Constructing Masculinity in Agatha Christie’s Novel And Then There Were None
Noora Rouvinen 233139
Pro Gradu Thesis
English Language and Culture
University of Eastern Finland
April 2016
2
Table of Contents
2
1. Introduction
5
2. Theoretical and Cultural Background
11
2.1. The Concept of Masculinity
11
2.2. Historical and Cultural Background
16
2.3. The Golden Age Detective Novel
22
2.4. The Detective Novel and Gender
27
2.5. The Detective Novel and Masculinity
34
3. Textual Analysis of And Then There Were None
43
3.1. Masculinity as Activity
45
3.2. Masculinity as Rationality
54
3.3. Masculinity as Heterosexuality
62
3.4. Masculinity as an Omnipotent Fantasy: Judge Wargrave’s
Narration
69
3.4.1 Wargrave as the Detective/Murderer
69
3.4.2. Wargrave’s Confession: Constructing
Masculinity
75
4. Conclusion
88
Bibliography
91
3
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Osasto – School
Philosophical Faculty
English Language and Culture
Tekijät – Author
Noora Anna Onerva Rouvinen
Työn nimi – Title
Constructing Masculinity in Agatha Christie’s Novel And Then There Were None
Pääaine – Main subject
Työn laji – Level
English Laguage and
Culture
Pro gradu -tutkielma
Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin tutkielma
Aineopintojen tutkielma
x
Päivämäärä –
Date
12.4.2016
Sivumäärä – Number
of pages
94
Tiivistelmä – Abstract
This thesis is a study of the construction of masculinity in Agatha Christie’s 1939 detective novel And Then There
Were None. The study consists of two parts. The first part presents the theoretical background, which establishes
the theoretical framework for studying masculinity in the novel. The second part consists of analysis of Christie’s
novel and the ways in which masculinity is constructed in it.
The theoretical framework has been divided into five sections. The first section is a theoretical approach
describing how masculinity is constructed. Although the feminine is usually considered to be the opposite of
masculinity, embedded within the concept of masculinity are a number of different masculinities, including
hegemonic, subordinated, complicit, and marginalized masculinities. The second section presents a historical
approach to masculinity and how it has been constructed in Britain before and after the Second World War,
which is a key historical moment for the novel. The third section consists of a concise definition of the Golden Age
detective novel and its defining features. The fourth section analyzes the relationship between the Golden Age
detective novel and the representations of gender, while the fifth concerns specifically masculinity and the
detective story in relation to one another.
The novel And Then There Were None is analyzed through a historical and cultural close reading, using binary
concepts such as feminine/masculine and irrational/rational in order to determine how masculinity is constructed
in the novel. All of the characters in the novel are guilty of murder, and therefore irredeemable in the context of
an Agatha Christie novel. This means that they have transgressed the norms of society and are acting rather than
embodying proper masculinity. The analysis has been divided into four sections. The first section concerns
masculinity as activity, and the analysis shows how both activity/passivity and violence are used to construct
masculinity both by the characters and the narration. The second part concerns masculinity as rational, and the
analysis shows how the male characters are portrayed as both rational and irrational. The third part shows how
masculinity is constructed as heterosexual, and contrasts the ideal heterosexual relationship found in Christie’s
other novels with the blatant non-existence of equal, supportive relationships in And Then There Were None. The
fourth part is an analysis of the character of Judge Wargrave. The analysis has been divided into two subsections,
the first of which deals how Wargrave’s character acts as a detective/murderer within the novel, and how the
double role is constructed as masculine. The second subsection consists of a deeper analysis of Judge Wargrave’s
character, concentrating on his confession letter and how he uses the document to represent himself as having
masculine qualities.
The thesis shows that although the male characters in the novel strive to construct their masculinity through
activity, rationality, and heterosexuality, in the narrative they are shown to be passive, irrational, and nonheterosexual. Hegemonic masculinity is the model to which the male characters aspire to. Although the characters
construct their masculinity in a very traditional manner, the inclusion of female characters and the feminized
genre subtly renegotiate the traditional construction of gender.
Avainsanat – Keywords
Agatha Christie, 1930s, detective novel, gender, masculinity, And Then There Were None
4
ITÄ-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO – UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND
Tiedekunta – Faculty
Filosofinen tiedekunta
Osasto – School
Englannin kieli ja kulttuuri
Tekijät – Author
Noora Anna Onerva Rouvinen
Työn nimi – Title
Constructing Masculinity in Agatha Christie’s Novel And Then There Were None
Pääaine – Main subject
Työn laji – Level
Englannin kieli ja kulttuuri
Pro gradu -tutkielma
Sivuainetutkielma
Kandidaatin tutkielma
Aineopintojen
tutkielma
x
Päivämäärä –
Date
12.4.2016
Sivumäärä – Number of
pages
94
Tiivistelmä – Abstract
Tutkielman aiheena on maskuliinisuuden rakentuminen Agatha Christien salapoliisiromaanissa Eikä yksikään
pelastunut (And Then There Were None, 1939). Tutkielma koostuu kahdesta osasta, teoreettisesta viitekehyksestä
ja romaanin analyysistä. Ensimmäisessä osassa luodaan teoreettinen ja kulttuurinen konteksti, jonka avulla
teosta analysoidaan. Toisessa osassa analysoidaan niitä tapoja, joilla maskuliinisuus rakentuu Christien
romaanissa.
Teoreettinen viitekehys on jaettu viiteen osaan. Ensimmäinen osa käsittelee maskuliinisuuden käsitettä ja
käsitteellistämistä. Feminiinisyys hahmotetaan usein maskuliinisuuden vastakohdaksi, mutta maskuliinisuuskäsitteen sisältä löytyvät hegemoninen, alistettu, myötäilevä, ja marginaalinen maskuliinisuus. Toisessa osassa
käsitellään maskuliinisuuden rakentumista historiallisesti Iso-Britanniassa ennen ja jälkeen toisen
maailmansodan. Kolmas osio määrittelee lyhyesti millainen oli maailmansotien väliin sijoittuva niin kutsuttu
’kultaisen ajan’ brittiläinen salapoliisiromaanigenre. Neljännessä osiossa käsitellään sukupuolen ja
salapoliisiromaanin monimuotoista suhdetta, ja viidennessä osiossa keskitytään tarkemmin maskuliinisuuksien
rakentumiseen salapoliisiromaaneissa.
Eikä yksikään pelastunut – romaania analysoidaan historiallis-kulttuurisen lähiluvun kautta. Analyysin kohteena
on maskuliinisuuden rakentuminen romaanissa, ja analyysin apuna käytetään binäärisiä käsitepareja kuten
feminiininen/maskuliininen ja irrationaalinen/rationaalinen. Kaikki romaanin päähahmot ovat syyllistyneet
murhaan, mikä tarkoittaa sitä, että Agatha Christien romaanituotannon kontekstissa he ovat rikkoneet
yhteiskunnan asettamia normeja. Tällöin heidän kaikkien voidaan tulkita ”näyttelevän” korrektia
maskuliinisuutta. Analyysi on jaettu neljän alaotsikon alle. Ensimmäisessä osassa maskuliinisuuden rakentumista
tarkastellaan aktiivisuuden ja väkivallan kautta. Toisessa osassa analyysin kohteena on maskuliinisuus ja sen
suhde rationaalisuuteen. Kolmannessa osassa analysoidaan maskuliinisuuden rakentumista
heteroseksuaalisuutena ja erityisesti tasaveroiseen parisuhteeseen tähtäävänä heteroseksuaalisuutena. Neljäs osa,
tuomari Wargraven henkilöhahmon analyysi, on jaettu kahteen teemoiltaan erilaisiin osiin. Ensimmäisessä
tarkastellaan Wargraven maskuliinisuuden rakentumista romaanissa etsivän ja murhaajan roolien kautta, kun
taas toisessa fokuksena on Wargraven kirjoittama kirje, josta analyysin kautta muodostuu kuva ideaalisen
maskuliinisuuden vajavaisesta konstruktiosta.
Tutkielma osoittaa että vaikka romaanin mieshahmot pyrkivät rakentamaan omaa maskuliinisuuttaan
aktiiviseksi, rationaaliseksi, ja heteroseksuaaliseksi, romaanitekstissä heidät esitetään passiivisina,
irrationaalisina, ja ei-heteroseksuaalisina. Hegemoninen maskuliinisuus on ideaali johon mieshahmot pyrkivät.
Vaikka maskuliinisuuden rakentuminen esitetään perinteisiin maskuliinisiin arvoihin ja ideaaleihin perustuvana,
romaanin naishahmot ja genren feminiinisyys uudelleenneuvottelevat sukupuolen rakentumisen tapoja.
5
Avainsanat – Keywords
Agatha Christie, 1930-luku, salapoliisikirjallisuus, sukupuoli, maskuliinisuus, And Then There Were None
1.
Introduction
If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily
panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the
essence of modernity. There were no dark corners – no possible sliding panels – it
was flooded with electric light – everything was new and bright and shining. There
was nothing hidden in this house, nothing concealed. It has no atmosphere about it.
Somehow, that was the most frightening thing of all… (And Then There Were
None, 89-90)
Agatha Christie is one of the bestselling authors of all time. During her career Christie
contributed significantly to the detective novel genre, both in volume and in content. Apart
from her most famous creations, the Marple and Poirot mysteries, she also wrote a
considerable number of other detective novels, comical thrillers, poetry, plays, and novels.
Although her mystery novels tend to be formulaic both in plotting and characterization,
great variance can be perceived when considering her oeuvre as a whole. For example, her
1932 novel Death in the Clouds is very formulaic and plot-centred, whereas Five Little
Pigs (1942) combines the structure of a detective novel plot with deep themes and subtle
characterization with great efficiency and skill. Apart from re-using mystery plots and
character types, Christie’s detective fiction tends to feature recurring themes: the dynamics
of a large, slightly dysfunctional family, murders corresponding with the lyrics of a nursery
rhyme, love triangles, and murder being a crime which demands justice. All of these
elements were used repeatedly during Christie’s long writing career.
6
The purpose of this thesis is to examine Agatha Christie’s 1939 detective novel And
Then There Were None1 from a masculinity studies point of view in order to understand
how masculinity and male characters are portrayed in her works. Agatha Christie’s novels
have been studied before in relation to gender: however, the gendered readings have
mostly concerned female characters and the portrayal of femininity in her work. The focus
of this thesis is to study villainous male characters in order to achieve a deeper
understanding of the presentation of gender issues in Christie’s fiction. In this study I will
describe and analyse how masculinity is constructed as rational, active, and heterosexual,
as well as passive, irrational, and non-heterosexual. The study builds upon previous studies
concerning English masculinity, gender in the detective story genre, and studies of Agatha
Christie’s work. Since Christie’s detective fiction has a tendency to be formulaic, the
construction of masculinity in this particular novel ought to be applicable to understanding
the construction of masculinity in her other works as well.
And Then There Were None is usually considered to be one of the best works Christie
produced in her entire career. It has proved to be continuously popular; the blurb of the
2007 edition defines it as “the world’s best-selling mystery: over 100 million copies sold.”
Light astutely describes it as “the most inward, least comic of Christie’s fictions, relentless
in taking the logic of her own fears about the social fabric to its extreme conclusion: every
person is both a potential murderer and victim” (98). Curran, approaching the novel from a
more structural perspective, views it as “her greatest technical achievement” (111). The
novel can be seen as a culmination point of her career as a mystery novelist, a story in
which the detective novel has been taken to its logical extreme wherein the novel is
populated only by people who kill and get killed. Despite its immense popularity, And
Then There Were None has not been studied as much as other well-known Christie novels,
1
The novel has also been published under the titles Ten Little Niggers and Ten Little Indians.
7
such as The Murder of Roger Acroyd (1926) and The Body in the Library (1942). This
study aims to rectify the situation.
Plot-wise the novel tells the story of ten people invited to spend their holiday on
Soldier Island off the coast of Devon. All of them have been invited there by a mysterious
Mr Owen, who is nowhere to be seen. The sunny island getaway acquires a sinister
atmosphere when the first evening on the island reveals that all the persons present have at
some point of their lives committed a murder. A disembodied voice, later revealed to be a
record placed on the record player, identifies each guest as a murderer by mentioning their
names and victims. That same night two of the ten people die. As time passes, the reluctant
guests trapped on the island diminish in number one by one. The ways in which they are
killed coincide with the disappearing soldiers described in the children’s poem “Ten Little
Soldiers”, from which the novel derives its title. One of the guests on the island is more of
a murderer than the rest of them.
The novel will be studied using close reading in the context of the historical and
cultural period. The concepts of masculinity, femininity, and gender are central in my
analysis. Masculine and feminine are understood to be opposed qualities describing
culturally male and female attributes, although in both reality and fiction the distinction is
not so well-defined. The study has been divided into two separate parts. The first one
details the historical and cultural background of the novel, offers a brief definition of the
detective fiction genre and the relationship between genre and gender, and finishes with an
exploration of the relationship between masculinity and the detective story. The second
part consists of a detailed analysis of the novel And Then There Were None, which shows
the different ways in which masculinity is constructed and portrayed in the novel.
Although the specific focus of this study is on And Then There Were None, I will
frequently use quotations and examples from other works by Christie to illustrate that the
8
novel, and by extension any work by Christie, is better understood as a part of her
extensive oeuvre rather than as a single separate piece. For example, there are a number of
Christie texts which are thematically “related to” And Then There Were None, including
“The Witness for the Prosecution” (1933), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Cards on
the Table (1936), and Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case (1975).
