MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

This paper examines how Raymond Chandler, the quintessential American hardboiled mystery novelist, was heavily influenced by his extraordinary secondary school education in Edwardian England at Dulwich College, a historic English Public School. This education was formative in Chandler’s self-perception as an outsider in America – an identity which (in his mind, at least) made him capable of objective critic of consumerist America and a masterful innovator of vernacular America. More importantly, it was essential in Chandler’s creation of the distinct chivalric ethos of his iconic hero, Philip Marlowe. Throughout his works, Chandler tests Marlowe’s ethical code against America, ultimately rejecting that code in The Long Goodbye in both his personal life and his artistic work. The rejection of the code also reflects Chandler’s disgust in an American culture he perceived as corrupt. This paper explores the development of Chandler’s unique chivalric code at Dulwich College in Edwardian England and explains how it transforms from the beginning of his career to The Long Goodbye. Using his extensive correspondence, Chandler’s identity as an Anglo-American and an artist is explored in order to understand his artistic intention and his own understanding of Dulwich’s influence. In addition, contemporary attitudes about chivalry at Dulwich and the Edwardian male are explicated using primarily contemporary accounts, such as E.M. Forster and A.H. Gilkes, the headmaster of Dulwich. Critical studies on both the English character and Chandler’s work, audience, and life are later analyzed primarily using Laurence Kohlberg’s theories of moral education as they pertain to Dulwich and Chandler’s own writing.