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Christie's Sleuths: Miss Marple
252 Plays7 months ago
Miss Marple is one of Agatha Christie's famous creations. In today's episode, Brook and Sarah discuss the books and short stories that feature this fascinating detective and are surprised to learn how many of Christie's works Miss Marple appeared in.
Discussed
"Tuesday Night Club" (1927) Agatha Christie
The Thirteen Problems (1932) Agatha Christie
Murder at the Vicarage (1930) Agatha Christie
Sleeping Murder (1976) Agatha Christie
The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962) Agatha Christie
At Bertram's Hotel (1965) Agatha Christie
4:50 From Paddington (1957) Agatha Christie
A Murder is Announced (1950) Agatha Christie
The Secret Adversary (1983) London Weekend Television
Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime (1983) London Weekend Television
Murder She Said (1961 film) MGM
The Mirror Crack'd (1980 film)
Murder She Wrote (1984-1996) CBS
Agatha Christie's Marple (2004-2013) BBC
Marple: Twelve New Mysteries (2022)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921) Agatha Christie
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Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction and Clued In Cartel Membership
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke, and we both love mystery. Hi Brooke. Hi Sarah. Today we're going to get back into talking about Agatha Christie's sleuths. Before we do that, should we mention our ride along that is coming up?
00:00:30
Speaker
Yes. So members of the Cludin Cartel, which is our paid membership. And to join the cartel, it's very accessible. It ranges from $12 US a year to $120. And you pay, you decide what your discount is.
00:00:48
Speaker
members of the cartel will be able to see the product of what you and I write over the next little bit and provide some input in terms of what we should be writing as we try something completely new and a little bit scary.
00:01:05
Speaker
It is a little scary, but it's really
Who is Miss Marple?
00:01:07
Speaker
exciting. So yeah, so bit by bit as we write the story, Cartel members will get to see it as we go along. And like you said, give some input when we want certain details or maybe when we get stuck and we need an idea. So we hope to see people there. We want to have a lot of fun.
00:01:26
Speaker
So in past episodes about Agatha Christie sleuths, we've talked about some of the lesser known sleuths that maybe only appeared in a few books or short stories. But today we're turning our attention to one of the most popular, Miss Marple.
00:01:46
Speaker
Agatha Christie Sleuth, the incomparable Miss Jane Marple, first appeared in a short story published in 1927 called The Tuesday Nightclub, which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems. Marple's first appearance in a full-length novel was in 1930 with The Murder at the Vicarage. Her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder, published in 1976 after Christie's death.
00:02:13
Speaker
Altogether, this octogenarian sleuth was in 12 novels and 20 short stories. Best known as simply Miss Marple, she's the quintessential elderly busybody, listening and picking up on details that others miss in order to cunningly solve mysteries.
00:02:31
Speaker
She likely acquired her surname from the name of a railway station in Marple on the Manchester to Sheffield Hope Valley line. The story goes that Agatha Christie spent a long delay there and made note of the sign. Miss Marple resides in the fictional English village of St. Mary Mead where there's a pub, a few shops, the vicarage, and Gossington Hall estate.
00:02:57
Speaker
According to the Agatha Christie website, the character of Miss Marple was heavily influenced by Christie's own grandmother and her grandmother's friends.
How has Miss Marple Evolved?
00:03:06
Speaker
Like many older women of that time, Marple's hobbies include knitting, gardening, and gossiping, of course. She's described as an attractive, tall, and thin old woman with a twinkle in her blue eyes.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's interesting to note that Ms. Marple's personality changed some over the years. In The Murder at the Vicarage, she's only barely tolerated by some of the town's people. She's considered a snoop and sort of a bother who always expects the worst in other people. In later stories, this isn't the case.
00:03:41
Speaker
Ms. Marple seems kinder and less negative in her views. Something that remains constant in her character, however, is her willingness to remain somewhat overlooked and disregarded, the quiet old woman in the corner who's secretly figuring everyone out.
00:03:59
Speaker
Miss Marple had a succession of housemaids in the stories. Uh, after her favorite long time made Florence retires, she employs several young women from a local orphanage whom she trains for service. And then in her later years, she employs a companion named Sherry Baker, and she's first introduced in the mirror craft from side to side.