As a popular fiction author Agatha Christie’s work has not been studied as much as it
perhaps deserves to. Like Chapman astutely observes, crime fiction “is often labelled as
paraliterature and like most popular fiction is excluded from official canon because it is not
elite or exclusive enough.”
However, literary studies have not excluded Christie
completely. In 1991 Light criticized the lack of critical work on Christie by remarking that
[i]t may be respectable to write about Conan Doyle or even Raymond Chandler but
Christie remains beyond the pale, the produced of harmless drivel, an unsuitable case
for a critic. It is an extraordinary fact, given the centrality of her work to British
cultural life, that no self-respecting British critic has ever written at decent length
about her, or felt impelled to look more closely at what that work might speak to.
(64)
After making the above statement Light proceeds to analyse Christie’s fiction to reveal
how modernist and unconservative Christie’s fiction can be, which is in contrast to the
usual perception of her work. Voicing a different critical opinion on Christie, Symons
claims that as a detective story writer
[h]er skill was not in the tight construction of the plot, nor in the locked-room
mystery, nor did she often make assumptions about the scientific and medical
9
knowledge of readers. The deception in these Christie stories is much more like the
conjurer’s sleight-of-hand. She shows us the ace of spades face up. Then she turns it
over, but we still know where it is, so how has it been transformed into the five of
diamonds? […] She was not a good writer, but she was a supreme mistress in the
construction of puzzles and had a skill in writing light, lively and readable dialogue
that has been consistently underrated by critics. (118-119)
In her study of bestselling female detective novel authors, including Christie, Rowland
conveys the opinion that “lack of critical engagement with the profoundly influential work
of all six writers is astonishing” (viii; emphasis added). Like Light, Rowland seeks to
rectify the situation by supplying a study of her own. In 2006 Makinen devoted a whole
work to analyzing the various female characters and ways of being feminine in Christie’s
detective fiction. In her Agatha Christie: Investigating Femininity she confidently
expresses the view that given her enormous and continuing popularity, there simply must
be more to Christie’s fiction than cleverly constructed plots (116). McKellar places
Christie’s mystery novels as belonging to an earlier era when detective fiction is
characterized by “means of enacting justice and restoring balance to society,” and it is only
in modern works of detective fiction in which “[n]o longer do we encounter the overriding,
universal set of moral imperatives which drove early examples of the genre: the detective’s
quest for justice and balance often degenerates into a quest for personal satisfaction.”
McKellar’s overall argumentation is sound, but as my analysis of the character of Judge
Wargrave will show, to describe Christie’s And Then There Were None as not a “quest for
personal satisfaction” for a detective-like character is to grossly misunderstand the novel.
In short, what many critics have expressed is that on the surface Agatha Christie may seem
10
like a simple popular author, but in reality her fiction contains subversive and varied
elements which are well worth studying and discovering.
11
2. Theoretical and Cultural Background
The first part of this study presents the theoretical background, and it has been divided into
five subchapters. The first subchapter contains a short explanation of the concept of
masculinity and its culturally construction. The second gives a historical and cultural
background for the ways of constructing masculinity in the time period when Christie’s
novels were produced. The third subchapter offers a brief and concise definition of the
detective story during the Golden Age of detective fiction. The fourth section concerns the
relationship between Golden Age detective fiction and gender. Although gender roles were
portrayed traditionally in Golden Age detective fiction, a close reading can uncover subtle
renegotiations of gender in the text. The final part is concentrated on the relationship
between the Golden Age detective fiction and masculinity. After the First World War the
attitudes towards male heroes changed, which created a chance for new kinds of heroic
masculinities to emerge. The aim of the theoretical part is to gain an understanding of the
gender politics of the time in order to be able to understand and analyze And Then There
Were None.
2.1. The Concept of Masculinity
The concept of masculinity is central to this study. To start with, in Masculinities Connell
claims that “’[m]asculinity’ does not exist except in contrast with ‘femininity.’ A culture
which does not treat women and men as bearers of polarized character types, at least in
principle, does not have a concept of masculinity in the sense of modern
European/American culture” (68). Therefore masculinity is not an essential quality, but a
relational one. The existence of the feminine creates the masculine. Culture defines what is
12
considered to be masculine and what is not. Since culture is not static, neither are
perceptions of masculinity. Masculinity itself is not a single, unified concept. Within the
concept of masculinity there are different roles or modes of masculinity, classified by
Connell as hegemonic, subordinated, complicit, and marginalized masculinities. According
to Connell, hegemonic masculinity “can be defined as the configuration of gender practice
which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of
patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and
the subordination of women” (Masculinities 77). Hegemonic masculinity is therefore what
is culturally considered the most “right” or effective way of performing masculinity. But,
as Connell clarifies, “[t]his is not to say that the most visible bearers of hegemonic
masculinity are always the most powerful people. They may be exemplars, such as film
actors, or even fantasy figures, such as film characters” (Masculinities 77). Therefore,
presenting an example from British popular culture, it would be plausible to say that James
Bond is more a masculine figure than James Hacker, although both are constructed as
heroes in their respective series. I would suggest that within fiction the characters who
embody hegemonic masculinity are usually the heroes.
In relation to the hegemonic masculinity, Connell describes three other forms of
masculinity which are needed to compliment it. First, there is subordinated masculinity,
which is dominated by hegemonic masculinity. Connell offers gay men as an example of
subordinated masculinity, since they are “subordinated to straight men by an array of quite
material practices,” including for example both legal and street violence, and economic
discrimination (Masculinities 78). The subordination of gay men also infers that
heterosexuality is a compulsory element of hegemonic masculinity. Second, there is
complicit masculinity which has a connection to hegemonic masculinity but does not
embody it. Specifically, Connell says that “[m]asculinities constructed in ways that realize
13
the patriarchal dividend, without the tensions or risks of being the frontline troops of
patriarchy, are complicit in this sense” (Masculinities 79) and, most interestingly, “[a]
great many men who draw the patriarchal dividend also respect their wives and mothers,
are never violent towards women, do their accustomed share of the housework, bring home
the family wage, and can easily convince themselves that feminists must be bra burning
extremists” (Masculinities 80). This passage implies many qualities associated with
hegemonic masculinity. Firstly, that there must be an element of violence, specifically
violence against women, in hegemonic masculinity. Secondly, married and domesticated
family men are unlikely to embody hegemonic masculinity. Thirdly, a man embodying
complicit masculinity might doubt what a man embodying hegemonic masculinity already
knows: that a woman who speaks for her rights is a threat to the allegedly proper order of
things. Finally there is marginalized masculinity, which is the masculinity of “subordinated
classes or ethnic groups” (Masculinities 81), for example the masculinity embodied by
black men in a white-dominated society, or in the novels of Agatha Christie, the
masculinity of the working class as opposed to the masculinity of the middle class. While
“feminine” is used to understand what constitutes as “masculine”, it is equally important to
consider the differences within “masculine.” Different kinds of masculinity are used to
determine which is the most dominant and therefore hegemonic.
There are two key facets in the construction of masculinity. The first one is the active
male body. Connell writes that “[i]n historically recent times, sport has come to be the
leading definer of masculinity in mass culture. Sport provides a continuous display of
men’s bodies in motion. Elaborate and carefully monitored rules bring these bodies into
stylized contests with each other” (Masculinities 54). Masculinity is visibly constructed not
only as an active male body, but also in relation to other active bodies. From a British
perspective Boyd describes a similar issue when she talks about the history of upper class
14
boys’ education in Britain: “[o]n arrival at public school, boys quickly adapted to a social
organization which from the 1860s stresses peer cooperation and physical rather than
mental expertise as the crucial signifier of manliness” (15; emphasis added). Hegemonic
masculinity is therefore built through physical prowess. Whoever is stronger or faster than
his peer is more likely to embody hegemonic masculinity. Of course, it is important to note
that physical prowess alone does not constitute to hegemonic masculinity and may turn on
itself. As Connell argues:
[t]here can, for instance, be too much sporting prowess. Messner cites the
troublesome cases of American football players whose ‘legal’ violence became too
severe. When other players were badly injured, the enactment of masculine
aggression risked discrediting the sport as a whole. (Masculinities 37)
Therefore merely possessing the active, capable male body is not enough to constitute to
hegemonic masculinity. The element of violence is present, but its overabundance
constitutes non-hegemonic masculinity. Therefore, from a bodily perspective hegemonic
masculinity is a fragile, contingent construct. Too much or too little bodily activity and, by
extension, violence are disqualifying elements for hegemonic masculinity.
The other significant component in constructing masculinity is rationality. As
Connell asserts,
A familiar theme in patriarchal ideology is that men are rational while women are
emotional. This is a deep-seated assumption in European philosophy. It is one of the
leading ideas in sex role theory, in the form of the instrumental/expressive
dichonomy [sic], and it is widespread in popular culture too. Science and technology,
15
seen by the dominant ideology as the motors of progress, are culturally defined as a
masculine realm. Hegemonic masculinity establishes its hegemony partly by its
claim to embody the power of reason, and thus represent the interests of the whole
society; it is a mistake to identify hegemonic masculinity purely with physical
aggression. (Masculinities 164)
What is of particular interest in this passage is Connell’s statement that mere physical
power or violence does not constitute hegemonic masculinity. The combination of
rationality and physicality is what constitutes to hegemonic masculinity. Rationality and
physicality have in common the element of action. Masculinity is produced and expressed
by the active body and active mind. Therefore it is reasonable to assert that activity is used
to construct acceptable masculinity, especially in contrast to femininity which is usually
culturally constructed as passive.
Deane uses Connell’s framework of masculinity to analyze popular fiction and notes
that it is “not without its critics, who point out that to select one cluster of masculine values
as hegemonic can oversimplify the diverse range of other contemporary ideals” (6).
However, Deane also argues that Connell’s framework
challenges us to understand how some masculine models enjoy a privileged
relationship to institutional power, and thus exercise enormous influence over the
lives of men and women whether they accept those models or not. At the same time,
Connell’s concept implies the fragility and contingency of a dominant model – any
hegemonic masculinity stands uneasily at a moment between the configuration it has
displaced and that which will displace it – and so spurs us towards a more
historically nuanced analysis that, say, the uncomplicated alignment of masculine
16
identities with social class. Connell’s framework is helpful […] because it highlights
the power of an idealized masculinity, even when the kinds of activity are
unavailable to the men who consent to it. Before the First World War, only a fraction
of Victorian and Edwardian men had any direct experience of military or colonial
life, much less of the rowdy voyages of colonial adventure fiction, but popular
audiences found the dream of imperial masculinity no less compelling. (6-7)
Deane’s argument highlights important points in Connell’s definition of masculinity: first,
that the culturally constructed ideal masculinities are at the same time highly influential
and a subject for sudden change, and second, that the lack of participation does not equal
lack of engagement in hegemonic masculinity. Deane’s mention of military and colonial
life suggests that the construction of national identity and masculine identity are closely
linked.
In this study I wish to make the argument that in Agatha Christie’s work hegemonic
masculinity, which is encompassed by heroic characters and idealized and strived at by
many other male characters, is active, rational, heterosexual, and never excessively violent.
Heroes and other male characters may exhibit violent behaviour occasionally, 2 but
murderers are never portrayed as having ideally masculine qualities, since as murderers
they cross the line between acceptable and unacceptable violence.
2.2. Historical and Cultural Background
Historically speaking in Britain there have been two distinct spheres of masculinity, one
for the upper classes and one for the lower classes. In her work about a popular fiction
2
The most extreme case of this can be found in Christie’s 1948 novel Taken at the Flood, where the hero
strangles the heroine in a fit of jealous rage, but does not kill her, and is implied to marry her. Apparently the
fact that he did not succeed in killing her mitigates his actions.
17
genre, the boys’ story paper, Boyd presents a concise description of the lives of adolescent
males in the time period between the second half of the 19 th century and the start of the
Second World War. She draws a clear distinction between the lives of upper and upper
middle class boys, and lower middle class and working class boys. The former would have
been educated in public schools, wherein the curriculum included the classics, athleticism
was promoted and encouraged, and the students were from a very young age placed both in
a hierarchy defined by age, and a society compromised of their social equals. The influence
of both mother and father was diminished as the influence of the school was introduced
(Boyd 14-15). Although several reforms in schooling took place during the time period, in
essentials the public school education remained the same, as did its effect: attending a
public school guaranteed a place in the elite of the society (Boyd 16-17). Boys of the lower
classes had a different upbringing. For them, the family unit was the central influence of
their lives. Lower class boys were expected to participate in the household expenses and
chores, and the relationships within the family would have been the most significant ones
in their lives (Boyd 18-19). Unlike for the upper class boys, school was restricting and
designed to turn the pupils into obedient future workers (20). Concerning the whole time
period Boyd says that the “[i]nterwar youth did not experience boyhood all that differently
from their Victorian and Edwardian ancestors” (24), which suggests a certain slowness
concerning social reform.
There are several points of interest in Boyd’s description. Firstly, upper and upper
middle-class masculinity and lower and working-class masculinity were produced in very
different environments. The upper class ideas of masculinity were formed mainly in a
homosocial environment. The most important point of reference in construction of
masculinity for the upper class boys were their peers and teachers in school. The school
also provided a chance for networking, to form bonds with other boys. This is the
18
framework of masculinity that may have been familiar to both Agatha Christie and the
male characters that inhabit her novels. On the other hand, in the lower classes the
distinction between feminine and masculine spheres was not so clearly defined, and neither
was the distinction between feminine and masculine labour within the family and the
home.
