SOURCE: "A Case for Violet Strange," in Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Susan Koppelman Cornillon, revised edition, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1973, pp. 206-15.

In the following excerpt, Cornillon views The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange from a feminist perspective, showing how the collection exposes female oppression and emphasizes sisterhood.

As fans of Anna Katherine Green's mysteries picked up her latest book in 1915, The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, they may have asked themselves as you are asking, "Who is Violet Strange?"

They were familiar with Ebenezer Gryce, the detective hero Ms. Green had created for her first novel, The Leavenworth Case, published in 1878, more than a decade earlier than Doyle's Sherlock Holmes; with Amelia Butterworth of Grammercy Park, Gryce's friend and amateur colleaugue; Sweetwater, Gryce's youthful companion and ambitious protégé; and Jinny, Sweetwater's enthusiastic and energetic...