Department of Comparative Literature

Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868) is frequently credited as the first English detective novel. The novel grips the reader into the mystery by infecting them with what is described as a “detective fever.” That is, readerly pleasure is contingent on uncovering the mystery. The pathology of “detective fever” is thus central to understanding the novel’s affective sensationalism. This paper situates Collins’ work in a Freudian and Focauldian model and argues that the desire to unveil feminine privacy underlies the detective aim. Thus, the gendered valence of detection is the primary characteristic of “detective fever.” The detective’s aim, then, closely aligns with what Foucault describes as the Victorian “incitement to discourse” of private sexual desire. The importance of confession to the novel’s conception of detection produces a cursory model for the Freudian psychoanalyst. Ultimately, the gendered anxiety underlying Collins’ detective novel problematizes the genre’s conceit that detection is governed by an agnostic and objective desire for truth.