The Fiction of Ruth Rendell: Ancient Tragedy and the Modern Family

by Barbara Fass Leavy

Overview

A study of the role of family, ancient Greek narratives, and the psychological theories of Freud and Jung in the mystery novels of Ruth Rendell.

Aside from Ruth Rendell’s brilliance as a fiction writer, and her appeal to mystery lovers, her books portray a compelling, universal experience that her readers can immediately relate to, the intra-familial stresses generated by the nuclear family. Even those who experience the joys as well as pains of family life will find in Rendell the conflicts that beset all who must navigate their way through the conflicts that beset members of the closest families.

Barbara Fass Leavy analyzes the multi-leveled treatment of these themes that contributes to Rendell’s standing as a major contemporary novelist. Rendell, who also writes as Barbara Vine, draws on ancient Greek narratives, and on the psychological theories Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung derived from them, to portray the disturbed family relationships found throughout her work.

Leavy’s analysis considers what distinguishes mysteries as popular entertainment from crime fiction as literary art. The potential for rereading even when the reader remembers “whodunit” will be the basis for this distinction. Leavy also looks closely at the Oedipus and Electra complexes and how they illuminate Rendell’s portrayals of the different pairings within the nuclear family (for example, mother and daughter) and considers the importance of gender differences. In addition, Leavy corrects a widespread error, that Freud formulated the Electra complex, when in fact the formulation was Jung’s as he challenged Freud’s emphasis on the Oedipus story as the essential paradigm for human psychological development.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781615953394
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Barbara Fass Leavy is a former Professor of English Literature at Queens College of the City University of New York. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor of English in Psychiatry at the Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University. She has published numerous essays and given lectures on literature, folklore, crime fiction, gender relations, and Greek tragedy and psychology. Three of her four books are on folk and fairy tales and their literary versions; a fourth treats literature whose subject is epidemic diseases. When asked by her six young granddaughters what she wrote about, she used to reply, “mermaids,” and now that they are able to do research online, they have tested this answer by putting her name and the word “mermaid” into Google, surprised by the number of entries. Barbara Leavy has published a book on the fiction of Ruth Rendell, and is currently working on a collection of essays entitled “Crime Fiction and Culture.”