Reflecting their Time: The »Nutshell Studies« of Unexplained Death as Microcosms of Mid-Century America

In the 1940s and 1950s, Chicago heiress Frances Glessner Lee (1878–1962) created a group of miniature rooms and buildings as tools for forensic investigators-in-training at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Legal Medicine. Known collectively as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, each represents a tiny, highly detailed crime scene, for which Lee also created an accompanying text with additional information: witness statements, weather reports, etc. It was Lee’s intention that the Nutshell Studies would provide capsule crime scenes “at the most effective moment, very much as if a motion picture were stopped at such a point” (Lee n.d.). This paper will explore Lee’s literary work – both in her youth and in her acc ompanying texts for the Nutshells. It will also look at the ways in which the themes of the Nutshells’ crimes, carefully chosen by Lee to represent issues relevant to her own day in the 1940s, are reflected in larger cultural currents in American society. This reflection of contemporary social issues finds strong parallels with crime film of the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly work of Alfred Hitchcock. In turn, many anxieties of mid-century America are also reflected in the post- 9/11 world with an increased unease about terrorism, global migration, and globalism. By understanding Lee`s and Hitchcock’s earlier work, we can better understand the 21st century’s attitude to similar concerns.