Homosociality is in fact a key concept when discussing the construction of
masculinity both before and after the First World War. When analyzing literary
representations of the gentleman (“a symbol of quintessential Englishness” [12]),
Berberich perceives a change in the second half of the 19th century:
The stress was no longer on educating refined gentlemen, but hardened empirebuilders who could deal with any situation without showing emotions. Etiquette
books became superfluous as men followed a new code of behaviour – namely that
of ‘playing the game’ with a ‘stiff upper lip’. The notion of self-fashioning still
applied; but the focus had shifted to the tough adventurer ready to conquer new
worlds for Queen and Country.
This inevitably led to yet another trend: a homosocial, exclusively male world
which caused changes in domesticity. Economic factors again played their part: as
the century advanced, it became increasingly important for a man to be financially
secure before contemplating marriage. And the longer men remained bachelors, the
more they got used to male-only society revolving around school, gentlemen’s clubs,
sporting associations and the hunting seasons. (22)
Besides homosociality Berberich also classifies the emotionless exterior, an active body,
and institutions like schools and clubs as essential signifiers of and arenas of construction
19
for English masculinity. This argument is reinforced by a similar view of Deane’s, who
defines the British popular literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras as being
“centered on interactions between male characters; women – especially British women –
were driven to the narrative margins, leaving questions masculine identity to be decided by
relations between and within male groups rather than by reference to feminine virtues” (2).
Therefore, masculine identity and masculine ideals were constructed largely in a male-only
environment. Although Berberich mentions institutions such as schools and clubs as the
prime locations of homosocial masculinity, there are also other, more informal situations in
which masculinity has been constructed. Although a contemporary observation rather than
a historical one, Easthope’s claim that “[j]okes are often used by men to exchange the idea
of a woman among themselves, so excluding woman and affirming the male bond” (160;
emphasis added) can be applied here as well. Masculinity is constructed homosocially in
informal, non-institutional situations as well, for example in popular literature, as Boyd’s
and Deane’s studies show.
In order to illustrate the connection between the school system and the construction
of specifically English masculinity, I will present an example from Christie’s own fiction,
her 1937 novel Death on the Nile.
‘Now, Monsieur Fanthorp,’ [Poirot] said, ‘to our business! I perceive that you wear
the same tie that my friend Hastings wears.’
Jim Fanthorp looked down at his neckwear with some bewilderment.
‘It’s an O.E. tie,’ he said.
‘Exactly. You must understand that, though I am a foreigner, I know something of
the English point of view. I know for instance, that there are ‘things which are done’
and ‘things which are not done.’’
20
Jim Fanthorp grinned.
‘We don’t say that sort of thing much nowadays, sir.’
‘Perhaps not, but the custom, it still remains. The Old School Tie is the Old School
Tie, and there are certain things (I know this from experience) that the Old School
Tie does not do! One of those things, Monsieur Fanthorp, is to butt into a private
conversation unasked when one does not know the people who are conducting it.’
(186)
In this passage the phrase “the Old School Tie” is implicitly used as a metonym for a
gentleman and subsequently for thoroughly acceptable English masculinity. O.E. is most
likely an abbreviation from Old Etonian, which indicates a great deal about Mr Fanthorp’s
character, education, background, and values, as Poirot correctly deduces. “Old School
Ties”, a metaphorical expression which refers to English gentlemen, abide by an unspoken
set of rules which control their conduct and behaviour when other people are concerned. It
also implies a set of values which transcend generations. Poirot’s friend Hastings is old
enough to have served in The First World War while Mr Fanthorp is not, and yet Poirot is
able to determine a flaw in Mr Fanthorp’s conduct based on what his friend Hastings
would or would not do. As is befitting to the code of conduct Mr Fanthorp shows, his
apparent “lapse” by “butting in” to a private conversation turns out to be beneficially
motivated. It also worth noting that although things are not “said much nowadays”, the
“custom still applies,” which means that the old rules governing proper masculine conduct,
familiar to Mr Fanthorp’s father and grandfather, are still relevant. It is also worth noting
that Mr Fanthorp also addresses older Poirot as “sir”, which is another sign of his proper
masculine conduct.
21
When Connell’s framework of masculinity is applied to literature produced in the
Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian eras, it can be said that the upper-classes are more
likely to embody the hegemonic masculinity, while the working classes are relegated to the
status of the subordinated, complicit and marginalized masculinities in fictional
representation. As Boyd asserts: “[t]he function of the tales of adventure in the boys’ story
paper was to crystallize the link between masculinity and class status. For this reason the
stories are concerned with showing that true manliness emerged only from within the elite
classes” (47). Likewise, Allen’s discussion of Muscular Christianity in Thomas Hughes’s
1859 novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays concludes with the following view:
[m]oreover, Hughes is able to co-opt the very concepts of the body and work
associated with the working classes precisely because, identified with unmeaning
materiality, the working class cannot represent itself, either in politics or in literature,
while the bourgeoisie, associated with the notion of representation, becomes the
universal signifier, which must of necessity stand in for the working class. Such
assumptions are, finally, the basis of Victorian middle-class paternalism, the notion
that the bourgeois male represents all men. (129-130)
Although it is maybe risky to generalize too much, this citation from Allen can certainly be
applied to Christie’s fiction, which also represents popular literature of its time. An
overwhelming majority of Christie’s male characters are middle-class, or “bourgeois”.
While the female characters are more likely to originate from different class backgrounds,
the male characters are very likely to be doctors, lawyers, authors, businessmen,
gentlemen-of-leisure, and other assortment of middle-class positions and, implicitly,
values. The rare working-class male characters tend to be servants. Upper class male
22
characters are represented frequently, but most often as the victims or suspects, very rarely
as heroes. Christie’s heroic characters, the detectives and the bold adventurers, are
certainly always represented by the middle-class.
2.3. The Golden Age Detective Novel
Detective fiction produced in the interwar period has been retroactively dubbed as the
“Golden Age” of detective fiction. Golden Age detective fiction has characteristics that
distinguish it from the earlier and later periods. In this chapter I will briefly outline some of
its defining features in order to characterize the genre in where And Then There Were None
and by extension most of Agatha Christie’s literary work belong.
The first distinguishing feature of the detective story in the 1920s and 1930s is its
popularity. The production and consumption of detective fiction increased exponentially in
this period, and the number of volumes published increased significantly between the two
World Wars (Symons 108). It is also at this point where the dominant form of the detective
story shifts from the short story to the novel (Symons 86). The second distinguishing
feature is the change in the construction of the story. The detective novels of this period
have been characterized with the phrases “fair play” (Sayers), “whodunit” (Light), and
“clue-puzzle” (Knight), all of which refer to manner in which the story is written. The
Golden Age detective novel was plot-centred, with less emphasis on character and more of
the intellectual puzzle of solving the crime. Thirdly, the Golden Age detective story is
deliberately distanced from the political and social upheavals of the real world. According
to Horsley,
23
[w]e would never guess, immersed in the world of golden age detection, that we
were reading about a period of history during which there was, for example, rapidly
increasing unemployment, the General Strike of 1926, the Great Depression of the
1930’s, and the rise of the European dictatorships. (36)
A relative sense of timeless, plot-heavy construction, and novel-length are therefore the
key features which distinguish the Golden Age detective story from its predecessors and
followers. Curran, on the other hand, describes the Golden Age detective story as
the era of the country house weekend enlivened by the presence of a murderer, the
evidence of the adenoidal under-housemaid, the snow-covered lawn with no
footprints and the baffled policeman seeking the assistance of the gifted amateur.
Ingenuity reached new heights with the fatal air embolism via the empty hypodermic,
the poison-smeared postage stamp, and the icicle dagger that evaporates after use.
(29-30)
Although slightly tongue-in-cheek, Curran’s portrayal is fairly accurate. It draws attention
to some other characteristics of the Golden Age: the middle-class milieu, the amateur
sleuth, and the intellectual game between the author and the reader. On the whole, the
Golden Age detective story can be defined as deliberately light and plot-centred.
In addition to the above, there is another distinguishing feature of interwar detective
fiction which is not directly linked to the form, but rather to the attitude towards the genre.
It is during this period that the writers of the genre began to take their craft seriously. As
Symons says, “[b]y the end of the [1920s], however, a body of criticism had been produced
to which tried to lay down the limits within which writers of detective stories ought to
24
operate” (93). Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” from 1928 and
Knox’s “Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction” from 1929 established conventions and
rules to define the genre. For example, according to Van Dine, in a detective novel the
“detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the
culprit”, “[t]here simply must be a corpse”, “the crime must be solved by strictly
naturalistic means”, for the role of the culprit a “servant must not be chosen”, and it should
“contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly
worked out character analyses, no ‘atmospheric’ preoccupations” (190-192).
Knox’s
restrictions are similar to Van Dine’s, for instance ruling that “[t]he criminal must be
someone mentioned in the early part of the story”, “[n]o hitherto undiscovered poisons
may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end”,
and that the “detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the
inspection of the reader” (194-196). Whether all these rules were obeyed by detective
fiction writers is a point of contention, but the very fact that the rules were established
means that by the 1930s both the writers and readers of detective fiction were
knowledgeable of the conventions and definitive features of the genre.
In other words, detective fiction became a self-aware genre. Dorothy L. Sayers, a
detective fiction writer herself, also contributed by writing “The Omnibus of Crime” in
1928-29, in which she traces the history of the detective story from folk tale to the
influence of Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, finishing her essay
with the fair play form of her own time. Her essay is important in terms of legitimizing the
genre. To this end, Sayers says that there is “one respect, at least, in which the detective
story has an advantage over every other kind of novel. It possesses an Aristotelian
perfection of beginning, middle, and end” (Omnibus 101). This comment of Sayers’s infers
that the detective story is a worthwhile genre and entitled to credit as a form of literature.
25
By providing the detective story genre with both rules and history these writers helped to
both define and elevate the genre.
With their rules and conventions the detective novels of the 1920s and 1930s served
an important purpose as light entertainment. Light defines the interwar detective story as “a
literature of convalescence” (65) and describes the “whodunit” as becoming “enormously
successful between the wars and [having] a wide and heterodox appeal” (65). She notices
that “what is most noticeable about the appearance of the whodunit, and paradoxical, is the
removal of the threat of violence” (69). Plain discusses the same phenomenon when she
analyses the way dead bodies are seen in Christie’s work: “the fragmented, inexplicable
and even unattributable corpses of war are replaced by the whole, over-explained,
completely known bodies of detection” (34). Since the dead body in a detective novel is
known and explained, it is not threatening. After the chaos of the First World War there
was a need for literature that discussed death as merely an intellectual puzzle. As death is
discussed in a palatable manner, the detective novel provides a safe haven for the reader, a
world in which people and events are predictable. In essence, the detective novel is on
purpose meant to be escapist in nature.
When the novel And Then There Were None, the focus of this study, arrived to the
literary scene in 1939, it was within the context of an already-established and clearly
defined genre with a wide readership. Although not a pure example of the genre, And Then
There Were None can be classified as a detective novel for several reasons. It abides by
most of Van Dine’s and Knox’s rules for writing detective fiction, as described above.
There are only two rules this novel does not explicitly follow, since the case is solved
(from a reader’s perspective) by an “unmotivated confession” instead of a detective’s
efforts, and there is no central character of a detective in the novel. Detective work is done
in the novel, but none of the characters is a detective, since they do not identify themselves
26
as detectives, nor do they solve the crime. The clues needed for solving the case are mostly
given fairly to the reader, because, as Van Dine says, “[t]he reader must have equal
opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery” (189). Although the latter half of
the novel is at points stylistically similar to the horror genre, there are no supernatural
forces at work and at the end all mysteries have been given a rational explanation. The
basic setting of the novel, a small number of people trapped on a desert island, is
reminiscent of the genre of the Robinsonade, but this is simply a means to provide a
plausible background for the claustrophobic closed circle murder mystery. At its core the
novel contains the essential elements of a detective story: there are a limited number of
suspects, a specific setting, and a straightforward plot. Likewise, And Then There Were
None follows an accepted detective story convention in that it is not set in a very specific
time. All that can be discerned is that the novel takes place some time after the year 1935,
according to the dates of the crimes provided in Chapter 3. There are no topical references
to actual historical events to date the novel’s timeframe. The reader can, if they so wish,
assume that the novel takes place on the same year that it has been written (1939), but there
is no evidence to either support or debunk the supposition. The novel takes place in an
imagined, timeless England where it is perfectly plausible to invite ten murderers to an
island and kill them according to the lyrics of a nursery rhyme. And finally, the novel also
engages in slight metafictional humour when the character Blore remarks that “[i]t’s only
in books people carry revolvers around as a matter of course” (146). Later on, the murderer
confesses to enjoying “reading every kind of detective story and thriller” (302). Detective
fiction is often prone to referring to itself, a “self-conscious form given to self-parody”
(74), as Light puts it.
