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Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

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Zlata Leibnerová

Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M. Litt.

Brno 2007

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M. Litt. for her kind help, valuable advice and revision of my thesis.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction.................................................................................................................4

1. 1 Golden Age Detective Stories............................................................................................ 4

1. 2 Agatha Christie................................................................................................................... 6

1. 3 Life in the Village............................................................................................................... 9

2. People Who Run the Village Life.............................................................................12

3. Doctors and vicars.........................................................................................................19

4. Retired Army Officers...................................................................................................28

5. Young Independent Women.........................................................................................36

6. Wives and Mothers........................................................................................................46

7. Spinsters and Widows...................................................................................................54

8. Wicked Young Men and Prodigal Sons.......................................................................61

9. Servants..........................................................................................................................67

1 Preface

This thesis attempts to compare and contrast the English village and its inhabitants as portrayed in the novels by Agatha Christie. It is based on the analysis of eight detective stories that take place in the country and were written at two different periods of the twentieth century. Agatha Christie has been often reproached for having created "a timeless, changeless world, peopled by cardboard characters" (Barnard 133). Her portrayal of the country in particular represents the target for the criticism. The English villages the author created are referred to as Mayhem Parva, which is to be defined as "a world shut off from the political and social preoccupations of the day" (Barnard 34) and their inhabitants are said to be based on clichés and stereotypes, lacking any psychological depth. These assumptions led me to define the area of interest of my thesis, the village and its figures, and the aim of my work is to trace whether these claims are well-founded or not. A village is an ideal setting of a detective story because it provides the writer with an enclosed group of people. Throughout her career, Agatha Christie wrote many novels that take place in the country. Her rural settings are rarely anchored in space, they are predominantly fictitious. However, their creation was inspired by the places Christie visited during her life (Morgan 176). The best known village is without doubt St Mary Mead, a place where one of the author"s most famous detectives, Miss Marple, lives. It is a quiet, peaceful place where everyone knows each other and any one new stands out a mile. Other villages such as Wychwood, Sittaford or King"s Abbot are similar to this one. To show whether these communities can be really perceived as sealed from the outside world I decided to base my thesis on the comparison of the English village as portrayed at the beginning and at the end of Christie"s career.

2 However, the village serves only as a starting point of the thesis. At the core of

the work lie the village characters. The detective stories of the Golden Age period do not usually leave any place for worked-out character analyses or complicated personal relationships. This allows the reader to concentrate solely on the resolution of the puzzle. In her stories, Agatha Christie introduced a set of figures that, as mentioned above, are referred to as "cardboard" or "flat", terms used for types that "are constructed round a single idea or quality" (Forster 73). Thus, the reader usually knows what to expect from them and recognizes them as soon as they appear on the scene. The village in particular is a place where the author widely used her stock characters. It is due to the fact that unlike the city, the village is seen as a stable place where people do not stay just for a while. It can be associated with a small number of residents, usually elderly people, who settled there for the rest of their lives. Thus, the typical inhabitants of Christie"s villages are retired army officers, gossipy spinsters, a vicar, a doctor and a squire. Apart from these figures, the majority of villages also feature other characters that can be identified with Christie"s detective stories, such as independent women, wicked men, ne"er-do-well sons, ordinary wives and servants. These characters are definitely worth noticing as they are not only typical of Christie"s writing but their way of life might give us an insight into society of the time. It is also worth exploring whether it is true that Christie relied on these stock types throughout her whole career or whether she changed them, described them more elaborately or introduced some new characters. To provide a thorough analysis of the above mentioned figures, the thesis is divided into eight chapters, each dedicated to the respective characters. As the life in the countryside revolves around the vicarage and a consulting room of the local doctor is also of great importance, the roles of vicars and doctors are explored in one of the chapters. In the part entitled Servants, I illustrate how Christie wrote about these lower-class characters and the chapter called People Who Run

3 the Village Life is dedicated to the aristocracy and upper-class representatives. The thesis

also focuses on the portrayal of women at different stages of their lives (Young Independent Women, Wives and Mothers, Spinsters and Widows) and the two remaining chapters concentrate on the description of qualities of Christie"s army officers and on the way the writer depicts the young male characters. Apart from this, the work also includes general background that relates to the period when the detective stories were created. This part provides information concerning the genre, the author and the English village of the twentieth century. As already mentioned, the principal task is to show what the village figures of Christie"s stories are like, what position they have in the village community and whether they undergo some changes or not. Christie"s work spans six decades. During that time British society underwent numerous significant changes. To demonstrate whether the author reflects this development and whether she creates new characters that correspond to the alteration of the village communities, the thesis concentrates on the analysis of eight novels that take place in the countryside. Four of them date back to the beginning of Christie"s career, to the period from 1925 to 1940, and they are as follows: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), The Sittaford Mystery (1931), Murder is Easy (1939). The rest of the books were written towards the end of the author"s career, from 1960 to 1975: The Pale Horse (1961), The Mirror Crack"d from Side to Side (1962), Hallowe"en Party (1969) and Nemesis (1971).