00:04:23
Speaker
Most of the Marple stories are set in St. Mary Mead, but not all of them. We find the sleuth to be very independent and a good traveler who enjoys visiting friends in various UK locations, as well as farther afield. Wherever she goes, a mysterious death is sure to take place.
00:04:41
Speaker
Ms. Marple is described as a spinster, but it's mentioned that she did have a special bow in her youth. But without children or immediate family of her own, her closest known relative is her nephew, Raymond West. He's an author and very fond of his aunt, but he tends to overestimate his own capabilities and underestimate his aunt's capacity to read human nature and therefore solve mysteries.
00:05:09
Speaker
Although Miss Marple is always portrayed as an elderly woman, her exact age is a bit of a puzzle itself. In At Bertram's Hotel, published in 1965, it's said she first visited this hotel when she was 14 and about 60 years have passed since then.
Adaptations of Miss Marple
00:05:27
Speaker
So implying that she's around 75.
00:05:30
Speaker
But in 450 from Paddington, published almost 10 years before, Ms. Marple reports to other characters that she will be turning 90 the following year.
00:05:41
Speaker
I doubt that the Queen of Crime made a mistake here. You know, maybe in her mind these stories were written out of order. Or was Miss Marple poking fun at her feebleness on purpose when she said she was about to be 90? It seems like something the character might do to downplay her abilities and keep her crime solving on the down low.
00:06:06
Speaker
The Murder at the Vicarage and A Murder is Announced were both adapted for the stage and played for many years last touring in the late 1970s. The BBC's beloved TV series entitled Agatha Christie's Miss Marple starring Joan Hickson aired from 1984 to 1992 and all 12 Marple novels were dramatized in this production.
00:06:30
Speaker
As we've learned in previous Clueden episodes, Agatha Christie was never very happy with film productions of her work. But it seems that after the BBC's success in producing The Secret Adversary and subsequently Partners in Crime, they were granted the rights to produce the Ms. Marple stories.
00:06:50
Speaker
Other TV adaptations followed, but ardent fans seemed to prefer the Joan Hickson Miss Marple, similarly to the preference for David Suchet as Poirot. Fans also enjoyed this particular series because it sticks so closely to the original plot lines of the Marple books. Murder, She Said was a 1961 full-length mystery film
00:07:14
Speaker
based on 450 from Paddington and it starred Margaret Rutherford as Ms. Marple. MGM also made three sequels, including Rutherford as Marple. It does not stick closely to the plot and Rutherford plays a comedic and rather silly Ms. Marple who often breaks the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience.
00:07:39
Speaker
In 1980, Angela Lansbury played Miss Marple in The Mirror Cracked, and the film featured an all-star cast, including Edward Fox as Inspector Craddock, and he does most of the legwork for Miss Marple in this film. Lansbury then, of course, later played a similar role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.
00:08:01
Speaker
It seems to me that the multiple TV series and especially the long-running BBC series has sort of tricked us a little bit in thinking that Agatha Christie wrote more Miss Marple than she did. But even though Miss Marple starred in less than 25% of Agatha Christie's novels, she definitely accounts for much more than that in the heart of mystery readers.
00:08:24
Speaker
Well, thank you, Brooke. And I have to agree. I'm surprised that your number there that she was in less than 25% of what I get the Christie wrote, because I would have thought it was more. But I guess a lot of short stories, you can expand those into screen adaptations.
00:08:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And I definitely think that's what happened. And we've talked before too, Sarah, that sometimes the other sleuths, the lesser known sleuths that we discussed, Sergeant Battle, even Tommy and Tuppence, some of their stories when they appeared on TV,
00:09:03
Speaker
the sleuth in them then became Miss Marple. So she got some other storylines from some of the other sleuths as well. But of the 66 novels that Agatha Christie wrote to think that only 12 of them were Marple novels, like that kind of blew my mind because he is such a big part of the canon.
00:09:23
Speaker
I don't think you mentioned it, but the more recent BBC series, Agatha Christie's Marple, and I think there were two women who played Miss Marple. Geraldine McEwen for the first set of the stories, and then Julia McKenzie in the last half of the episodes for that.
