystery."  Murder in Haste "marks the author as a writer with imagination, wit and skill--a first-rater."

After the publication of Two Names for Death, Fenwick abandoned crime fiction for a dozen years. Her next novel, published in 1947, was a "straight" novel called The Long Wing.  On the back there is a great photo of her and some biographical information:

young author at work

Elizabeth Fenwick was born is St. Louis, but left at the age of four and has been moving about ever since.  Her father was an invalid with no business ties and a taste for new cities, so her growing up and schooling were peripatetic, but fun.

After graduating from high school, she spent a year and a half living in three states and learning to be a writer. The results were one novel, burned after its first rejection, and many poems.  After this came business school and two years as a secretary and French translator.  

After her marriage she moved to Ithaca, New York, and began a period of intensive notebook keeping, out of which The Long Wing developed.

It's interesting that Fenwick's biographical blurb failed to acknowledge her three detective novels. Did she view them as 'prentice works, now to be disowned?

We also learn that Fenwick already had already married when she was at Yaddo in 1948, where she met, and became lifelong friends with, Flannery O'Connor, as discussed earlier.

My guess is that Fenwick married Clark Mills McBurney around 1945.  As mentioned in a previous post, McBurney, a poet and Cornell University professor of French, grew up in St. Louis, where Fenwick was born, and was a college friend and mentor of Tennesse Williams.  Note that Fenwick had worked as a French translator.

When Days of Plenty was published in 1956 (another novel, Afterwards, appeared in 1950), this picture of Fenwick (right) was included on the back cover of the dust jacket.

The biographical blurb claimed that Fenwick was born in 1920 and that Days of Plenty was her third novel.

Neither claim was true. Fenwick was born in 1916 (she left St. Louis in 1920), and Days of Plenty was her sixth novel. But then the early trio of detective novels seems to have been officially scrubbed from her biography by this time! Of course she made a big return to crime fiction, as I have discussed, in 1957.  But by then it was labeled "suspense."

Golden Age Mystery: 30 Titles by Notable American Crime Writers

As discussed here recently, the Library of America will be publishing a two-volume set of 1940s/50s suspense novels by women authors.  Previously the LOA had shown, when it comes to crime fiction, a marked partiality toward hard-boiled and noir writers (and, sure enough, their next offering in this area will be a two-volume Ross Macdonald set).  Is there a chance, however, that they may open their door wider, to include classic mystery writers from the Golden Age of detective fiction?  We know now, if there was doubt, that the reading public has a strong interest in classic mystery.

If the LOA did launch a classic mystery series, who would you suggest should be included?  Below is my attempt to represent high points of American Golden Age "classic" mystery fiction.  This could make a seven-volume set (okay, that's not going to happen)!  Some titles are not necessarily my favorites by the given authors, but they were/are so highly-regarded they seemed required to me. But, again, what do you think?  I'd very much like to know.  Make your voices heard!

Note: I attempted to provide links to the books as much as possible. You'll notice several blogs coming up quite a bit.  Thanks Pretty Sinister Books, Tipping My Fedora, Vintage Pop Fictions and everyone else for all your great work the last several years on classic crime fiction.