In conclusion, the interwar detective story has its own distinguishing markers like
any other form of popular culture in a certain time and place. The “whodunit” is best
27
described as more concerned with plot than characterization, at the same time both defined
and constricted by a set of rules, and self-aware both in content and in authorship. The
intellectual, rather than emotional, approach to death was a result of the atmosphere after
the First World War. Dorothy L. Sayers’s amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey remarks that
“in detective stories virtue is always triumphant. They’re the purest literature we have”
(Strong Poison 132), and this observation sums up one of the defining characteristics of the
genre quite accurately. The interwar detective story is often simple and uncomplicated. A
crime is committed and solved, and the wrongdoers punished. And Then There Were None,
although in some respects more complex than the average Golden Age detective story, is
also fundamentally a representative of the genre. The novel is centred on the murder
mystery plot, and the resolution of the mystery marks the end of the narrative.
2.4. The Detective Novel and Gender
The relationship between gender and the detective story in the period after the First World
War is complex. On one hand, the genre and its authors became more feminine. In addition
to Christie herself, the most well-known detective story authors of this period were
women: Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham. In contrast to the foggy
streets of London associated with the immensely popular Sherlock Holmes stories, murder
and crime relocated themselves into large country houses and idyllic small villages.
Horsley argues that in this period the detective story itself became feminized, which was
seen in “the domestic scale of the action, the politeness of the language, the effeteness of
many of the detective protagonists, and their frequent association with kinds of knowledge
traditionally considered to be feminine” (38). Rowland offers a similar view, writing that
“[g]olden age fiction located crime at home. It is to be found amongst the colonels,
28
spinsters, minor gentry, middle-aged businessmen, impecunious relatives and young
feckless socialites” (68). In other words, the interwar detective story located itself in the
comforts of middle-class and acquired feminine features. This femininity is seen not only
in the settings but also in the characters and the language used. Rowland takes the
argument of the detective novel being a feminized genre further and argues that it can be
seen as the “other” of the masculine legal establishment:
[a]ll crime fiction, when clearly defined as fiction, is offering a story that the laws
cannot or will not tell. It is saying, in effect, that there is more to crime than the
institutionalised stories told in courts and police stations; there is more to criminals,
their motives, actions and lives that can be represented through the cultural authority
of the legal system. Crime fiction is the other of the powers of legal institutions to
represent crime to the culture. […] In this sense we could suggest that detective
fiction is structurally gendered as feminine. (17; emphasis original)
Rowland suggests that the form of the detective story is feminine, since it offers a point of
view which is opposite to the official, male-dominated establishment. However, the actual
content of the interwar detective story can be described as conservative and maledominated. Scaggs characterizes the genre as set in tradition in relation to gender:
In these hundred years or so, from the publication of ‘The Murders in the Rue
Morgue’ in 1841 to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, both crime
fiction writers, and the detectives that they created, seemed to endorse an undeniably
patriarchal world-view. With only one major exception, this being Agatha Christie’s
spinster detective Miss Jane Marple, all of the fictional detectives of this period were
29
men. Again, with very few exceptions, it is masculine heroism and rationality that
solves crime and restores the social order […] the crime genre during this period was
a particularly powerful ideological tool that consolidated and disseminated
patriarchal power, and its voice was the rational, coolly logical voice of the male
detective or his male narrator. (20)
While in the above citation Christie is flatteringly singled out as a creator of Miss Marple,
Scaggs’s argument about the genre being male-dominated rests on solid ground. If we
observe Christie’s oeuvre, the male detectives are overwhelmingly more common. In
addition to Poirot she also has other recurring detectives, such as Colonel Race, Inspector
Battle, Mr Satterthwaite, and Parker Pyne, whereas the aforementioned Miss Marple solely
represents the female detective. The dominance of the males is not confined to the
detectives, either. A Christie detective novel chosen at random will almost without a fail
present male characters predominantly as middle class professionals, while women are
portrayed mostly in domestic and subservient roles. More often than not, in the
representations the male and female genders are traditional.
While the form and style of the interwar detective story can be described as feminine,
the representations of gender within the genre are better described as traditional rather than
modern. How to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory assertions? How can a genre
be simultaneously innovative and feminine in form and yet patriarchal and traditional in its
approach to gender? Devas presents interesting conclusion in her analysis of a novel by
Christie: “[t]he various texts of 4.50 from Paddington provide a site for a rebuttal of the
silenced or hysteric woman and allow her a place of belief, action, and investigation, albeit
within the prescribed limits of the genre” (191; emphasis added). This statement illustrates
the situation aptly. Although this particular conclusion concerns a Christie novel published
30
in the 1950s, rather than in the 1930s, it demonstrates the gender issue in question
concisely and appropriately. The detective novel is a popular fiction genre, and therefore it
can not be expected be revolutionary in its approach to gender. However, building on
Devas’s argument, the work can include what I term subtle renegotiations of traditional
gender roles and boundaries. These subtle renegotiations occur within the accepted
limitations of the genre. We can not expect the detective novel to be completely
revolutionary in its approach to representations of gender, but by reading closely evidence
can be found to support a more nuanced interpretation. In other words, Christie’s fiction
does not fundamentally challenge the state of society and how gender is perceived, but it
can contain the possibility of change.
The traditional construction of gender coupled with the feminized aspects of the
genre is best understood by using an example from Christie’s fiction. In The Murder of
Roger Ackroyd (1926) the following description of a male character can be understood on
more than one level.
Hector Blunt is perhaps five years Ackroyd’s junior. They made friends early in life,
and though their ways have diverged, the friendship still holds. About once in two
years Blunt spends a fortnight at Fernly [Ackroyd’s manor], and an immense
animal’s head, with an amazing number of horns which fixes you with a glazed stare
as soon as you come inside the front door, is a permanent reminder of the friendship.
Blunt had entered the room now with his own peculiar, deliberate, yet softfooted tread. He is a man of medium height, sturdily and rather stockily built. His
face almost mahogany coloured, and is peculiarly expressionless. He has grey eyes
that give the impression of always watching something that is happening very far
31
away. He talks little, and what he does say is said jerkily, as though the words were
forced out of him unwillingly. (36)
On the surface the above passage presents a typical description of an English out-of-doors
man, a man who is accustomed to acting instead of talking. The tone of the text, however,
suggests a more slyly humorous approach to the character. Blunt is strongly associated
with hunting, and yet the only visible marker of his profession is an unidentified animal’s
stuffed head mounted on the wall. He has an “expressionless” face and he is unwilling to
talk, which is an exaggeration of the typical English reserve. Blunt’s faraway gaze is
implicitly directed at the Empire, but as later events in the novel imply, it also means that
he is not at all good at observing anything which is at close quarters. On a novel-wide scale
Blunt, although active and capable, is not the hero of the story. The hero of The Murder of
Roger Ackroyd is Hercule Poirot, a fussy elderly Belgian who has retired to the country to
grow vegetable marrows. Blunt’s role is that of a murder suspect. In the story he represents
a character type. This type is both symptomatic of the formulaic genre and an easily
identified stock character in Christie’s concise writing style: a solid, unimaginative
Englishman. Male characters similar to Blunt appear regularly in her works, with slight
adjustments made according to the time and place. However, as the above description
implies, the character type can be used humorously instead of seriously in order to mock
established gender stereotypes while not disregarding the stereotypes themselves. In short,
while the representations of gender in detective fiction are more traditional, the style used
to convey them suggests a potentially more revolutionary attitude, or the potential for
subtle renegotiations of gender.
Previous studies dealing with Agatha Christie and gender have had a tendency to
focus on female characters and the feminine. Makinen’s comprehensive study Agatha
32
Christie: Investigating Feminity (2006) offers a fascinating analysis of Christie’s extensive
literary output and identifies her work as being more diverse and subversive in its
representations of gender than previously thought. Makinen argues that Christie’s female
characters are far from being stereotypical and instead employ a number of active roles.
Particular attention is also paid to the female murderers and other villains, who are
characterized in similar terms to male villains, and are shown as capable of using gender
roles to their advantage in order to avert suspicion away from themselves (Makinen 115134). In Makinen’s view, Christie’s female characters are seen as capable of negotiating
within the boundaries of society in order to insure their personal happiness (114). Although
it is not the main focus of her work, she also mentions the wide array of renegotiated
masculinities which complement the available femininities in Christie.
As mentioned above, Devas’s article “Murder, Mass Culture and the Feminine: A
View from the 4.50 from Paddington” is concerned with the subtle renegotiation of female
roles within the boundaries of a popular fiction genre. Devas focuses on Christie’s 1957
detective novel 4.50 from Paddington and its two film adaptations in order to prove that
women are capable of acting as detectives while occupying acceptable feminine positions.
The female characters in the novel responsible for apprehending the murderer include a
middle-aged, respectable woman, and elderly spinster, and a young domestic worker. What
Devas finds significant for a female reading is that a woman’s voice is heard, not silenced,
by the authorities. While women are visually and verbally placed in traditional scenes of
domesticity, the domestic attributes are not trivialized but rather celebrated. Devas argues
that the novel and the films are not feminist texts, but they do offer a gentle renegotiation
of the traditional domestic role offered for women within the parameters set by the popular
genre (187-191).
33
Another viewpoint to the representation of femininity in Christie’s work can be
found in Rolls’s recent article “An Ankle Queerly Turned, or the Fetishised Bodies in
Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library”, which explores the original 1942 Christie
novel and its 2004 film adaptation. The adaptation differs from the original novel in
changing the identity and the sexual orientation of one the murderers from male to female
and from heterosexual to lesbian. Applying close reading, Rolls identifies the female
ankle/leg being used in a fetishised manner in the film, which leads him to uncovering a
potential lesbian subtext in the original novel. Implicitly, his analysis reveals that Christie’s
supposedly conservative texts are open to a variety of interpretations, and that their
simplistic form can conceal powerful subtext. Bernthal’s “’If Not Yourself, Who would
You Be?’: Writing the Female Body in Agatha Christie’s Second World war Detective
Fiction” focuses also on The Body in the Library, as well as Evil Under the Sun (1941),
and it proposes the idea that rather than being simple entertainment, the novels offer a
sharp-eyed look into gender roles and dynamics during the Second World War. The dead
bodies in these novels are deliberately and distinctly feminine, in contrast to the realities of
the war. Much is made of the bodies being misidentified and misread, and clothes and
make up play a significant role in relation to female characters (Bernthal 48-51). Bernthal
also notes that the female characters who accept their roles as wives and mothers fare
better and are rewarded within the text, which suggests a veiled social commentary of the
gender roles of that time period (53-55).
Critical texts concerning Agatha Christie in relation to gender have a tendency to
focus on female characters and femininity. The role of women in society and the potential
significance on the female body, dead or alive, has been of interest to academics studying
Christie. Her male characters and depictions of masculinity have received less attention. It
is perhaps symptomatic of gender studies to focus first on the “othered” aspects of the text.
34
However, I argue that the representations of Christie’s male characters, although from a
readerly perspective not as engaging or imaginative as her best female characters, can also
be as varied and subversive. It is the aim of this study to shed some light on Christie’s male
characters and her representations of masculinity.
2.5. The Detective Novel and Masculinity
The phrases “detective story” and “masculinity” used in conjunction do not primarily
evoke the comfortingly conservative, middle-class image of an Agatha Christie novel.
Rather, the hard-boiled detectives of American film noir are more likely to be connected to
the study of detective stories and masculinity. However, Britain has produced at least one
detective who may be said to embody traditional masculine attributes. I will start this
chapter by discussing Sherlock Holmes, as he has been studied in depth by Kestner.
Kestner’s study of masculinity and the detective novel concerns many of the same themes
which are also relevant to Christie, and the chapter on the Georgian Sherlock Holmes is as
a time period very close to the one examined in this study. Christie’s career as a writer
overlaps with Doyle’s as her first novel was published in 1920, and the final Sherlock
Holmes stories by Doyle appeared in 1927. I argue that any study of Agatha Christie would
be incomplete without referencing Sherlock Holmes, since, as Knight points out, “[i]t is
not hard to see the main influences on her – she had obviously read Doyle, from whom
comes the initial model of detective and narrator” (89). In fact, Poirot may be interpreted to
be a sort of conscious reworking of Sherlock Holmes, a master detective who is the
complete opposite of Holmes: elderly, foreign and feminine in his behaviour in contrast to
the subdued, active, rational, and consummately British Great Detective.
35
The chief point of Kestner’s lengthy analysis of gender in Sherlock Holmes canon is
that it establishes that masculinity must be constantly reinforced after it has been
questioned, often by comparing and contrasting it with the Other. This Other is often
represented by a foreign masculinity, as a violent or criminal man from America, a German
man connected to espionage, or a woman who is somehow perceived as a threat to the
current order. The great detective himself is constructed as a “universal model and
particular prototype of the masculine” (208). During their long run the Sherlock Holmes
stories have discussed many different challenges which have been imposed on masculinity,
with the conclusion that science and rationality triumph over any transgressions. They also
demonstrate that the definition and construction of masculinity is an ongoing process, one
which is constantly challenged and must therefore be constantly strengthened.
Additionally, the more recent the stories become, the notion of masculinity itself becomes
increasingly more unstable in the progress: whereas many of the earlier Sherlock Holmes
stories are concerned with the possible failing of the masculine body, exemplified by
numerous references to wounded or crippled men, in the analysis of the short story “The
Veiled Lodger” Kestner suggests that the circus as an environment implies that
“masculinity is performative, delusive and deceitful” (182). It could be suggested that the
stability of masculinity can also be interpreted as dwindling alongside the power of the
British Empire itself. The discussion of masculinity in the decades-long Holmesian canon
is mirrored by the decades-long discussion of masculinity in the Christie canon. In both
writers the reader can observe the changing times in gender issues: Conan Doyle writing a
Sherlock Holmes story in the 1880s discusses different subjects than Conan Doyle writing
a Sherlock Holmes story in the 1920s, just like the Christie’s novels from 1920s are
different in their representation of gender from those written in the 1950s.
