Research
My research project is a study of the manipulations of the Gothic tradition by the prolific twentieth-century ‘middlebrow’ novelist Agatha Christie. I argue that Christie’s work, which, although popular, has been critically neglected and seen as lacking in substance, immensely repays a detailed examination informed by Gothic criticism. My main theoretical approach is that of cultural materialism - situating Christie’s novels within their historical, social and political contexts – however, I also incorporate elements of psychoanalysis, spatial theory and postcolonial discourse into my readings of the texts. There are three chapters to the thesis:
Gothic Parody
Chapter one investigates texts which infer supernatural practices – witchcraft, gypsies’ curses, table turning – that foster false Gothic expectations which are ultimately deflated in order to uphold a version of twentieth century modernity at odds with the Victorian penchant for the macabre.
Key texts for this chapter: The Sittaford Mystery (1929), ‘The Idol House of Astarte’ and ‘The Bloodstained Pavement' in The Thirteen Problems (1932), The Pale Horse (1963) and Endless Night (1967).
The Domestic Gothic
Chapter two is focused on Christie’s incarnation of the genre of domestic Gothic. It seeks to ascertain why it is, in relation to domesticity, that Christie often opts for the ‘subversive’ Gothic mode, thereby investigating how novels her fiction function within a larger social phenomenon of a ‘re-imagining’ of the home following the First World War.
Key texts for this chapter: The Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Murder is Easy (1939), The Moving Finger (1943), A Murder is Announced (1950), By The Pricking of My Thumbs (1967), Sleeping Murder (1976).
The Archaelogical Gothic
Chapter three examines the colonial and post-colonial resonances of produced by notions of ‘home’, by investigating what I term to be Christie’s use of the ‘archaeological Gothic’, which is manifested in her representations of Syria, Iraq and Egypt.
Key texts for this chapter: Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), Death on the Nile (1937), Appointment with Death (1938), , Death Comes as the End (1944), Absent in the Spring (written as 'Mary Westamacott', 1944).
The sutiably Gothic dust jacket cover of the first edition of The Hound of Death and Other Stories (1933)
Agatha Christie and her husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, at Tell Halaf, Syria (1935) (photo: Richard Barnett)