Classic Golden Age Mystery Fiction by Women, 1918-1939

1. Vicky Van (1918), by Carolyn Wells

2. The Red Lamp (1925), by Mary Roberts Rinehart

3. The Bellamy Trial (1927), by Frances Noyes Hart

4. The Desert Moon Mystery (1928), Kay Cleaver Strahan 

5. Murder Backstairs (1930), Anne Austin

6. From This Dark Stairway (1931), by Mignon Eberhart

7, Death at Dayton's Folly (1935), by Virginia Rath

8. The Crimson Patch (1936), by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

9. The Bell in the Fog (1936), by John Stephen Strange (Dorothy Stockbridge Tillett)

11. Dance of Death (1938), by Helen McCloy

12. Death Wears a White Gardenia (1938), by Zelda Popkin

13. The Listening House (1938), by Mabel Seeley

14. Strawstack (1939), by Dorothy Cameron Disney

Classic Golden Age Mystery Fiction by Men, 1925-1939

1. The House without a Key (1925), by Earl Derr Biggers

2. The Bishop Murder Case (1929), by S. S. Van Dine

3. Murder by Latitude (1930), by Rufus King

4. About the Murder of the Clergyman's Mistress (1931), by Anthony Abbot

5. Murder on the Blackboard (1932), by Stuart Palmer

6. The Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), by Ellery Queen 

7. The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934), by Darwin Teilhet

8. Vultures in the Sky (1935), by Todd Downing

9. Obelists Fly High (1935), by C. Daly King

10. The League of Frightened Men (1935), by Rex Stout

11. The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935), Erle Stanley Gardner

12. Murder of a Matriarch (1936), by Hugh Austin

13. The Burning Court (1937), by John Dickson Carr

14. The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937), by Anthony Boucher

15. Puzzle for Players (1938), by Patrick Quentin

16. The Man from Tibet (1938), by Clyde B. Clason

17. Death from a Top Hat (1938), by Clayton Rawson

Gone Grandam: Poor Harriet (1957), by Elizabeth Fenwick

In 1950, after some months spent at the Yaddo artists' and writers' colony in upstate New York, Elizabeth Fenwick (1916-1996) published a well-received mainstream novel, Afterwards.  Six years separated this novel from what appears to be her next one, a mainstream work titled Days of Plenty. The next year Fenwick published a suspense novel, Poor Harriet.  It was quite well-reviewed, and seven more suspense novels would follow from Fenwick's hand over the next eleven years.

What happened in the intervening six fallow years between Afterwards and Days of Plenty? One thing I know from correspondence of Fenwick's good friend from Yaddo, Flannery O'Connor, is that Fenwick had married by 1952. Her husband was Clark Mills McBurney (1913-1986), a modernist poet (under the name Clark Mills) and 1930s friend and mentor of the playwright Tennessee Williams.  The two young literary aspirants both had been students at Washington University in 1935-37 and during that time had outfitted the basement of Mills' parents' house as a "writing factory," in Mills' words.

Cover Girl: Flannery O'Connor
thought Elizabeth Fenwick
lucky with her book jacket art

Whatever took Fenwick away from novel writing, she was emphatically back at it by the late 1950s and 1960s. In a 1960 letter to a friend, Flannery O'Connor stated that Fenwick wrote mystery novels to "make money," alternating them with novels written "to suit herself." Actually, it appears that after 1956 Fenwick never again wrote another "straight" novel, unless she was doing so under a pseudonym; so perhaps she found that psychological crime novels suited her too and it wasn't just about the money.

Certainly Poor Harriet, Fenwick's first essay in this subgenre, suited the critics.  For example, Margaret Millar, one of the finest twentieth-century crime novelists, declared, in a penetrating and pithy sentence, that the novel had "some of the most macabre mood writing since the Gothic tale looked under the bed and found Freud."

Male critics agreed with Millar. Anthony Boucher proclaimed Poor Harriet "the work of a highly skilled novelist" and James Sandoe deemed it "an astonishing evocation."

From Georgia Flannery O'Connor joined in the chorus as well.  Writing Fenwick from her country home outside Milledgeville on August 4, 1957, a few days before the novel was officially published, O'Connor wrote praisefully (and amusingly):

Well cheers for Poor Harriet!  I enjoyed her and also my mamma enjoyed her and I must say you are lucky on your [book] jackets....I have never read anybody else's mystery stories....My mother read Poor Harriet straight through and kept saying, "Well I just don't see how she figured all this out, I just couldn't do it."

often in 1950s crime fiction publicity
suspense was emphasized
 and detection downplayed

What greatly impressed many of the critics was the novel's sensitive depiction of mental aberration, but in fact Poor Harriet offers a ratiocinated murder problem as well; so detection fans need not be disappointed, I hope.

The novel follows the dire events that occur after Marianne Hinkley, a loyal office manager for a Connecticut contracting firm, embarks on an errand in New York City on behalf of Irma, the demanding, high maintenance wife of her boss, Tom Bryce.

Irma tasks Marianne with selling the diamond bracelet that Tom recently gave her (she's had financial reverses, she says). In New York Marianne encounters an odd, old woman named Harriet, setting in motion a succession of events that culminate in violent death.

I found Poor Harriet an excellent fifties "novel of suspense," with interesting characters and a teasing plot.  Flannery O'Connor's mamma got it right.

Note: I hope to review another Fenwick novel next week, one of her early detective novels; and when I do I expect to have her photo posted here.  In the meantime, here is a photo of her at Yaddo in 1948 (Fenwick is the blonde in white on the left).