36
When discussing the short story “The Noble Bachelor” Kestner makes an observation that
is integral to understanding the function of the detective in a detective story. He says that
“[o]n the evidence, women, whether British or American, appear as threats to masculinity.
At the same time, males themselves appear to menace the masculine script, requiring
Holmes to police men as much as women in the culture” (95; emphasis added). This is a
key to understanding one of the most important roles a detective plays in a detective story.
The detective is not only the person who solves the crime. He, or sometimes she, is a
moral guardian, whose duty it is to guide men and women to act appropriately and find the
people who have transgressed the boundaries of society. Makinen argues a point similar to
Kestner’s: “[d]etectives, within the genre of detective fiction, are portrayed as the bastions
of law and order, however much writers may play around with their flawed and eccentric
characters” (26; emphasis added). The position of the detective as a moral guardian is
emphasized by the observation that many detectives of the interwar period, including
Christie’s, are amateur sleuths instead of professional policemen. Their influence does not
come from the establishment, but rather from a moral code which gives them a right to
judge. It could be said that instead of legal power the detective wields social power.
Kestner’s key observation about moral guardianship is applicable to Christie’s work
because there can be seen a strong tendency in both her main detective characters, Marple
and Poirot, to condemn and criticize unacceptable male or female behaviour. It is not
confined to the murderers, who have made the ultimate transgression of killing. All people
involved in the case, including the murder victim, are placed under the watchful eye of the
detective in the narrative. For example, in The Body in the Library Miss Marple chastises a
married woman, who is guilty of no crime whatsoever, of maintaining an illusion of unwed
cohabitation with her husband in order to shock the more conservative residents of St.
Mary Mead. To quote the novel:
37
I want to advise you, very strongly, not to continue using your maiden name in the
village. […] In a very short time you may need all the sympathy and goodwill you
can find. It will be important to your husband, too, that he shall be thought well of.
There is a prejudice in old-fashioned country districts against people living together
who are not married. It has amused you both, I dare say, to pretend that that is what
you are doing. (238-239)
In this passage Miss Marple is criticizing the married couple for breaching social norms
and expectations. In her opinion a married couple should identify themselves as such.
Similarly, in The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple does not hesitate to categorize the
murderer as “[o]ne of those charming young men who have no moral sense” (177; original
emphasis), implying that she herself is in possession of moral sense and has the right to
pass judgement. In a similar vein, David Suchet, who has played Christie’s most popular
creation Hercule Poirot in film adaptations for more than twenty years, has expressed a
related opinion on Poirot’s character:
For me, an essential part of what made Poirot the man he was lay in his conviction
that God had put him on this earth so that he could rid the world of evil. That was the
raison d’être at the heart of every single of his actions. (275; original emphasis)
Although Suchet’s comment refers most directly to murder and its solution, in the
adaptations Poirot as portrayed by him can be seen chastising characters for committing all
sorts of immoral actions. Poirot has no patience for liars, blackmailers, and adulterers, all
of whom are a threat to the fabric of society. Many aspects of Christie’s detective fiction
38
support reading the detective character as a moral guardian. This guardianship includes,
but is not restricted to, observing and maintaining proper gender roles in the society. There
is an inclination for the detectives to be male, which seems to suggest that moral
guardianship is more a male domain than a female one. Although Miss Marple features
heavily in the examples above, it should be noted that she is the detective in twelve of
Christie’s mystery novels, whereas Poirot’s presence graces 33 of them. Christie’s less
known detectives tend to be male as well, suggesting that the role of the detective, and of
the moral guardian, is more likely to be played by a male character rather than a female
one.
During the interwar years the character of the detective undergoes a change. Instead
of following in the footsteps of the conventionally masculine hero in the shape of Sherlock
Holmes, the fictional detective becomes more feminine. In Light’s analysis of the detective
literature of the period, the key observation in describing the representations of masculinity
is this:
[i]n his own small way Agatha Christie’s Poirot was part of that quest for a bearable
masculinity which could make what had previously seemed even effeminate
preferable to the bulldog virtues of 1914. Christie, like Sayers, recognized the
impossibility of creating a confident British middle-class hero in the old mould.
(Light 73)
This passage affirms that the kind of hegemonic masculinity which is apparent in the
Victorian and Edwardian eras was considered to have become non-functional in the
modernism-influenced writing of the 1920s and 1930s. As far as detectives and heroes go,
Poirot may be male, but he is also elderly and originally from Belgium: he would have
39
been an impossibility in a pre-war detective story. Poirot is not physical enough to fit the
role of the hero in the prewar context, but in the interwar context he and his famous “little
grey cells” represent a new kind of negotiation of what is a hero and who can be one.
Sayers’s detective creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, is similarly a character who can act as a
detective hero in only the interwar years, since he is mainly comical and cerebral instead of
serious and physical. Light’s phrase “bulldog virtues” is very evocative in this context,
bringing to mind such quintessentially British traits such as honesty, tenacity and “fair
play.” On the basis of this it can be inferred that the detective heroes, and by extension
other male characters in detective stories, represent a new kind of masculinity. Makinen
makes an interesting observation about Christie’s male detectives:
Christie did construct detectives who embodied more traditionally masculine
components: the stolid, forceful, mountain-like figure of the patriarchal
Superintendent Battle; the dashing, lean-figured, tanned adventurer Colonel Race as
a military hero: But neither lasted for more than 4 novels in contrast to Poirot’s 33
novels and 65 short stories. Though she could construct conventionally gendered
male figures who embodied the policing establishments, representations that
challenged and tweaked at the conventional proved of more lasting interest. (40)
A more traditional, heroic male figure was therefore to be found in the popular literature of
the time and also within Christie’s own work. However, the newer representations of
masculinity in the form of a detective-hero, different from the earlier establishment-linked
figures, were “of more lasting interest”, as Makinen points out (40). The interest was
immediate at the time as well: in the period between the World Wars (1920-1939) Poirot
starred in no less than 17 novels and a large number of short stories. The key to his
40
success, and by extension, to Christie’s, seems to be in compromise. There was a need for
a different kind on masculinity being represented in popular literature. Makinen’s analysis
of Poirot’s character suggests that compromise was an integral part of his success:
[a]lthough Poirot’s recourse for validity is the phallologocentric ‘men of science’, in
contrast to credulous, batty spinsters, and hence a reification of ‘masculine’ forms of
knowledge, the fact remains that Poirot allows the irrational and emotional
sensitivities to complement his logocentric methodology of facts. (42; emphasis
added).
The new masculinity apparent in Christie’s work contains more feminine aspects than the
previous ones, while still maintaining the core aspect of rationality. While the new
detective heroes can be seen as physically passive in comparison to the heroes of the
previous generation, including the figure of Sherlock Holmes, they are nevertheless
masculine in the sense that they are portrayed more rational and scientific than women
characters.
Literary evidence suggests that Christie was well aware of the shift in representing
masculinity in fiction. As early as in her second novel The Secret Adversary, published in
1922, she gives an equally heroic role to the main female and male characters,
complementing Thomas “Tommy” Beresford’s more traditional, stalwart masculinity with
the active, modern femininity of his fellow adventurer Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley. As
an outside observer in the novel notes:
Outwardly, he’s an ordinary clean-limbed, rather block-headed young Englishman.
Slow in his mental processes. On the other hand, it’s quite impossible to lead him
41
astray through his imagination. He hasn’t got any – so he’s difficult to deceive. He
worries things out slowly, and once he’s got hold of anything he doesn’t let go. The
little lady’s quite different. More intuition and less common sense. They make a
pretty pair working together. Pace and stamina. (188-189; emphasis added)
This paragraph shows that Tommy is portrayed as a stereotypical English hero, but his
success is only made possible by co-operation with the feminine influence of Tuppence.
Likewise, his heroic qualities are phrased in a manner which is slightly belittling and
intended to be humorous. In other words, even though Tommy is quite close to what might
be termed a representation of traditional heroic masculinity of the prewar context, the
sarcastic undercurrent of the narration and the required presence of the female partner
suggest that we are dealing with a modern kind of hero rather than a traditional one.
In the theory part of this study I have outlined a cultural and historical background
for my analysis of masculinity in the novel And Then There Were None. The definition of
the construction of masculinity comes from Connell. In opposition to femininity and
complicit, subordinated, and marginalized masculinities, hegemonic masculinity is defined
as rational, active, and heterosexual. Historically masculinity in Britain has been
constructed through the education system and in other homosocial institutions. The
detective novel genre, to which Christie’s novel belongs, transformed during the interwar
years into a more prestigious, plot-centred, and self-aware genre. Within the detective story
genre the issue of gender was complex: while the genre itself became more feminine, the
gender roles portrayed in the stories tended to remain conservative. However, the detective
story genre may include subtle renegotiations of gender whilst maintaining portraying it
traditionally. Also within the genre, the study of detective story and masculinity usually
concerns the character of the detective, whose role as a guardian of society remained the
42
same before and after First World War despite the different portrayals of the detective’s
masculinity.
3. Textual Analysis of And Then There Were None
43
In this part my aim is to analyze the different aspects of masculinity portrayed in Christie’s
novel And Then There Were None. This novel is particularly interesting in terms of
“proper” gender behaviour in the sense that all the characters encountered in the novel
(apart from the policemen in the “Epilogue”) are murderers and have therefore already
trespassed from acceptable to unacceptable femininity or masculinity. Therefore I argue
that that they are acting proper masculine or feminine behaviour instead of actually
embodying it. Although this study does not make full use of Butler’s theory of gender as a
performance, “produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity”
(174), masculinity is conceptualized as Butlerian in the sense that it is more of a
performance than an essential quality in a male person/character. Male characters can act
masculinity rather than embody it. I choose to use the verb “act” here also because it
emphasizes the connection between Christie’s prose and modernism. Although Christie’s
writing can be described as realistic rather than modern in style and content, she was
influenced by her times, and this can be seen in her characters. As Birns and Birns argue:
“[m]any, if not all, of the characters in a Christie novel are playing roles, so that although it
is the murderer who is revealed to be the most hypocritically estranged from his or her
performed self, Christie suggests a general doubleness in the human character” (123;
emphasis added). All of the characters in And Then There Were None are playing the part
of an innocent person, while they are hiding their identity as a murderer. In addition to the
modernism connection, “act” also implies theatricality and the theatre, which is a subtle,
recurring theme in Christie’s detective fiction.
Since hegemonic or accepted masculinity is portrayed as active, rational, and
heterosexual, in my analysis I will study how the male characters in the novel are portrayed
as active, rational, and heterosexual. I will also show that how they are passive, irrational,
and non-heterosexual, because as murderers they do not embody accepted, hegemonic
44
masculinity. The contradictory attributes assigned to masculinity emphasize understanding
the detective novel as a form of popular fiction which can include subtle renegotiations of
gender rather than static, traditional gender roles. In analyzing the representation of
masculinity in this novel I will use binary concepts, such as killer/victim and
killer/detective,
masculine/feminine,
masculine/non-masculine,
active/passive,
and
rational/irrational, which are necessary in order to understand how masculinity works in
And Then There Were None, and by extension, in other Christie novels as well. The use of
binaries in my study of masculinity is supported by Easthope’s suggestion that “English
empiricism frequently characterises masculinity as realistic, objective, clear, serious,
sincere, and right because it cleaves unrelentingly to fact while femininity is relegated as
subjective, obscure, silly, dogmatic, artificial, because it is prone to fantasy, self-deception,
and being wrong” (90). Easthope uses binaries to discuss and define Englishness, but they
are also useful in discussion of masculinity.
The analysis has been divided into four sections. The first part deals with masculinity
being portrayed as active. This also includes the fact that unacceptable or non-hegemonic
masculinities are portrayed as passive. The second part concerns the relationship between
masculinity and rationality. The third part focuses on how masculinity is portrayed as
heterosexual in different ways. The final part is an analysis of the character of Judge
Wargrave. He is ultimately revealed to be the mastermind behind the murder plot, and his
narration at the end of the novel is interesting in terms of defining perceptions of correct
and incorrect masculinities.
3.1. Masculinity as Activity
45
I will start the analysis on the novel by concentrating on how masculinity is constructed as
activity. Connell writes at length how sports and the male body in motion are important in
constructing masculinity, not in small part because there is a hierarchy between men and
women are excluded from the process. At the same time, the performance’s dependability
on the male body underscores the fragility of the construction – if the body fails, it affects
the construction as well. (Masculinities 54) In this analysis of Christie I will not discuss the
male bodies themselves, because they are not central to the argument. Instead, I will
analyze how masculinity is constructed as activity, which implicitly demands the use of the
male body. In other words, masculinity is constructed as doing/acting, whereas femininity,
the constructive opposite, is portrayed as not doing/acting. I will use the term “action” to
refer to bodily actions, since activity of the mind is discussed further in chapter 3.2.
The male characters in the novel portray themselves as active. Lombard and Blore,
the characters who are portrayed as the closest examples of heroic characters in the novel,
are also the most active ones. They search the island and the house for clues about the
whereabouts of the mysterious Mr Owen, who has lured them on to the island. Later, they
also device and carry out the means to contact the mainland in order to escape the island.