00:09:43
Speaker
I really like those. I think they stray a little bit from the stories. But what I like about those is in the setup, in the opening scenes, she's always reading something. And if you are quick enough to make a note of whatever it is she's reading, it's often another Golden Age author, or it's some callback to mysteries
00:10:12
Speaker
in a historical sense. Oh, that's very clever. I like that. I think that the TV adaptations also skewed my understanding of the character a little bit because like especially the actresses that you just named.
00:10:32
Speaker
They're not disliked in the community. They're kind of the sweet elderly lady. They're usually quite attractive and a really liked part of the community, I think, versus who we see in when I first read The Murder at the Vicarage. I was like, oh my goodness.
00:10:54
Speaker
These characters really don't like her and they don't want her around. Yeah. But, you know, as I explained that did change over the series. And I was wondering about that and I'm wondering if part of that changed as.
00:11:10
Speaker
Agatha Christie aged herself because in 1927 she was a very young woman and elderly women, we think of them differently when we're in our 20s and 30s when, boy, 70 doesn't seem very old at all right now as I'm entering middle age. You don't want to portray those older people as stodgy or an annoying busy body. I'm wondering if that changed in the way she saw herself as she became an older woman.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're probably right, Brooke.
What Makes Miss Marple Unique?
00:11:43
Speaker
I think that's a great observation. And I get this sense that Agatha Christie really enjoyed writing Miss Marple. Although I agree with you, when I first read Murder at the Vicarage, I thought she was not very kind to Miss Marple at all.
00:12:03
Speaker
Um, and you know, I haven't read all of the, uh, Marvel stories or, or novels, so I can't, um, you know, really talk to how that change evolves, but I'm glad to hear that it does. Yes. Yes. I am too.
00:12:25
Speaker
For today's conversation, I started reading The Thirteen Problems. And so that's the short stories that she first appeared in. And I really like them. They're short, snappy. And in each of them, a different character is kind of sharing a mysterious story that they're familiar with.
00:12:53
Speaker
there's six of them I think who've gathered and they each kind of pose a solution and then it's Ms. Marple who at the end has some observation of some seemingly pointless piece of information that actually reveals the truth of the matter. But yeah, I've really been enjoying those.
00:13:16
Speaker
Oh, those sound fantastic. I'll, I'll definitely pick that up too. And I think that's so, because we're talking about how she changed over the length of the stories, but here she is the very first time that Christie presents her. And she already has that characterization where, because that stays true, doesn't it? Where, uh, at the end of the story, Ms. Marple is able to be the one to identify that one piece of information.
00:13:46
Speaker
that unlocks or maybe not just one, but key pieces of information that unlock the whole mystery. And that obviously was established right at the beginning. And one thing that I learned and thought that was really interesting in my research was that to think about the fact that these days it's very common to have a sleuth.
00:14:11
Speaker
put the mystery together by listening and talking or simply observing different people and how they interact with one another. But that was very new for Marple because prior to that, sleuths either had a police background or an espionage. They were into espionage or military or something and they were looking at physical evidence, fingerprints, a dropped letter or a
00:14:37
Speaker
a note left behind, these very physical things that would tie the case together. And she was kind of the first one to just observe maybe secret alliances or human nature. So that was a very new thing that Agatha Christie was introducing.
00:14:56
Speaker
I think it's interesting, and you kind of commented on this, the way that she doesn't really age, or we don't really know how old she is. You said there's a couple of hints, and yeah, maybe the stories were written out of chronological order, or as you say, maybe Agatha Christie was just kind of messing with the audience. But
00:15:24
Speaker
And I guess she's like Poirot in that sense in that she doesn't really. She doesn't really age, even though the world around her is presumably is changing. Mm hmm. Yeah. Isn't it interesting that Christie did that with both of her primary salutes? She doesn't do that with everyone. You know, Tommy and Tuppence age and they sort of mirror her life cycle. But yeah, I think that it's
00:15:53
Speaker
interesting that she kept these kind of solid or stable characters there. And I think that sometimes she gets criticized for that because they, you know, there's no character arc or whatever. But I think it was very intentional and it really creates a strong story and an ability to create a series around that character.
