How Agatha Christie Revolutionized Murder

8/12/2019 How Agatha Christie Revolutionized Murder

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How Agatha Christie Revolutionized Murder

Many of us only know the name Agatha Christie in association with known works of literature,

such as Death on the Nile or And Then There Were None , imagining her as being this entitythat churns out one murder mystery after the other without ever seemingly getting tired.Unfortunately, it seems that most schools put very little emphasis on her works or her life,and as a result countless people grow up deprived of knowing anything about one of thetwentieth centurys literary titans.

She was part of a rare breed of people, the kind whose lives and professions blend together,making for turbulent lives that are nevertheless rich in history. As you are going to find out a bit later, Christie had a very interesting life, one that perhaps even started to mirror her careeras time went by.

Agatha Christies Early Life

ust like most good stories, Agathas life began in a very promising way when she was born inSeptember !"#$ into a wealthy upper class family whose members overcame many hurdles tolive as comfortably as they did in South %est &ngland. As Christie herself would put it, shehad a very happy childhood and from a very young age was consistently interacting withstrong and independent women.

Agatha Christie as a girl (date unknown)

She traveled a fair bit around &urope, going from one vacation home to another. 'eing borninto a wealthy family she was provided with a sophisticated home education, learning to read, write, do basic arithmetic and play the piano as well as the mandolin from a young age. Asmost prominent authors, Christie developed a love for reading from a very young age, withsome of her fondest childhood memories consisting of burying her nose in the pages of


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childrens books.

All of that wealth and comfort didnt come without a price though( much of Agatha Christieschildhood was spent secluded from other children, which to a certain e)tent inhibited hersocial development. *ater in life though she did make friends with a group of girls in +or uay,and starring alongside them in a theatrical production was, according to Christie, one of themost -oyous moments in her lifetime.

+o make matters worse, her father fell ill uite often and suffered from a number of heartattacks, finally succumbing at the age of fifty five in /ovember !#$!. 0is death not only cameas a heavy blow to the family, but it also left them in a precarious financial situation, and thatserved as a wake up call for Christie, one that would grab her by the arm and throw her intothe brutal and unforgiving world of adulthood.

1n !#$2, Agatha received formal education at Miss 3uyers 3irls School, though she nevercould uite fit into the strict regime the girls were made to follow. +hree years later, in !#$4, Agatha was sent away to 5aris where she was educated in three schools6 MademoiselleCabernets, *e Marroniers and Miss 7rydens.

Agatha Christies Literary Beginnings

+hough Christie had written many stories and poems, none of them really had any impact orrecognition, that is until she wrote her first short story, 8 The House of Beauty 9, a si) thousand word story revolving around Agathas favorite topics, dreams and madness. +hough it didhave many imperfections it was enough to serve as a start to her literary career, and from thatpoint forward she never looked back.

0owever, her first novel, Snow Upon Desert , had trouble being published( no publisher wanted anything to do with it, and so it slowly died away. +hough Christie did temporarilystep away from the literary world to marry Archibald Christie 8Archie9 in !#!2 hoping toreturn to it shortly, her plans came to an abrupt stop as the :irst %orld %ar broke out in !#!;.7uring the four years that followed Archie was shipped to :rance to fight off the 3ermans while Agatha -oined the


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appearances, and when she was once asked to read her work on the ''C she admitted to besuffering from stage fright. +here are still previously unknown works of her that keep poppingup even to this day, with one of the more recent cases being the 0arper Collins publication, A atha !hristie"s Secret Note#ooks$ %ifty &ears of Mysteries in the Makin .

he Rise to the o!

As the number of books published kept on rising, so did Christies fame. %ith time, she became recogni?ed as being one of the most influential personalities when it comes todetective literature, and her contributions begin with the creation of 5oirot and Miss Marple.'oth of them are polar opposites in terms of character( with the former being arrogant andinsufferable while the latter is kind and gentle.

/evertheless, when it came to solving cases, these were the sleuths people wanted to see at work. 1t felt as if in every novel, they established some kind of link with the reader and wenton the adventure together, rather than it being a case of observing the mystery from theoutside. +hough Christie did admit she preferred Marple and ended up describing 5oirot to bean 8ego centric creep9, they both remain some of the most beloved detectives in literature.

As a matter of fact, during the Second %orld %ar Christie wrote two novels, Sleepin Murder and !urtain , both of them designed to be Marples and 5oirots last cases, to be published atthe end of her life. %hen 5oirots story was finally published, he actually became the onlyfictional character to have ever been given an obituary by +he /ew @ork +imes, and it waseven published on the front page. Miss Marple was spared such a fate though as her endcomes in the form of a dull and regular life in St. Mary Mead.

"#!a$t on the %ete$tive &enre

/aturally, Christies contributions to literature go beyond the creation of two memorablecharacters. More precisely, she is known as basically being one of the pioneers of the whodunit genre, and many of the techni ues and devices she used became staples of the genreto this very day. 1n most cases, the stories even follow a similar structure, starting with themain sleuth either stumbling across a murder or being called to its scene by someone.

1n some cases, the detective is asked for help by an old ac uaintance who is more than likelyinvolved in the crime. As the detective gradually analy?es the scene and interrogates suspects,he she starts to form a preliminary picture of what happened. +he important part is that thedetective always makes note of each clue, actually giving the reader a fair chance at solving thecrime.

:urther down the line, a suspect generally dies as a result of having discovered the killersidentity, and at the end, the detective organi?es a meeting with all the characters in which thetruth is logically laid out, step by step. 1n some cases =as in Death !o'es at the (nd fore)ample> there are multiple victims before the murderer is unveiled.


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Agathas stories were no strangers to plot twists, as on two occasions the murderer turns outto be the storys narrator and on si) occasions the murderer escapes any form of -ustice orretribution. As you may know, these are techni ues that have been used time and time againnot only by book authors but also by moviemakers.

'ne Last lay 5erhaps the greatest mystery Agatha left us with was her own, and were not talking about herlack of communication with the world. +here was a time in the authors life during which shedisappeared for eleven days. 1n 7ecember !#2B, her car was found abandoned with her effectsstill inside. After eleven days of manhunt, a ban-o player accidentally discovered her staying ata hotel under the pseudonym +heresa /eele.

+hough Agatha claimed to have suffered from a bout of amnesia brought on by recent tragicevents in her life, there are many other theories as to what could have happened, and theseinclude vengeance, publicity stunt, insanity, boredom, and even the idea she set the wholething up to enact a real life mystery.

Curiously, the event is not mentioned at all in her autobiography. And so, it seems that one ofthe most celebrated and important authors of the twentieth century could not bear thethought of leaving this world without giving it at least one more mystery to solve.

Source: uick 'ook Deviews How A atha !hristie )evolutioni*ed Murder
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How Agatha Christie Revolutionized Murder