In A Woman's World: Gender, Vulnerability and Violence in Louise Mey's Les Ravagé(e)s

Abstract

This article proposes a tripartite examination of the interplay between gender and crime in Les Ravagé(e)s, a 2016 police procedural by French crime author Louise Mey, which tracks Inspector Alex Dueso's investigation of a series of brutal assaults on men across France. In the first section of this article, Dueso's displays of empowerment and authority in her role as a respected police officer are contrasted with her vulnerability to gender-based harassment from suspects and other agents of the police and justice systems. The nature of her policework, and her daily encounters with the consequences of gender-based violence for both men and women alike, are then considered for their exposition of the overlaps between multiple forms of violence committed by individuals, systems and the state under patriarchy. Finally, I examine Mey's use of a rape-revenge narrative in light of what Claire Henry describes as ‘the ethics of revenge’ (5), and thus interrogate the feminist potential of a novel that positions collective, extrajudicial, violent reprisals as acts of female solidarity and defence.