Miss Marple as a Feminist Icon
00:16:20
Speaker
Well, and it also makes the character really timeless, right? Because they're not so ground in whatever is going on in the outside world. You know, you can pick up the Tuesday nightclub and it could be any time, right? It's six people who've gathered to have this conversation. It's not grounded in a particular
00:16:44
Speaker
event or, you know, there's no reference to, um, COVID or cell phones or, you know, I mean, obviously those aren't going to appear in, in Agatha Christie stories, but it's really timeless. Yeah. And a good lesson, right? For, because as you say, if you were writing something now and you put all these details in that are about, you know, the 2020s,
00:17:11
Speaker
then it's going to freeze it in that time period where we can still enjoy these Ms. Marple stories that are 100 years old now that feel like they're just not locked into an era. Yeah, great point.
00:17:28
Speaker
So I know it was a couple of years ago now that the Christie estate commissioned, I think it was 12 authors to write 12 new Ms. Marple stories. I would love for them to do that again. Like I would be, I would love to read more Ms. Marple stories.
00:17:49
Speaker
I would too. Well, hopefully someone from the Christie estate is listening. We can only hope. There've been some discussions about feminism and Ms. Marple. Um, and interestingly, which I guess this is like anything these days, kind of both sides of this and say that she's very, you know, very good representation of feminism and then the opposite. And I think I'm on the end where I feel like she is a great
00:18:17
Speaker
representation of feminism and being a strong woman. She's independently wealthy. We don't really know. She never works. She just has the means to exist, right? So she's very independent in that way. She's unmarried. She's always been unmarried. She's taken care of herself. She travels alone. She does have companions, of course, but as far as
00:18:41
Speaker
getting around the world. She does what she likes, she solves crimes, and I think she's a wonderful role model for women. I agree, and older women as well, right? You know, she really plays up the, well, I'm just this helpless old woman that, you know, nobody sees. That's part of the Tuesday nightclub is she says, and nobody sees me sitting in the corner, right?
00:19:10
Speaker
But I agree. I think she's a really good example of how a woman can be independent even into her old age. And I think she sets the stage for some of what we're seeing now where there's
00:19:29
Speaker
you know, multiple series with older sleuths. And, you know, there's definitely a line I think you can draw from Miss Marple through to those series that we're seeing today. Exactly. And in this contemporary time, we are still drawn to that, to that idea of the person who you least expect can be, you know, the hero.
00:19:57
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Although Miss Marple, the name, is a bit of a shorthand for kind of a busy body, know-it-all. You know, you'll hear reference to, say, a detective show. If there is an old lady character, they're often referred to as a Miss Marple and not in a particularly positive way. This is true.
00:20:24
Speaker
So Brooke was the character of Miss Marple inspired by anyone?
00:20:30
Speaker
Oh yes, actually Sarah, we see her predecessor in some books by Anna Catherine Green and the character is Amelia Butterworth. And Amelia is a helper to Anna Catherine Green's primary sleuth, Detective Ebenezer Grice. And this enables him to kind of utilize her to get into the, you know,
00:20:56
Speaker
drawing rooms of some of the more posh society where they wouldn't necessarily let a police detective who was kind of considered a lower blue collar worker into that world. And Amelia was able to infiltrate it much like we see Ms. Marple doing the same thing.
00:21:16
Speaker
Oh, that's a fantastic connection. And I think I get the Christie in her biography identified Anna Catherine Greene as one of her inspirations in writing mysterious, a ferret styles.
00:21:33
Speaker
Oh, that's true. Not to get off on a Anna Catherine Green tangent, but she was just so ahead of her time in so many ways. And so it's interesting that we see her bringing in this elderly female sleuth much earlier than even Miss Marple.
Closing Thoughts and Future Discussions
00:21:51
Speaker
Mm hmm. Well, Brooke, this has been so much fun speaking about Miss Marple. And I actually hope this isn't the last time that we talk about her because she is such a great character.
00:22:02
Speaker
I think I would love to revisit Ms. Marple. And you know, we might want to do a viewing of those silly movies starring Margaret Rutherford and discuss how they differ from the actual Christie Cannon. It could be a fun conversation. Absolutely.
00:22:23
Speaker
Well, thank you, Sarah. And thank you listeners for joining us today on Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah. And we both love mystery.
00:22:36
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers. If you liked what you heard, please consider telling a friend, leaving a review, or subscribing with your favorite podcast listening app. Visit our website at cluedinmystery.com to sign up for our newsletter, The Clued In Chronicle, or to join our paid membership, The Clued In Cartel. We're on social media at Clued In Mystery.