How literature invented detectives

Ellen Wood's detection in Within the Maze

Abstract

In 1829, during years full of terror and mass murder, Sir Robert Peel founded in London the Metropolitan Police, with the aim to fight the city’s dangerous underworld. At first, despite local enhancement, policemen were seen with suspicion in Victorian society, because they were constantly  breaking into other people’s homes and digging into their lives and secrets. An unacceptable violation that produced a lot of discontent and concern. Nonetheless, shortly thereafter, literature proposed more positive views of their function, as we can see – just to name a few writers – in Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Their contribution was essential in consolidating the emerging social group of the policemen. In the light of such changing roles and perceptions, the present paper focuses on Ellen Wood’s narratives and on her special way of classifying the new male professional category. In particular, among her other novels, I analyse one of her most best known sensation book, Within the Maze. Published in 1872, it was an enormous popular success, even if it caused a national scandal, because of its both sexually-explicit and criminal contents, which challenged current cultural, social and literary norms. Particularly, in her sensation fiction, Wood reveals great interest in detection and is able to include many policemen, building very positive brand new social roles.