4 1. Introduction 1. 1 Golden Age Detective Stories

It was after the First World War that the detective story genre was at its peak. These years are called the Golden Age of the detective story, and to be more precise, it spans the period from 1920 to 1937. Its beginning is marked by the publication of the first detective story written by Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the period closes with the last novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman"s Honeymoon (Trodd 129). This literary form was exactly what people wanted after the war - it reflected their need to relax and escape the monotonous life they led. In contrast to the realism of the nineteenth century, the detective story represented light reading and was marked by emotional detachment and absence of violence. The writers of the Golden Age period did not usually discuss problems of society in their novels, they concentrated on the game, on the adventure. This aspect corresponds to the period of the 1920s, to the needs of society shaken by the horrors of the First World War (Light 66). In 1928 the Detection Club was founded and at the same time, Monsignor Ronald Knox formulated his famous Decalogue, a set of ten fair-play rules that were to guide detective fiction. It would be pointless to mention all of them here, let us just provide a few examples to show some of the restrictions imposed on the genre:

1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story.

4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which

will need a long scientific explanation at the end. 7. The detective must not himself commit the crime. 8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any

5 thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly,

but very slightly, below that of the average reader. (Smith) The core of the detective story lies in the puzzle. The principal question is who committed a crime and how he/she did it. The other aspects of the novel are of less importance, they are subordinate to the record of crime and deduction (Symons 8). This important feature of the detective stories is closely linked to the rules concerning the characters and the setting. In order not to distract the reader from unfolding a crime, the list of characters, which means of potential suspects, should be limited. The reader must be able to get to know all of them. The limited number of characters is then tied to the restricted setting such as a country house, ship, summer resort etc. The emphasis put on the construction of the puzzle led to the assumption that virtually everyone can become a writer of detective stories and there were many critics of this genre, such as Julian Symons or Raymond Chandler. In his famous essay The Simple Art of Murder, the latter author attacks the detective stories, the English ones in particular, for being artificial and wants the "murder" to return to the "alley" where it belongs: [Detective stories] do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too contrived and too little aware of what goes on in the world. [...] But if the writers of this fiction [...] wrote about the kind of murders that happen, they would also have to write about the authentic flavor of life as it is lived. (Chandler 56) However, detective fiction also had its supporters. The response to Raymond Chandler was W. H. Auden"s The Guilty Vicarage where he defends the restricted setting of the genre by assuming that the universe of the detective stories is "Eden-like" (qtd. in Hubly 512). The crime disrupts the order of this good place and its solving therefore plays the most

6 important role. Once the criminal is arrested, "innocence is restored" (qtd. in Hubly 512)

and the community is purged from the sin. Thus, according to Auden, the detective stories play with the dichotomy of guilt and innocence and that provides the explanation of the portrayal of an innocent and idealized setting, for example a village. There were many detective story writers in Britain in the 1920s, however, a prominent position was held by female authors who brought some novelties to the genre, such as introduction of domestic features and social issues. The most famous women writers of the period are usually called the English Queens of Crime and they are as follows: Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie. These authors often break the restricting rules and their works bring more than just a masterly constructed mystery (Trodd 129-130). Later on, as the demands of the public on the authenticity of the story increased, the detective story genre gradually gave way to the different crime fiction whose form is not that limited by the fair-play rules which prevented the writers from concealing any important clues from the reader (James 5). The principal change is marked by the basic question: This time it is not who but why that matters. Thus, the psychology of the characters plays a much more important role. Furthermore, crime fiction also focuses on the police procedures and expertise which are rarely developed in the classical detective fiction (Symons 183-185).

1. 2 Agatha Christie

As mentioned above, Agatha Christie started writing in the 1920s, during the period that is known as the Golden Age of detective fiction and the author herself is often called the Greatest Queen of Crime. During her career, she wrote over eighty crime novels and short story collections and many plays out of which the best-known is without doubt

7 The Mousetrap that appeared on the scene in 1952 and has become the longest-running

play in the world. Besides, she is also an author of six romantic novels that were published under the name of Mary Westmacott ("Queen of Crime"). Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born in Torquay on September 15, 1890. She was the youngest of three children of an American, Frederick Miller, and his English wife Clarissa. She was educated at home and encouraged to write from the early childhood. During the First World War she worked as a nurse with the Voluntary Aid Detachment and later on, she joined the dispensary. This proved to be very important experience. Consequently, she profits from her knowledge of different poisons in her detective stories. It was during the war that she married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Royal Flying Corps. Unfortunately, the marriage did not last and the couple got divorced in 1928. Her second husband was an archaeologist, Max Mallowan, who she met in Iraq, in an ancient city of Ur. She often accompanied her husband on the archaeological excavations and his work inspired her to write several detective stories, including a novel entitled Death Comes as the End that takes place in ancient Egypt. At the age of eighty- one, Agatha Christie was appointed a Dame Commander of the British Empire by Queen

Elizabeth II.