Flannery's Favorite? Flannery O'Connor and Elizabeth Fenwick

Sarah Weinman's path-breaking Library of America anthology Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 50s will be out later this year, and high time too (up until now female-authored crime fiction has been represented in the noir and hard-boiled focused LOA by, I believe, exactly one author, Patricia Highsmith).  Included in the two-volume set are novels by Vera Caspary, Helen Eustis, Dorothy B. Hughes, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, Charlotte Armstrong, Patricia Highsmith, Margaret Millar and Dolores Hitchens.

If there is ever an additional volume in the series, another good candidate for inclusion might be Elizabeth Fenwick (1916-1996), an author who offers an interesting example of the writing path taken by a number of mid-century American women crime writers, as the puzzle-oriented detective novel lost its predominance within crime fiction.  Here is a list of the fourteen novels Fenwick published over a quarter century period:

The Inconvenient Corpse 1943
Murder in Haste 1944
Two Names for Death 1945
The Long Wing 1947
Afterwards 1950
Days of Plenty 1956
Poor Harriet 1957
A Long Way Down 1959
A Friend of Mary Rose 1961
The Make-Believe Man 1963
The Silent Cousin 1966
The Passenger 1967
Disturbance on Berry Hill 1968
Goodbye, Aunt Elva 1968

The first three of these novels, published under the androgynous name E. P. Fenwick when the author was in her late twenties, are relatively traditional detective stories, while the next three, published, like all this author's later novels, under the more revealing name Elizabeth Fenwick, are "mainstream" novels. Finally, the last eight novels are all crime thrillers, or psychological suspense tales, for which Fenwick became best known.

Presumably Fenwick deemed the first detective novels, which were well-reviewed but never well-known, as something of an apprenticeship to her main interest, "straight" novel writing (although in the late 1950s she apparently abandoned straight novel writing for tales of psychological suspense).

In 1948, shortly after the publication of her first "serious" novel, Fenwick was accepted at Yaddo, the famous upstate New York artists' and writers' colony. There she completed her second mainstream novel, Afterwards. In a 1950 Saturday Review notice of this book Kathleen Sproul advised: "Those who are bewailing the lack of successors to our aging, and in some instances, declining novelists, would do well to contemplate Elizabeth Fenwick."

Yaddo

Two years before Fenwick came to Yaddo Truman Capote had worked there on his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms, while the same year that Fenwick was at Yaddo, Patricia Highsmith and the great American novelist and short story writer Flannery O'Connor were guests there as well (Highsmith was working on Strangers on a Train, Yaddo have decided to accept a writer working in a "lower" form of writing because she was deemed a better stylist than many "serious" writers).

Apparently Fenwick's and Highsmith's time at Yaddo did not overlap, but Fenwick's and O'Connor's did; and the two became good friends, which is more than you can say for O'Connor, who was religiously devout, and Highsmith, who was...anything but.   

"In any collection of so-called artists you will find a good percentage alcoholic in one degree or another," O'Connor wrote sardonically to a friend in a 1959 letter.  "In such a place you have to expect them all to sleep around. This is not sin but Experience, and if you do not sleep with the opposite sex, it is assumed that you sleep with your own" (see Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor).

Patricia Highsmith

For her part, Highsmith--one of those Yaddo residents drinking alcohol and sleeping around (with both sexes)--apparently did not form a great impression of O'Connor, whom she identified at the time as the "new writer Capote [a friend of Highsmith's at this time] likes very much.  Maybe another McCullers, I don't know....I expected from the name a racy colt with reddish hair, a six-gear brain [but she] personifies Iowa once removed from Georgia, which she is."

Many years later Highsmith is said to have complained that O'Connor never socialized with her boisterous crowd (O'Connor in 1959 wrote, "I went to one or two of these [Yaddo parties] but always left before they began to break things").

On coming back to Yaddo from one such party, so this story goes, Highsmith found O'Connor kneeling on a porch, raptly staring at a knot of wood and declaring that she discerned in it the face of Jesus.

"And ever since then I've not liked that woman," Highsmith is said to have told a young friend, in the story's punch line (see Joan Schenkar, The Talented Miss Highsmith). Whether or not this event actually took place, it certainly reeks of antipathy for O'Connor on Highsmith's part.

In Elizabeth Fenwick, however, O'Connor found a friend; and the two corresponded until O'Connor's tragically premature death in 1964.  Fenwick, nearly a decade older than O'Connor, was, like Highsmith, originally from Texas, but I have yet to see anything in her writing that identifies her as a southern regional writer (indeed, all the books I have read by her are set in Connecticut's New York City exurbs).

