Interrogating The Politics Of Anonymity Among The Writers Of Detective Fiction : A Study

Abstract

If we go through the Bengali detective fictions which are greatly inspired by Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes's stories, we can notice an interesting fact. Stories like ''HarimotirHatyakando'', ''OdbhutHatyakari'', ''Sindhuker lash'', ''Jal Raja'' etc. have been published anonymously (SekalerGoyendaGolpo, ed. by Arindam Dasgupta) There is a possibility that these stories are written by women writers and like many women writers and artists they could not expose their name, which was a common picture of Victorian age in our country and also in Europe. The Bronte Sisters, Mary Anne Evans and many of the women novelists had to use pen names to pursue their creative genius. This problem has been addressed by Gilbert and Gubar in their work The Mad woman in the Attic" as "Anxiety of Authorship". I think the anonymity of the above mentioned detective fictions calls for a thorough research. Who are these anonymous writers? Can this identification open a new room or Bengali women writers? This paper would try to address these questions.