The author was always interested in puzzle books and riddles and it was her sister Madge who inspired her to write her first detective story (Christie, An Autobiography 235-

236). Thus, in 1920 The Mysterious Affair at Styles was published. However, the turning

point in Christie"s career came six years later when she wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which was a huge success mainly because of the ingenious trick played on the readers. To mislead the public, Christie broke one of the conventions to which detective fiction conformed: The narrator of the story turned out to be the murderer.

8 During her career, Christie infringed many other rules, for example it was a policeman who

became murderer in one of her novels. In her works, the writer introduced a large number of detectives and the most famous one was without doubt Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee with an extraordinary moustache and an egg-shaped head. He is in a way a great amateur detective in the style of Sherlock Holmes who relies on his "little grey cells" and his Watson is represented by not particularly intelligent Captain Hastings. However, this character is not a hero of the Edwardian period. In a way, by introducing this character Christie mocks the Great Detective of the past: "Poirot is a 'little man". Under stress he builds houses of cards or when the going gets really rough orders a special tisane" (Light 78). He is rather a creation of the post-war period which "made the notion of the conquering detective unpalatable to some" (Light 73) and in this sense the author made him modern, endowing him with modernist attitudes, such as love of geometric designs or central heating. The refusal of any heroism can also be seen in the portrayal of other well-known detectives, such as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, a young and anti-romantic couple, or Miss Jane Marple, an old spinster from St Mary Mead who is an expert on human nature. There is another aspect of modernity typical of Christie"s writing. She changes the Victorian image of sweet home by bringing crime right into the middle of the family. The murderer is usually not someone from the outside, it is a member of an enclosed group of people within the family community. Furthermore, in her work, Christie is unsentimental about the past. She does not focus on the aristocracy but on the life of the changing middle class: "Her dream is not of a grander, nobler existence but of a quiet life. Her characters are not the large and sweeping aristocrats of the literary imagination but little people" (Light 106).

9 Agatha Christie died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. By that time she was

the best-selling author of detective stories in the world and it was already in the fifties that another Queen of Crime, Margery Allingham, wrote: "Christie has entertained more people for more hours at time than any other writer of her generation"(qtd. in Liukkonen).

1. 3 Life in the Village

The first half of the twentieth century was a time of significant changes in the British countryside. Not only did the structure of the rural community alter but the village itself changed considerably. This development of the rural areas was due in particular to the First and Second World Wars. At the turn of the twentieth century, the village inhabitants still represent a close- knit community of people who know each other and meet regularly at the important village events, such as fêtes or bazaars and at the village church which represents an important gathering place. The structure of the village society is hierarchical and it is the ownership of the land that plays an important role. Thus, at the top of the pyramid is a country squire or a rich industrialist who provides work for the people and the second most important position is held by a parson whose task is to help those in need. The majority of the villagers are then represented by the working class which is attached to the farmland (Abercrombie 316). However, the agriculture gradually loses its strong position (the process has already started during the Industrial Revolution). In addition, "agriculture has [...] become 'industrialized"" (Abercrombie 317) and the use of new machinery results in the decrease in number of farm workers. Thus, the traditional structure of the village society starts

to deteriorate. The squires often find it difficult to look after their estate and their

possession is frequently acquired by the wealthy businessmen. The development

10 of engineering during the First World War also leads to the emergence of new working

opportunities: World War I had been the first 'mechanized" war and many returning soldiers came home with a good army training as fitters, mechanics and drivers. They also had useful gratuities, and several set up their own village taxi or bus services. (Porter 58) The post-war era is also marked by the appearance of many new services. For instance, a lot of villages start setting up libraries, and various organisations whose aim is to improve the life in the village are founded, such as Women"s Institutes and committees that take responsibility for the housing, health, life of the young etc. These bodies tend to take over the work of the parish councils that came into being in the 1890s. During the 1930s other important alterations are made in the countryside, such as new housing. Many of the old buildings are demolished and modern bungalows are built instead. Nevertheless, the inter-war period only marks the beginning of the flow of significant changes in villages which are completed after the Second World War. For example, "[i]t was not until 1953 that electricity came to rural areas on a major scale" (Porter 54) and the situation was more or less the same as far as piped water is concerned. In addition, it is in that period that the welfare system wholly absorbs the function ofquotesdbs_dbs24.pdfusesText_30

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