A feminist approach to Agatha Christie's novel Murder at the Vicarage and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel A Study in Scarlet

Sex is a concept determined on the basis of biological characteristics. Gender, on the other hand, is a concept that includes the roles and behaviors that are determined by the society and expected from a gender. What is important in this regard is that gender roles do not fit every woman or man and that each individual may have different abilities and interests. Gender roles can restrict the freewill of individuals and cause gender inequality. The sexist attitude caused by social norms appears as a subject of literature as well as in business, education, politics and other social sciences. In time, female characters have been included in detective novels, which are a male-dominated genre, but female detectives appear as characters who cannot go beyond gender roles due to the nature of the genre. In this study, Agatha Christie's The Murder at the Vicarage and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet will be examined within the scope of Jane Marple and Sherlock Holmes characters, with the method of feminist criticism. The perspectives, methods and professional achievements of Sherlock Holmes and Jane Marple will be compared in the context of gender roles. With this study, it is aimed to reveal the similarities and differences between the fictional female detective Miss Jane Marple of Agatha Christie, one of the successful writers of the detective novel genre, and the male detective character Sherlock Holmes, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and try to determine how the female and male dedective characters adapt to the crime novel genre.