Golden age fiction makes ideologies visible in both the process and the closure of plots, often revealing a complex politics. For example, Josephine Tey and Gladys
Mitchell adopt female teacher training colleges as the confined setting that acquires
Gothic resonances through crime. Mrs Bradley ’ s claw - like hands are firmly wrapped
around the Wardenship of a women ’ s Hall of Residence in Laurels Are Poison (1942), learn that social role - playing is both a manifestation of class privilege and a cover for moral guilt. These detectives discover the role - playing that the more rhetorically artifi cial tones of authors like Christie and Marsh proclaim is endemic and dangerous to social stability. Role - playing is at one level rooted in the self - referential “fictional” quality of the golden age. It serves to make ideologies of class and ethnicity visible in the process of the plots, however much the successful “ closure ” might try to restore authenticity to the social roles. An example of implicit criticism of class role - playing in process, followed by conservative closure, is Georgette Heyer ’ s Envious Casca (1941). Of course, it is wrong to overemphasize the role of the country house in golden
age writing. What is generally characteristic is the confined space and Christie, in
particular, is inventive in making the contained spaces of modern travel metonymic
of the dangerous mixing of classes and ethnicities in the modern world. In her most famous example, Murder on the Orient Express (1934), the performing selves of the different nationalities prove to be emblematic of the rising power of America (and of a dangerous tendency towards unilateral justice!). Another way that the golden age makes social ideologies visible is by exploring the post - Victorian family. Compared to Holmes, the golden age detective is positively. Allingham, and Tey as well as Christie ’ s Beresfords all fall in love and marry through detecting. Moreover, Wimsey develops a complexity to his family life through the moral challenges of detecting when very connected. When brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, is arrested for murder in Clouds of Witness (1926) , Wimsey fi nds himself torn between accusing his brother or his sister of a capital crime. Yet in addition to the growth of a family - friendly detective, families are often the focus of the crime plot in a critical sense. It goes without saying that a person exerting. The “Classical” Model of the Golden Age 125
tyrannous, usually monetary control over a family is the favorite target for the villain.
However conservative the closure of such a plot, the ending still reconfigures family
dynamics on more egalitarian lines. In particular, control of the younger generation
by the older is frequently loosened. The golden age rejects Victorian stuffiness and
authority by making it the loser even after the crime is solved. Even Heyer engages readers through witty and complex family relationships. Most of her detectives are attractive policemen who do not get too involved. Yet in The Unfinished Clue (1933a) , Inspector Harding is seduced into giving up his profession by his attraction to the only sensible member of a dysfunctional family. In the satisfying Why Shoot a Butler (1933b) , one delightful and one sinister family are linked by amateur detective and barrister, Frank Amberley. Here the mesh of performing selves is delicately balanced between the conservative plot of discovering a hidden will for inherited wealth and the tantalizingly radical possibilities of a mysterious young woman. She spends the novel resisting all social categories. Unsurprisingly in a Heyer novel, she is at last discovered to be the missing heiress. Even so, this conservative closure of the plot does not cancel the haunting possibilities evoked earlier.

Q: Explain the tension between role playing and closure as developed in the article.