Mary Helena Fortune: Waif Wanderer or a cross-dresser with a mission?

Scientific paper - Original scientific paper

• Author: Tihana Klepač
• Author's institution: University of Zagreb; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; (Department of English language and literature)
• Scientific / art field, discipline and subdiscipline: HUMANISTIC SCIENCES; Philology; Anglistics

Abstract (french)

At a time when marriage and domesticity still largely defined women’s lives, women
often found increased freedom in the colonial environment where social expectations
of them were more relaxed than in Europe. The first Australian crime fiction writer,
Victorian Mary Helena Fortune in both, her life and in her writing, took advantage of
this opportunity. Shrouding her private life in mystery, and writing under a pseudonym
Waif Wander shielded her, and protected her income from the audiences whose
Victorian values she did not share. Professionally, writing under a pseudonym, and
within then but emerging literary genre, she had the liberty to speak freely: she discussed
the issues of gender and identity in the hybrid and fluid colonial society which
was being constructed as a place where identities could be forged, and redemption
was possible, as is evident from the only printed (and reprinted) volume of her crime
stories The Detective’s Album.

• Keywords (french): Australia; Mary Fortune; crime fiction; New Woman
• Language: french
• Publication type: Scientific paper - Original scientific paper
• Publication status: Published
• Peer review: Peer review
• Publication version: Published version
• Journal title: Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabiensia
• Numbering: vol. 62, no. -, pp. 39-54
• p-ISSN: 0039-3339
• e-ISSN: 1849-1421
• URN:NBN: urn:nbn:hr:131:476346
• Publication: 2017
• Document URL: https://hrcak.srce.hr/201144
• Type of resource: Text
• Access conditions: Open access
• Created on: 2020-02-12 11:57:35