The action is used to distinguish not only the masculine from the feminine, but the
difference between different masculinities. When Lombard suggests a search of the island
to Dr Armstrong, he says:
We’d better rope in Blore to help us. He’ll be a good man in a pinch. Better not tell
the women. As for the others, the General’s ga-ga, I think, and old Wargrave’s forte
is masterly inactivity. The three of us can attend to this job. (131)
46
In this passage Lombard identifies himself, Dr Armstrong, and Blore as being capable of
confronting and apprehending a killer whom they assume to be hiding on the island.
General Macarthur is dismissed because of his advanced age as well as his presumed frail
mind, and Wargrave is seen as too passive. The three of them are all fit and well enough to
deal with the bodily exertions necessary for the mission, which includes climbing down a
cliff to ascertain whether the killer might be hiding in a concealed cave. Mr Rogers, the
servant, is not mentioned at all. Apparently his position as a servant and a member of the
working class disqualifies him from being considered properly masculine and therefore
capable of acting by the other male characters. However, Rogers is frequently seen
carrying out his tasks as a servant thorough the novel until his death. Like the other male
characters, he is also using activity to construct a masculine identity. Since he comes from
the working class, his construction of identity is rooted in his professional capacity.
The narrative also uses the passivity of the female characters to contrast them with
the actions taken by the male characters. For example, in the above scene the women are
not involved in the decision-making at all. None of the female characters are portrayed as
particularly active. In fact, two of the three female characters in the novel, Mrs Rodgers
and Miss Brent, are almost always discussed and described in terms of their passiveness.
Mrs Rodgers fulfils her duties as a servant quietly, and her most important function to the
plot is her death, which happens when she is asleep. Miss Brent’s actions are mostly
confined to knitting, cooking, and reading the Bible, none of which is very active. Both of
these characters enhance the masculine/active and feminine/passive juxtaposition in the
narration. Vera Claythorne is more complicated in this sense, since she fits Christie’s
formula of plucky young female characters. While she is active both verbally and
physically in the narrative, she is still constructed as passive by the other characters. In the
latter half of the novel when there are situations which demand actions to be taken, she is
47
excluded from them by the male characters. Passivity is constructed as a feminine attribute
by the men in the novel in order to construct their masculinity as active.
One of the most interesting scenes concerning the connection between masculinity
and activity in the novel occurs in the middle of Chapter 16, at the point when there are
apparently only two people surviving at the island. Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard
discover the corpse of Dr Armstrong on the beach, and determine that he has died by
drowning some time before. Vera suggests that she and Lombard move the doctor’s body
out of the water so that it would not be washed away by the tide. When they move the
body, Vera takes the opportunity to steal Lombard’s revolver from his pocket. This is
immediately followed with a scene where Lombard attempts to retrieve the revolver and
Vera kills him:
[Lombard] said authoritatively:
‘Give that revolver to me.’
Vera laughed.
Lombard said:
‘Come on, hand it over.’
His quick brain was working. Which way – which method – talk her over – lull her
into security or a swift dash –
All his life Lombard had taken the risky way. He took it now.
He spoke slowly, argumentatively:
‘Now look here, my dear girl, you just listen -’
And then he sprang. Quick as a panther – as any other feline creature…
Automatically Vera pressed the trigger…
48
Lombard’s leaping body stayed poised in mid-spring the crashed heavily into the
ground. (280-281)
Before this incident Lombard has been consistently referred to as a ruthless survivor in the
narrative, and he is described with phrases indicating that he is active, quick-witted, and
resourceful. For example, in Chapter 3 when Mrs Rogers is heard screaming, he is “the
first to move” (58), and in finding the hidden record-player “[a]gain it was Lombard who
acted” (59; emphasis added). When searching the island for the whereabouts of Mr Owen,
Lombard in the one who climbs down a steep cliff to investigate. However, in this scene he
underestimates Vera and overestimates his chances of survival. He acts rather than tries to
reason or negotiate with Vera, which results in his death. His masculine actions lead to his
demise. However, immediately before the above scene Lombard was in possession of the
revolver for some time (since Vera steals it from him) but during that time it did not occur
to him to shoot Vera to preserve his own life. He knows that he is not the murderer, so
from his perspective the murderer must be the only other survivor. In other words,
Lombard does not act on his knowledge about the identity of the murderer, and that also
leads to his death.
In fact, Lombard exhibits a curious combination of activity and passivity throughout
the narrative, particularly in the latter part. In the above scene he is willing to act, but
before that he resorts mainly to passiveness when interacting with his fellow guests. If he
indeed caused the death of 21 native Africans and felt no remorse about it, he should
equally feel no remorse about killing some fairly unthreatening persons, one of whom he
knows for certain to be responsible for multiple murders. For a man who is portrayed as a
consummate survivor and who has been established in the narrative as not being afraid to
use violence, Lombard appears to be curiously reluctant to resort to violence in order to
49
guarantee his own survival in the island. The racial implications of killing a black African
person versus killing a white English person are certainly a part of the reason, but
Lombard’s passiveness in the narrative is more complicated. When he is compared to the
other male guests, even his murder method can be considered passive. He deserts the
native Africans during what is implied to be an expedition and saves his own life instead.
He is actively preserving his own life, not depriving someone else’s. Compared to, for
example, Dr Armstrong whose bungled operation killed a patient, or Anthony Marston
whose reckless driving directly caused the death of two children, Lombard’s actions are
remarkably uninvolved.
I would suggest that there are two reasons why Lombard exhibits activeness only
intermittently in the novel. The first one is a question of setting. Lombard is a colonial man
in the mother country, and the lawlessness which has characterized his actions abroad is
not a viable course on action in this civilized environment. The second reason is that
Lombard represents a character that does not have a place in the modern world. The
environment and the house, which is the centre of action, are described as thoroughly
modern. The house itself is “the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners – no
possible sliding panels – it was flooded with electric light – everything was new and bright
and shining” (89). The house and the island implicitly act as symbols of Britain in the
novel, meaning that the country itself is modern and not willing to house antiquated
beliefs. In contrast to the more middle-class professions of the other characters, Lombard’s
occupation as an Empire man, an explorer and a colonialist, represents an older type of
masculinity. A character of his kind does not have room in a modern murder mystery as a
heroic character. As a character he has been emasculated by the feminized, modern genre
in which he appears. Lombard is an active character, but his activeness is wrong for the
time period and the genre.
50
Since the novel is populated by characters who are murderers and therefore by
default morally unworthy, they cannot embody “correct” masculinity characterized by
activity. Masculinity is therefore portrayed as passivity as well as activity. Many of the
murders committed by male characters are actually results of neglect, that is to say, they
stem from inactivity rather than activity. Dr Armstrong ignored a proper surgical
procedure, which results in his patient’s death. Mr Rogers did not take proper care of his
employer, which results in her death. Anthony Marston disregarded traffic regulations with
fatal repercussions. Blore’s case is slightly ambiguous in this sense: he might have omitted
some parts of what happened in his false testimony, which would be neglecting to tell the
truth, or he might have outright lied. Murders born out of inactivity suggest that in general
activity can be seen as a positive attribute of masculinity.
Another aspect of activity in the novel is violence, since the characters are all
murderers. Violence is mainly seen as a masculine attribute. As Connell writes, it is “the
dominant gender who hold and use the means of violence” (83). Similarly, Makinen asserts
that
[t]raditionally within detective fiction, while women could be blackmailers or
thieves, they were rarely murderers, since that was seen as aggressively unfeminine.
So, when the crimes involved in the detective novel narrowed down to the solving of
the classic murder, the whodunit of the Golden Age format, women became the
victims, even the suspects, but rarely the murderer, Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night
(1935), set in a woman’s college, being an exception. (117) 3
3
Makinen’s logic is slightly faulty here: even Gaudy Night is technically not an exception, since it only
contains an attempted murder.
51
On the surface level the idea of violence as a masculine quality is supported in the novel,
since most of the reluctant guests/murderers invited to the island are men. However, three
of the guests/murderers are women, which complicates the correlation between violence
and masculinity. As Makinen rightly observes, “[f]rom the 1930s to the 1970s, Christie’s
villains unproblematically assume either gender” (156; emphasis added), which means that
Christie was willing to subvert the audience’s gendered expectations as to the identity of
the villain.4 Since in this novel the guests/murderers are both male and female, violence is
not supposed to be considered a solely masculine attribute.
However, the characters in the novel consider violence to be a masculine rather than
a feminine act. For example, in the latter part of the novel the claustrophobic closed
environment-situation on the island is escalated, and the guests decide to take precautions
to protect themselves against the unknown assailant in their midst. The potentially harmful
substances and objects are to be locked away so that none of the guests has access to them.
When Lombard disagrees and refuses to hand over his revolver, Judge Wargrave tries to
reason with him:
Mr Lombard, you are a very strongly built and powerful young man, but ex-Inspector
Blore is also a man of powerful physique. I do not know what the outcome of a
struggle between you would be but I can tell you this. On Blore’s side, assisting him
to the best of our ability will be myself, Dr Armstrong and Miss Claythorne. You
will appreciate therefore, that the odds against you if you choose to resist will be
somewhat heavy. (218)
4
However, it should be noted that when a man and a woman conspire to commit a murder together in a
Christie novel, the man is more likely to commit the actual murder, while the woman acts as the accomplice.
This can be seen in And Then There Were None as well: Mrs Rogers is her husband’s accomplice, not
actively a murderess.
52
In this passage the potential to act and engage is violence is strongly implied to be a
masculine attribute, and none of the characters disagree with Wargrave’s assessment.
Although Vera is a fit young woman, her name is mentioned by Wargrave almost as an
afterthought. The possibility of her engagement in violence is seen as unlikely. Earlier in
the novel, when Mr Rogers’s body is discovered, Dr Armstrong concedes to the possibility
that a woman could have struck him with an axe, but only after the option has been pointed
out. That the murderer is male is a given assumption in their conversation. In the scene
which was discussed earlier, Lombard is confident in his supposition that Vera will not
shoot him although she has a gun, but the supposition proves fatal for him. This shows that
violence is not considered a feminine attribute for most of the novel.
At the conclusion of the novel the murderer is revealed to be a man, which validates
the connection between violence and masculinity. The idea of the correlation between
masculinity and violence can be supported with more textual evidence in the novel, since
most of the guests/murderers as well as the criminal mastermind behind all the mysterious
deaths is a man. Instead of hastily arriving at a conclusion of definite correspondence
between violence and masculinity, I would rather suggest that Christie is unable to make
her ruthless serial killer a woman because it would have been seen as unrealistic at the
time. The reader has already been asked to willingly suspend their disbelief with the
assumption that a single person could cause the death of nine others in a closed
environment on an island. However, I am not suggesting that a woman murderer is
unlikely or un-preceded in Christie’s writing. The novel itself has three of them. Rather, I
am arguing that a woman culprit would be unlikely in a book such as And Then There
Were None, which in essence is a story about serial killings in England during the 1930s.
Although violence is mainly represented as masculine in the novel, it is not
exclusively so. Rather, while maintaining a connection between violence and masculinity
53
the novel subtly renegotiates the assumption by providing a definite connection between
violence and femininity as well. Devas’s reading of Christie’s novel 4.50 from Paddington
concludes with the argument that while the work itself is not necessarily feminist, it can
allow for a reading which encourages rather than disproves an interpretation that constructs
the female characters as active, and the woman characters are given a space of action and
speech within the prescribed limits of the genre (191). I argue that And Then There Were
None offers similar grounds for a subversive reading. Although Vera is female and
violence is generally considered to be a masculine attribute, she is offered an opportunity
for committing violence in the narrative. In Chapter 16, Vera unambiguously kills
Lombard. After this murder she is apparently the final survivor on the island, which allows
the reader to temporarily believe that she has been the cunning murderer behind all the
deaths. Although the real criminal is unmasked as a man at the end, it does not invalidate
Vera’s violent act. Apart from the actual killer, she is the only other character to have
actually killed another person while on the island.
While, according to Devas, in 4.50 from Paddington female characters are given
space and credence as investigators of crime, I would like to suggest that in And Then
There Were None the female characters are reversely given space and credence as persons
who are both capable of and willing to commit murder. In fact, it can be argued that Vera’s
sheer continued presence in the main narrative disturbs the expected connection between
violence and masculinity. It implies that she is potentially as dangerous as the male
characters and just as likely to be the murderer as the rest of them. Vera’s character is used
to subtly renegotiate representations of gender: when she murders her young charge it is a
clear rejection of the role of the nurturing female. When she murders Lombard, an active
and potentially violent male character, she complicates the supposedly straightforward
connection between masculinity and violence. Eventually the correlation between
54
masculinity and violence is re-established when the murderer is revealed to be male, but
not before the idea has been disturbed by the possibility that the murderer could be a
woman.
To sum up, activity is mainly constructed as a masculine attribute in the novel. Its
male characters are portrayed as aspiring to be active, since it is an important positive
quality of a masculine identity. In attempting to portray themselves as active, they
simultaneously construct the female characters as passive in order to enforce their own
activity. Violence, which is a bodily activity to taken to the extreme, is portrayed as being
more of a masculine attribute, although not exclusively. While a majority of the
murderers/guests are male, the presence of females indicates that violence cannot be
constructed as a purely masculine attribute. The juxtaposition between Vera and Lombard
in the latter part of the narrative suggests that activity can be both a feminine and a
masculine attribute.
