Masculinity In The Maltese Falcon

Welcome, let's discuss crime fiction, specifically the one with the guns, and cigars as well as hot women and men, discussing the social values of through conventions, but first, what text?

The Maltese Falcon reflects the period of the 1920s classifying it as hard-boiled. Hardboiled, refers to a person devoid of emotions and is morally ambiguous. Hardboiled crime fiction aims to make social commentaries on the corruption and hypocrisy of the power imbalance which was due to the great depression. Hard-boiled detective novels gave the common people a voice to criticise the rich. 1920s society was harsh and explicit, reflecting life in that era with values such as truth, male masculinity, and female femininity.

Maltese Falcon presents values

This says that femininity is best for women. This was due to the effects of WW1 putting everyone in difficult positions, thus everyone is fighting for their place in the next decade, and thus women evolved through scheming and dominance to even have a chance. Dominant women being evil came from the sentiment after WW1 where women took male roles, reluctant to return, turning them evil in the male eyes as they challenged male masculinity. This value isn't present in Brigid, the killer of 2 men and a chronic liar in the relentless pursuit of the Maltese falcon, the femme fatale, a new character archetype due to the prior events. The subversion of past iterations of female characters such as Miss Marple, who played a detective. In this genre, the femme fatale is the villain, the cause of injustice and death which very much did happen. She is dominant, don’t trust her, she is dangerous as she is a threat to male masculinity as possessing the same traits that men believed were superior. All of these are exposed through characterisation, taking the typical male villain role. Thus these women were placed as evils, reflecting on the values of men who had all the say in that era, classifying submissive women as superior, as shown in "You're an angel," "a nice rattle-brained angel." This portrayal of dominant and then submissive shows the societal

Festered in every character, each lied. Brigid used lying to deceive other characters into the oh-so-brilliant Maltese falcon. Always putting herself on top of those who couldn’t play the game like her. This was as everyone was fighting for their survival, placing males on top as they were in power before, and thus women needed to scheme and lie to climb the ranks, seems reminiscent of someone right? BRIGID, manipulating, and gaslighting to the top. These lies, fueled by greed, SURVIVAL every man for themselves, and thus greed was a mechanism for the rich to stay rich and the kind to become poor, imbalance. Greed, shown through characters and actions, and plot development, is the only way people climbed the ranks. Greed is the cause of conflict, in tandem with lies and deceit furthers the plot through actions of materialism and not morality, which is questionable at best in that society. An example is “we believed your 200 dollars.” Spade only got involved due to the money, people aiding in the justice for wealth or retrieving something or to cause injustice for the same reasons. The usage of greed and lies causing destruction presents truth as justice, a value of