This study examines masculinity and individualism in four American novels of the 1920s and 1930s usually regarded as belonging to the genre of hard-boiled fiction. The novels under study are Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy, and To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway.
In this first full-length study of gender in hard-boiled fiction the genre is discussed as a representation of the ideologies of masculinity and individualism. Hard-boiled fiction is located in its...