In her own life Agatha Christie blazed a trail for female contemporaries – travelling around the world in 1922, crossing Europe alone after her 1928 divorce, living regularly in the desert on archaeological digs for many years thereafter, dominating London’s theatre world (still the only woman to have three plays running simultaneously in the West End), and, along the way, becoming the best-selling writer of all time. If a feminist is one who believes in the equality of the sexes Dame Agatha’s credentials are indisputable; but how many readers realise that in the pages of her books she also created many ‘fellow’ feminists?
The first of her spirited, independent young women is Prudence Beresford, nee Cowley, known to her friends and acquaintances as Tuppence. Although not as famous as either Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, Tuppence appeared in print the year after Poirot made his debut and many years before Jane Marple solved The Murder at the Vicarage. In 1922 we meet Tuppence in the opening lines of The Secret Adversary (‘Tuppence, old bean!’) where we learn that she is the daughter of an Archdeacon and that, like her creator, she worked in a hospital during World War I. Like many women of the time she had little formal education (again, like her creator) or training but was anxious to see life before domesticity beckoned. As an outlet for her undoubted spirit, courage and zest for life she joins forces with Tommy Beresford to become The Young Adventurers; and in the course of their adventures she proves herself equal to – or better then? – her male fellow adventurer.
Tommy and Tuppence have the distinction of being the only Christie characters to age gradually between appearances. They marry at the end of The Secret Adversary (1922) and are starting a family at the close of Partners in Crime (1929). We find them at the opening of N or M? (1941) anxious to contribute to the War effort and, despite parenthood, they become involved in tracking down German spies. By 1968 and By the Pricking of my Thumbs, they are both middle-aged but with, in Christie’s own words, ‘spirit unquenched’; in the last book that Christie wrote, Postern of Fate (1973) they are elderly detectives investigating (not very convincingly, it must be admitted) the dark history of their new home. It is clear that Christie retained a lifelong affection for her husband-and-wife creation.
Imbued with similar spirit is the next feminist candidate, Lady Eileen Brent. Like her predecessor she is better known by a nickname, Bundle. She drives an expensive sports-car, has a hectic social life and is the bane of Lord Caterham, her staid father’s life. She appears in two novels, The Secret of Chimneys (1925) and The Seven Dials Mystery (1927) and in each title she tackles kidnapping, robbery, murder and romance with enviable élan. We meet another titled female with little regard for the niceties of the class system that obtained at that time in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (1934). Lady Frances Derwent – again with a gender-ambiguous nickname, Frankie – is so similar to Bundle that a minor mystery is why Christie didn’t bring Lady Eileen back for one more adventure. Living in a castle and daughter of another Lord, Frankie takes time out from her hectic social whirl to join forces with her more impoverished friend, Bobby Jones, to solve the puzzle of the last words, the book’s title, of a dying man. Like Bundle, she takes dead bodies, car crashes, impersonation and kidnapping in her glamorous stride. And it is Frankie who first realises why ‘they’ didn’t ask Evans!
In the 1950s two independent women, both with a yen for travel as well as adventure, appeared in They Came to Baghdad (1951) and Destination Unknown (1954). Although the plots of both books are untypical Christie (foreign travel spy story) and preposterous at that, Victoria Jones (They Came to Baghdad) and Hilary Craven (Destination Unknown) carry on the Christie tradition of strong-willed women in a man’s world. Both characters reflect Christie’s own travel experiences and most of the places visited by the characters were visited by Christie herself. Admittedly, Victoria sets off on her adventure in pursuit of a man but her independent spirit stands her in good stead during her subsequent masquerade as an anthropologist in the course of which she is kidnapped and almost murdered.
Hilary’s situation is strikingly original. Deeply depressed after the death of her child and the loss of her husband she is contemplating suicide when she is approached by the mysterious Mr. Jessop. He suggests that if she intends ending her life she might consider ending it in a good cause, in the service of her country. She agrees to impersonate the wife of a recently vanished scientist in an effort to discover what happened to him. Her subsequent adventures demand courage and quick-wittedness in alien locations and with unseen enemies.
Successful career women – Rosamund Darnley (Evil under the Sun), Jenny Driver (Lord Edgware Dies) – appear alongside women eminent in (then) unusual fields. The newly-qualified Dr. Sarah King in Appointment with Death (1938), Angela Warren, a renowned archaeologist, in Five Little Pigs (1943); Henrietta Savernake from The Hollow (1946) is a well-known sculptress and Sophia Leonides in Crooked House (1949) is a highly-placed Foreign Office administrator despite her twenty-two years.
Probably the most unusual career woman in the entire Christie output is Lucy Eyelesbarrow in 4.50 from Paddington (1957). Despite achieving a First at Oxford, Lucy realised that a gap in the market existed for capable domestic help and made herself available for short term housekeeper postings, for a considerable fee. In 4.50 from Paddington one Jane Marple employs her to carry out the most bizarre task of Lucy’s entire ‘domestic’ career – finding a dead body.
And from the 1930s onwards well known detective novelist Mrs. Ariadne Oliver – British, middle-aged, creator of a foreign detective, author of The Body in the Library – appears at irregular intervals. Described as ‘an earnest believer in woman’s intuition’ and a ‘hot-headed feminist’, her mantra is ‘Now if a woman were in charge of Scotland Yard...’.
Perhaps she has a point…
- John Curran
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John Curran is an Irish literary scholar and archivist, best known as an expert on the work of Agatha Christie. He was born in Dublin and for years edited the Agatha Christie newsletter, subscriptions to which are handled through the author's official website. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Christie at Trinity College. He served as a National Trust consultant during the restoration of Christie's Devon residence, the Greenway Estate.