Flannery O'Connor

At the time of her stay at Yaddo, Fenwick was working for a Columbia University professor and residing at the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A male guest at Yaddo at this time recalled Fenwick as "a kind of sexy creature, very attractive physically."

Sally Fitzgerald, a friend of O'Connor's and editor of The Habit of Being, a collection of O'Connor's letters, recalled that "Flannery spoke of Elizabeth, whom she always referred to as 'Miss Fenwick,' often and fondly."

 In 1960 O'Connor wrote rather a paean to Fenwick, in correspondence with another friend:

She writes novels, writes one to suit herself and then one mystery novel to make money, then one to suit herself, etc.  She lives by a kind of rhythm, has nothing to say but is full of lovely feelings, giggles, is a big soft blond girl and real nice to be around except that she bats her eyelashes....She is kind of a complement to me, and we get on famously.

In another letter, one to Fenwick, O'Connor discussed Fenwick's first psychological suspense novel, the highly-praised Poor Harriet (1957).  I'll be having more to say about this novel, and O'Connor's discussion of it, for Friday.

And for more on Patricia Highsmith in the 1940s, see this Passing Tramp post from last year.

Murder Farce: The Deadly Dove (1945), by Rufus King

"I will tell you more," Joe said, "about the Dove.  He is a gentlemanly, mild-mannered old guy, and for looks you would think that a sneeze would blow him away. With him you never have to worry. Just give him a  job and you can forget about it."

--The Deadly Dove (1945), Rufus King

In The Deadly Dove, Rufus King's assassin, the mild-mannered murderer known as the Dove, is, course, ironically named.  Rather than a man of peace he is a professional hit man, one highly-regarded within the slay racket.  His professional services are called upon in The Deadly Dove.

In New York actor Alan Admont has married the widow Christine Belder. Christine is wealthy and imperious while Alan is handsome and impecunious. Also, Christine is sixty and Alan is twenty-five.

Alan owes a very substantial sum of money to gangster Joe Inbrun, who concludes that the best way for Alan to be in a position to pay him back would be if Alan were to inherit a chunk of change from a rich, dead wife.  Joe tells Alan he has hired the Dove to eliminate Christine at her crumbling Gothic pile of a mansion in the Catskills, where the couple is staying, surrounded by a very odd coterie of retainers.  However, the best-laid plans....

Christine returns from a trip to New York having been persuaded by her conservative, perpetually suspicious attorney, Stuyvesant Swain (a loyal friend of her dead first husband and bemused observer of her own affairs), to create an immediate lifetime annuity. This means that upon Christine's demise gold-digging Alan will get nothing but her jewels, which are enough to cover his debt to Indrun and Indrun's debt to the Dove, with precisely nothing left over for him.  Suddenly Alan has every reason to keep his wife alive. But the deadly Dove already has set flight for the Catskills! What to do now....

The Deadly Dove is a short, farcical murder novel that, as others have commented before me, reads very much like a novel adapted from a play. Like The Case of the Dowager's Etchings and Museum Piece No. 13, both reviewed on this blog, it was originally lucratively serialized in a "slick"; however, I have seen no evidence that it actually was a play, although Rufus King in the 1930s enjoyed some success with play writing, as John Norris has documented.

The Dove is very much the sort of villain one might have expected to see on stage, during the between-the-wars years, in an Edgar Wallace crime thriller; yet in his novel King plays the criminous situation more for laughs than for thrills. I enjoyed the proceedings, but then I enjoy murder farces.

another Belarski pb cover,
clearly adapted from the pulps
(this scene doesn't actually quite
happen in the novel--the Dove
is not so crude a killer)

Rufus King's wealthy father, who died when Rufus was 35, appointed the King family lawyer as Rufus's trustee; and the relationship between headstrong Christine Belder and cautious Stuyvesant Swain may bear some resemblance to that between Rufus and his trustee (a family friend wryly commented on John Norris's blog, "Rufus needed his money looked after").

A relationship between an older wealthy women and a younger attractive man is a familiar motif in King's writing and I think one that reflects the likelihood that King was almost certainly gay. That King's fiction has certain gay aspects to it seems obvious to me, as well as John Norris and Mike Grost; yet this is something that had never been alluded to within the mystery community, as far as I know, before we three began blogging about his books.

King portrays Christine Belder as an eccentric, no question; but ultimately he seems impressed with her determination to live life as she pleases, with little concern for conventional opinion of the day. Can Christine be seen as a female "gay icon" archetype? I think so.