3.2. Masculinity as Rationality
Masculinity is often constructed as rational in contrast to emotions that may be constructed
as feminine. According to Connell, the division between masculine/rational and
feminine/emotional is “a familiar theme in patriarchal ideology” and therefore “a deepseated assumption in European philosophy” as well as “widespread in popular culture too”
(Masculinities 164; emphasis added). In this chapter the connection between masculinity
and rationality is analyzed. Although Connell uses “emotional” as the opposite concept of
“rational”, in this section I will mostly use the word “irrational” as the opposing concept,
because it fits better with the intellectual connotations of the detective story genre. I will
pay particular attention to how the characters’ rationality is portrayed in the narration.
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I will begin by showing that the male characters can be observed constructing their
rationality in contrast to the female characters. At the beginning of Chapter 11, Mr
Rogers’s body has been discovered and the news of his death has been told to all the
remaining six guests. The former policeman Blore voices his opinion of the other guests to
Lombard:
I though of that when I saw the axe – and then when I went into the kitchen and saw
[Miss Brent] there so neat and calm. Hadn’t turned a hair! That girl, coming all over
hysterical – well, that’s natural – the sort of thing you’d expect – don’t you think so?
(200-201)
Miss Brent’s “unfeminine” rational and calm behaviour is disturbing to Blore. On the other
hand, Vera’s hysterical rambling, a sudden fit of overly emotional and irrational behaviour,
was completely “natural”. Through his comment Blore is seeking confirmation from
Lombard. He wants Lombard to accept his statement that it is natural that women both are
and should be more emotional than men. This also shows the construction of masculinity
in a homosocial situation: although feminine/emotional is used as the opposite of
masculine/rational, the construction of masculine as rational happens in a conversation
between two men. Women are not present at this situation; they are merely used as grounds
for verbal affirmation of rational masculine identity. Blore also uses Miss Brent’s
composed behaviour as evidence of the theory that she is the mastermind behind the
murders. Lombard, while he does not completely agree with Blore’s murder theory, is
nevertheless complicit with the idea that women are inherently more irrational as seen in
the discussion following Blore’s remark. Wargave also seems to construct his masculinity
at least in part in contrast to female irrationality, which is discussed more in depth in
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chapter 3.4.2. Therefore it can be argued that the novel’s male characters do construct their
masculinity and rationality in contrast to the (supposed) irrationality of its female
characters.
After Mr Rogers’s death there can be no doubt that one of the guests on the island is
a murderer, since it is very unlikely that someone could (or would) commit suicide by
bashing their own head in with a axe and without leaving any fingerprints of the weapon in
question. However, the characters continue to portray an outward appearance of normality
and sanity, despite their irrational, distressed inner thoughts. It is also worth noting that
from Chapter 11 onwards, the narration changes slightly in style. The sentences are
frequently short and disjointed rather than form a coherent narrative, and at the same time
the genre of the novel subtly transitions from a traditional whodunit to a whodunit with
horror and gothic elements. However, the characters strive to maintain a façade of
normalcy and order by adhering to strict rules of conduct. The façade of rationality in the
face of the unknown and its eventual collapse is illustrated by the characters’ attitudes
towards communal meals. Breakfast is served in a normal fashion even after Rogers’s
death, as the following passage shows:
Breakfast was a curious meal. Every one was very polite.
‘May I get you some more coffee, Miss Brent?’
‘Miss Claythorne, a slice of ham?’
‘Another piece of toast?’
Six people, all outwardly self-possessed and normal.
And within? Thoughts that ran round in a circle like squirrels in a cage… (207)
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The breakfast is not simply a morning meal, but an English breakfast, a symbolical way for
the characters to construct and affirm their Englishness, and by extension their rationality.
The act of partaking in the meal is an attempt by the characters to calm themselves, and to
appear normal. This is noteworthy when the aforementioned scene is contrasted with a
later scene in the novel:
When the clock struck five they all jumped.
Vera said:
‘Does anyone – want tea?’
There was a moment of silence. Blore said:
‘I’d like a cup.’
Vera rose. She said:
‘I’ll go and make it. You can all stay here.’
Mr Justice Wargrave said gently:
‘I think, my dear young lady, we would all prefer to come and watch you make it.’
Vera stared, then gave a short rather hysterical laugh.
She said:
‘Of course! You would!’
Five people went into the kitchen. Tea was made and drunk by Vera and Blore. The
other three had whisky – opening a fresh bottle and using a siphon from a nailed up
case. (229)
Although it is not mentioned explicitly, the above scene refers to five-o’clock tea, another
traditional English mealtime. Significantly, both scenes take place during the same day. In
the former scene, the meal is a falsely reassuring occasion, disguising rampant irrational
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thoughts under the veneer of politeness and routines. In the latter scene, the characters’
paranoia and irrationality has become apparent to all of them, and they have stopped
disguising it. Between the two meals only one murder has taken place, but the characters
are hyperaware of the fact that one of them has committed it. This makes then paranoid and
distrustful, and therefore the meal is no longer partaken by all of the guests. Additionally
Lombard, Wargrave, and Armstrong decline to drink the traditional tea and prefer strong
alcohol instead, which is perceived as safer since it could not have been tampered with.
This five-o’clock tea is also in contrast to the one on the previous day, in which the
“ordinary everyday afternoon tea!” (188) is a relaxed occasion partaken by all characters in
fairly congenial circumstances. The blurring between rationality and irrationality is also
represented by the blurring of the masculine and feminine spaces. The breakfast had been
prepared by Vera and Miss Brent in the kitchen and consumed in the dining room. None of
the male characters partook in the preparation of the breakfast. The five-o’clock tea
however, is both prepared and consumed in the kitchen, under the watchful eyes of the
male characters. The shift between the two ways of preparing the meals shows how the
characters are, in a manner of speaking, regressing from civilization and learned habits.
It is interesting to note that Vera, the most prominent female character, is most likely to do
or say things that are impolite or otherwise counter the accepted social conduct. For
example, when Blore remarks that the murder method established in the eighth verse of the
nursery rhyme is not likely to happen since there is no zoo on the island, Vera cries: “Don’t
you see? We’re the Zoo… Last night, we were hardly human any more” (265; original
emphasis). She is willing to acknowledge what her male companions remain unable to do:
that the atmosphere in the island is slowly making them all lose their sanity. Vera’s
femaleness, which functions as a counterpoint to the male characters’ masculinity, is most
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prominently displayed in her irrationality. Although she is capable and active like the male
characters, her mental health deteriorates more quickly than that of the male characters.
As the novel progresses, Vera’s internal monologue and her behaviour become more
disjointed and paranoid, revealing that despite her original cool demeanour she is affected
by the atmosphere on the island more than the others. The male characters are initially
shown as more rational and capable of dealing with the situation. However, in Chapter 13
the narrator offers the reader a glimpse of the inner workings of all the remaining
character’s heads, and it is impossible to distinguish between her incoherent thoughts and
those of her male companions. Notably, this is also a point where the narration shifts from
realistic storytelling to a more modernism-influenced stream-of-consciousness style, which
is one of the narrative tools used by Christie to create the claustrophobic atmosphere of the
novel. For example, one of the characters, unnamed, uses an inner monologue:
shall I tell them? … Shall I scream out? … No, it won’t do to put him on his guard…
Besides he can seem so sane… What time is it? … Only a quarter past three? … Oh,
God, I shall go mad myself…(228)
Meanwhile, another character’s thoughts follow a very similar pattern:
I don’t understand – no, I don’t understand… This sort of thing can’t happen … it is
happening… Why don’t we wake up? Wake up – Judgement Day – no, not that! If
only I could think (228; original emphasis).
There is no discernible difference between the thoughts of the male and female characters.
Even the murderer’s thoughts, differentiated through their murderous intent, are expressed
60
in the same incoherent, rambling style as those of his victims: “I must keep my head… I
must keep my head… If only I keep my head. It’s all perfectly clear – all worked out. But
nobody must suspect” (229). Logically speaking the murderer should not be influenced by
the situation, since the fear the characters are experiencing comes from not knowing.
However, the murderer’s knowledge does not protect him from succumbing to the
atmosphere in the island. His rationality in this situation is as thin a construct as that of the
other characters.
The characters’ loose grip on sanity is expressed in the narration by change in their
behaviour and demeanour. As Christie writes:
There was little pretence now – no formal veneer of conversation. They were five
enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation.
And all of them, suddenly, looked less like human beings. They were reverting
to more bestial types. Like a wary old tortoise, Mr Justice Wargrave sat hunched up,
his body motionless, his eyes keen and alert. Ex-Inspector Blore looked coarser and
clumsier in build. His walk was that of a slow padding animal. His eyes were
bloodshot. There was a look of mingled ferocity and stupidity about him. He was like
a beast at bay ready to charge its pursuers. Philip Lombard’s senses seemed
heightened, rather than diminished. His ears reacted to the slightest sound. His step
was lighter and quicker, his body was lithe and graceful. And he smiled often, his
lips curling back from his long white teeth. (225-226)
In this passage the use of words connected to animals depicts the irrationality. “Instinct of
self-preservation”, “bestial types”, and “ferocity and stupidity” are all expressions which
are used to represent the characters’ descent to an irrational, primitive, and uncivilized
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state on mind. The blurring between the juxtaposition between the human and the animal
is used to illustrate the deterioration to irrationality in the male characters. Vera is also
described in animalistic terms; she is “like a bird that has dashed its head against glass and
that has been picked up by a human hand. It crouches there, terrified, unable to move,
hoping to save itself by its immobility” (226). Notably she is described terms of a passive,
preyed-on animal rather than as a predatory one.
The characters’ fall from civilization, and from rationality, is also expressed through
the environment. Electricity has been cut off from the house, and tinned foods and candles
have replaced warm meals and bright electric lighting. The characters’ attempts to contact
the outside world are reduced to bonfires and SOS signals with a mirror, since there is no
telephone. Technology and masculinity are often associated with each other. Connell
asserts that “[s]cience and technology […] are culturally defined as a masculine realm”
(Masculinities 164). Therefore, the lack of electricity and other advanced technology in the
environment acts as yet another indicator of the male characters’ lack of masculine
properties. If the male characters were able to act rationally, they could surely get the
generator working rather than use candles for illumination.
From this point on, the narration consistently portrays all characters, both male and female,
as acting mainly instinctually rather than calmly and rationally. Vera’s slow descent to
insanity is emphasized more than that of any male character, since a large portion of the
narration is from her perspective. However, as the above analysis shows, it is clear that
irrationality is not a solely feminine attribute. The male characters engage in irrational acts
and thoughts. In fact, in the narration Vera’s emphasized insanity serves to highlight the
insanity of the male characters. Since the male characters are portrayed as increasingly
irrational and succumbing to their survivalist instincts, Vera is portrayed as undeniably
insane to preserve at least some of the correlation between masculinity and rationality.
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However, the juxtaposition of male/rational and female/irrational is clearly broken down as
the narration progresses. The male characters strive to keep up appearances of normalcy
and sanity in a situation which is the opposite of normal, but their supposed rationality in
contrast to the female irrationality is shown to be empty. After all, it is easy to appear more
rational in contrast to someone who is not sane at all.
3.3. Masculinity as Heterosexuality
While masculinity in And Then There Were None is constructed with the binaries of
activity versus passivity and rationality versus irrationality, the same does not apply to
heterosexuality. The numerous “false” masculinities in the novel are not portrayed as
homosexual, which is often considered to be the opposite of heterosexuality. As Connell
argues, hegemonic masculinity is heterosexual in contrast to the subordinated homosexual
masculinity (Masculinities 78). Likewise, complicit and marginalized masculinities, while
being subservient to hegemonic masculinity, are nevertheless heterosexually constructed
like hegemonic masculinity (Masculinities 79-80). Therefore, the “right” kind on
masculinity, the most culturally accepted way of portraying masculinity, is always
heterosexual. Since the male characters in And Then There Were None are merely
masquerading as properly masculine, their heterosexuality as well as their activity and
rationality could be contested. However, the novel offers multiple examples of
heterosexual relationships, which suggests that the issue is more complex. In order to
understand the relationship between heterosexuality and masculinity in this novel it is
imperative to examine the role of heterosexuality in Christie’s body of work.
In Agatha Christie’s works there is an often-occurring romantic subplot between two
supporting characters, usually murder suspects, who are at the end of the story found to be
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innocent and are then united in an engagement. When discussing the topic Makinen quotes
Maida and Spornick who assert that
‘And they lived happily ever after’ – or so it seems in most of Christie’s fiction.
Match-making is a persistent motif in her work, for no marriageable character gets
off without finding the ‘right’ mate. Christie herself was committed to the traditional
roles for men and women, to marriage and to family. (23)
As the above quote indicates, this romantic subplot and its implications of female
subordination have been heavily criticized. However, I assert that rather than being only a
formulaic addition to the detective story formula, this subplot actually serves an important
narrative function in Christie’s detective fiction. The promise or the expectation of a
heterosexual partnership, in the form of an engagement or a marriage, is the antithesis of
murder. A detective novel typically begins with a murder, which is an act that disrupts
society. At the end of the novel society is re-established with the unification of a man and a
woman. This subplot can be seen very clearly in, for example, such works as Lord
Edgware Dies, The ABC Murders, Murder on the Orient Express, and Cards on the Table.
