Abstract In the history of education women and their communities have always posed a threat to the male stronghold. Turning on the idea that women have historically been perceived as interlopers, and thus symbolically criminalised by their desire for, and ultimately successful, admittance to scholarly and educational spaces, this article examines a cluster of Golden Age detective novels from the 1930s and 1940s (published at a time when it was still possible for women to study for but not receive a degree) in which educated women and criminality come into violent contact. Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935), Mavis Doriel Hay’s Death on the Cherwell (1935), Gladys Mitchell’s Laurels are Poison (1942), and Josephine Tey’s Miss Pym Disposes (1946) are all set in women’s residential academic communities and place the question of women’s right to learning at the crux of their narratives. By invoking the concomitant history of women’s education, this article examines the way in which these authors use the genre to perform contemporary concerns about educated women and more specifically the fear that women are made monstrous, deviant, or corrupt by their contact with Higher Education. In the process they reveal the vulnerability of women’s institutions in the 1930s and 1940s and acknowledge the competing and incompatible demands of educated women’s personal and professional lives. Much of this is communicated through a preoccupation with territory and the act of trespass: the communities, and the women in them, are perceived as dangerous and threatening and yet are themselves consistently under attack. By staging the educated woman as a criminal, or at least a suspected criminal, these texts make manifest her symbolic position in early twentieth century society: she is a woman made transgressive by her crossing of figurative and literal boundaries.

中文翻译：

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“学无止境”：黄金时代侦探小说中的学术社区、女性教育和犯罪

摘要 在教育史上，女性及其社区一直对男性大本营构成威胁。回顾女性历来被视为闯入者的观点，因此她们渴望并最终成功进入学术和教育领域，因此象征性地将其定为犯罪，本文研究了 1930 年代和 1940 年代的一系列黄金时代侦探小说（出版于在女性仍然有可能学习但无法获得学位的时代），受过教育的女性与犯罪行为发生暴力接触。多萝西·L·塞耶斯的艳俗之夜 (1935)、梅维斯·多里尔·海伊 (1935)、格拉迪斯·米切尔 (Gladys Mitchell) 的桂冠是毒药 (1942)、和 Josephine Tey 的 Miss Pym Disposes (1946) 都以女性住宅学术社区为背景，并将女性的学习权问题置于其叙事的关键。通过援引女性教育的相关历史，本文考察了这些作者如何使用这一体裁来表达当代对受过教育的女性的关注，更具体地说是担心女性因与高等教育的接触而变得可怕、越轨或腐败。在这个过程中，他们揭示了 1930 年代和 1940 年代妇女机构的脆弱性，并承认受过教育的妇女个人和职业生活的竞争和不相容的需求。其中大部分是通过对领土和侵入行为的关注来传达的：社区，以及其中的妇女，被视为危险和威胁，但他们自己却始终受到攻击。通过将受过教育的女性描绘成罪犯，或者至少是犯罪嫌疑人，这些文本表明了她在 20 世纪早期社会中的象征地位：她是一个因跨越比喻和字面界限而变得越轨的女性。