The re-establishment does not necessarily require the formation of a new relationship,
since both The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Murder at the Vicarage offer a variation on
the romance theme. In the former, a separated married couple reconciles, and in the latter
the narrator Leonard Clement and his wife are revealed to be expecting a baby. The
common element is the heterosexual relationship between a man and a woman. Sometimes
Christie’s romantic subplots subvert the reader’s expectations of the characters destined to
be together: for instance, in Death on the Nile, a reader familiar with Christie’s style might
expect Cornelia, the long-suffering lady’s maid, to marry Mr Ferguson, who is revealed to
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be a titled, rich Englishman and who proclaims his affection for her several times during
the story. However, the story concludes with Cornelia choosing the middle-aged,
unattractive German Dr. Bessner, on the grounds that he is the one who is most likely to
make her happy.
In all of these examples the heterosexual relationship is used to signal the re-establishment
of society after the murder has disturbed it. However, I argue that the romance subplot also
serves a function as a reward for proper gender behaviour. Murderers and other morally
dubious characters are never rewarded with a romance at the conclusion of the narrative.
Male and female characters who have suffered hardships and proved themselves to be
worthy are rewarded at the end with a life partner. Although this may seem biased in the
sense that the only appropriate conclusion to a young female character’s story is marriage,
I would like to point out that this resolution affects both parties. It would be equally correct
to assert that the male characters’ stories are always concluded with marriage. The
“rewarding” aspect of the heterosexual relationship applies to both female and male
characters. Makinen presents a similar view when she asserts that relationships in
Christie’s works “challenge the traditional views of the feminine role within marriage,
rejecting the old domestic ideal of homemaker, for one of more partnership and wit […]
modern wives in her novels, including Tuppence Beresford, argue the need to forge
workable partnerships of equal status” (114; emphasis added). There is an element of
mutual support in Christie’s ideal partnerships, rather than the idea of a subservient, stayat-home wife and a domineering husband. Additionally, there is great variation as to what
constitutes masculine or feminine behaviour worth rewarding: the romantic subplot
encompasses a wide variety of characters in her detective novels, ranging from meek to
assertive and from saint-like to slightly dubious. Or, as Makinen phrases it, Christie depicts
“a whole range and diversity of femininities and masculinities that form workable
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partnerships” (111). As far heterosexual relationships go, there is not one specific and
always consistent way of constructing socially acceptable and ideal masculinity or
femininity in Christie’s works.
In addition to the formulaic romantic sub-plot, “right” or “proper” masculinity can
also be signalled by the potential of a heterosexual partnership. This means that the male or
female characters who have displayed proper behaviour are granted the potential of a
heterosexual relationship even if they are not part of the romantic resolution. For example,
in The Man in the Brown Suit Colonel Race is presented as a viable romantic option for the
main character Anne Beddingfield. She chooses another man as her life partner and Race
becomes a recurring detective character in Christie’s novels. Likewise, in Appointment
with Death Jefferson Cope is potential love interest to a woman who is married but
separated from her husband. At the end of the novel she reconciles with her husband (again
a variation of the heterosexual romance) while Cope graciously steps aside. This means
that masculinity is not necessarily portrayed as compulsory participation in a heterosexual
partnership for all characters, but rather as the potential to engage in one. Even Hercule
Poirot, who is mostly portrayed in asexual terms, has a potential love interest in Countess
Vera Rossakoff, a reformed thief. Conversely, the person or persons guilty of murder have
forfeited their right to a heterosexual partnership. The revelation of the murderer’s identity
at the conclusion signals the end of many potential partnerships. For example, in such
works as Three-Act Tragedy, Death in the Clouds, and Lord Edgware Dies the murderer’s
unmasking leads to the definitive end of a relationship. “Faulty” masculinities in Christie
are not portrayed as homosexual in contrast to the heterosexual “right” masculinity, but as
non-heterosexual or non-sexual. Homosexual characters are relatively rare in Christie’s
work. Curran argues that prior to A Murder is Announced (1950) Christie’s homosexual
characters “have been either figures of fun (Mr Pye in The Moving Finger or Mr
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Ellsworthy in Murder is Easy) or menace (Lord Edgware’s Greek-godlike butler, or, some
years later, Alec in The Rats)” (179). It should not be ignored that homosexuality was
constructed as being outside of hegemonic masculinity both legally and culturally at this
point in history (Connell, Masculinities 196), and that contributes to its relative absence in
Christie’s fiction. However, I argue that just like hegemonic masculinity can be
constructed in comparison to other kinds of masculinity in addition to femininity,
Christie’s ideal equal heterosexual partnerships can be constructed in comparison to less
acceptable forms of heterosexuality rather than homosexuality.
When the romantic subplot and the heterosexual potential are understood in the terms
of proper gender behaviour, the portrayal of heterosexual relationships in And Then There
Were None becomes logical and consistent. In the novel the characters’ marriages or
relationships are not portrayed as being rewarding, equal, or contented, because
committing murder disqualifies them from participating in a rewarding relationship. Mr
and Mrs Rogers are both morally culpable of murder and their marriage is not portrayed as
a particularly happy one. General Macarthur’s motive for murder was his jealousy of
Arthur Richmond, his wife’s lover, and the narration clearly states that after Macarthur
committed the crime, his relationship with his wife was never the same:
Leslie hadn’t known. Leslie had wept for her lover (he supposed) but her weeping
was over by the time he’d come back to England. He’d never told her that he’d found
her out. They’d gone on together – only, somehow, she hadn’t seemed very real any
more. And then, three or four years later she’d got double pneumonia and died. (9495)
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The murderer cannot rejoice in his crime. Leslie’s early death can be seen as symbolical of
the death of their marriage/partnership after Macarthur has committed a murder. Similarly,
Vera Claythorne committed a murder in order to facilitate her marriage to a suitable young
man, but that very same act of murder prevented the marriage from taking place. After the
murder her fiancé Hugo distanced himself from Vera and became an alcoholic, unable to
reconcile himself to the knowledge that the woman he loved was a murderer. Since in
Christie’s fiction heterosexual partnership can be constructed as the antithesis of murder,
and since murder is the antithesis of heterosexual partnership, murderers are not allowed a
happy marriage/partnership.
The beginning of And Then There Were None suggests the possibility of a romance
between Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard in a typical Christie fashion. They sit
opposite each other on the train and notice the other as an interesting person. Vera sees “[a]
tall man with a brown face, light eyes set rather close together and an arrogant, almost
cruel mouth” (15) while Lombard “summing up the girl opposite in a mere flash of his
quick moving eyes thought to himself: ‘Quite attractive – a bit schoolmistressy perhaps.’ A
cool customer, he should imagine – and one who could hold her own – in love or war.
He’d rather like to take her on…” (15-16). This scene already shows that while there is a
potential romantic subplot, this does not have the potential for a “equal partnership”, the
ideal heterosexual relationship in a Christie novel. Rather, Vera notices Lombard’s “cruel”
mouth, and Lombard imagines Vera as subservient to him rather than as his equal. At the
end of the novel Vera kills Lombard in cold blood, and the potential heterosexual
relationship is permanently replaced with an act of murder. Significantly, this is the only
murder in the novel that is not directly committed by Judge Wargrave, the mastermind
behind the plot. It emphasizes the point already made: murder is the antithesis of
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heterosexual partnership, and a murderer can not be allowed to participate in a satisfying
heterosexual romance. 5
Of all the characters in And Then There Were None only two are married: Mr and
Mrs Rogers. Of the eight remaining characters, General Macarthur and Vera Claythorne
are established as having had a heterosexual relationship in their lives. Macarthur’s wife
has died some time earlier and Vera’s relationship with her fiancé was destroyed after he
realized she was a murderer. Both relationships serve as motives for their murders. Dr
Armstrong, Miss Brent, Blore, Lombard, Marston, and Judge Wargrave are not revealed to
have had any kind of heterosexual relationship. In fact, most of the male characters in the
novel are not strongly associated with heterosexuality or any other way inclined to a
relationship. Therefore I argue that in this novel hegemonic masculinity is not constructed
by using the binary of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Rather, proper masculinity is
constructed as active heterosexuality that aspires to an equal romantic relationship.
Unacceptable masculinity is constructed as heterosexual but either inactive, as is the case
with Armstrong, Blore, and Wargrave, or as heterosexual and overtly dominant, as in the
case of Lombard. Notably, the novel is lacking both male and female characters who are
both capable and deserving to construct an ideal heterosexual partnership with an equal
partner. The re-establishment of society through a heterosexual partnership is impossible,
because the miniature society on the island has been established as consisting of “faulty”
femininities and masculinities.
5
This is in stark contrast to the play version of And The There Were None, in which both Vera Claythorne
and Philip Lombard are revealed to be innocent of the murders they supposedly committed, and they intend
to get married in accordance to the nursery rhyme’s alternate ending, in which the soldier boy who was left
all alone got married instead of hanging himself. This is in accordance with my argument: a heterosexual
romance is a possibility only for the characters who have exhibited proper gender behaviour.
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3.4. Masculinity as an Omnipotent Fantasy; Judge Wargrave’s Narration
While the previous chapters have presented a more general analysis of the novel and the
characters, this last part concentrates on the character of Judge Wargrave, revealed to be
the murderer at the end of the novel. The first part of the analysis of his character concerns
his dual role in the story. Wargrave’s actions are a mixture of the action role taken by the
murderer, and the rational “moral guardian” role of the detective. The second part of the
analysis concentrates on the second half of the “Epilogue”, Wargrave’s confession, in
which he details how and why he committed the murders. The analysis has been divided
into two parts for clarity: the former is more concerned how Wargrave is portrayed by the
narrator and himself in the text within the context of a detective novel, while the latter
concentrates on how Wargrave portrays himself as possessing ideal masculine attributes.
3.4.1. Wargrave as the Detective/Murderer
As explained in section 2.3, And Then There Were None is a novel which has most of the
attributes featured in a detective story. However, it lacks the central character of a detective
to solve the case. While Judge Wargrave acts in many ways as a detective would in a
detective novel, in the end he is revealed to be the mastermind behind the mysterious
deaths. His confession letter details how he located the nine uncaught murderers and
invited them to the island to receive their punishment. In other words, he acted like a
detective would act, and found out the truth about the seemingly innocent deaths which
occurred in the past. His assembling the guests at the drawing room and questioning them
about the recorded accusations in Chapters 3 and 4 can be read as a mocking version of the
“parlour scene” found in so many of Christie’s own novels, where the detective assembles
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all the suspects under one roof and points out the guilty party. The difference, or irony, is
that in this scene all the people present have already been established as guilty, and that the
scene occurs at the beginning instead of the end of the novel. The double role that
Wargrave plays also serves to slyly invert the normal structure of the detective story.
Wargrave begins the story with detection and ends it with successful murder, when usually
the detective story starts with a murder and ends in successful detection.
Throughout the novel Judge Wargrave is the person who asks all the questions and
makes all the suggestions which are characteristic of a detective trying to solve a case. He
questions the other guests as to how they were invited to the island, who have potentially
life-threatening substances in their possession, and when the murders start occurring, he
interrogates them about their alibis. Under the guise of this detective work he subtly
manipulates the other guests in order to kill them. Wargrave’s dual role is established by
himself in his narrative at the end, where he states that “[f]rom an early age I knew very
strongly the lust to kill. But side by side with this went a contradictory trait – a strong
sense of justice. It is abhorrent to me that an innocent person or creature should suffer or
die by any act of mine” (301-302). This quotation demonstrates the two contrary sides of
his personality concisely: he wants to kill, but only people who have, in his opinion,
deserved it.
Wargrave plays a double role in the narrative, and what is interesting is that the parts
ought to be diametrically opposed. In his confession letter he clearly presents himself as
both the detective and the murderer. The detective part is compromised of his discovering
cases of murder which have been left unattended by the authorities. The detective is also
apparent in his decision to punish the criminals for their transgressions. As seen in
Kestner’s key idea that Sherlock Holmes is required to “police men as much as women in
the culture” (95), it is the detective’s function in the story to be a moral guardian, to guard
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and guide the members of society and to discover transgressors. It is apparent that this is a
definition of a detective that Wargrave fulfils. He has made it his purpose to find out
transgressors who have passed unnoticed in the society. His desire to seek justice for
crimes committed makes him a detective.
However, it is also the detective’s duty to hand over the transgressors to the proper
authorities. Let us consider McKellar’s claim that it is in modern detective fiction, not that
of the Golden Age, in which ”[n]o longer do we encounter the overriding, universal set of
moral imperatives which drove early examples of the genre: the detective’s quest for
justice and balance often degenerates into a quest for personal satisfaction.” This
degeneration is exactly what happens in the novel. Wargrave decides to take the law into
his own hands and starts punishing the criminals personally. His description of his
experiences as a judge clearly displays an element of personal involvement rather than
professional detachment: “[t]o see a wretched criminal squirming in the dock, suffering the
tortures of the damned, as his doom came slowly and slowly nearer, was to me an exquisite
pleasure” (302). He can be seen as acting according to “moral imperatives”, punishing the
criminals to protect the innocent, but the personal element is clearly present. In this sense
Wargrave’s actions on the island are an extension of his lengthy career and involvement in
punishing criminals, but here he does so both for what he perceives to be the greater good
and for his own personal quest for justice.
Wargrave’s dual role in the story is emphasized in his determination to kill himself in
the end. On one hand, he frames his suicide to look like a murder to divert the suspicion
away from himself. If he is found murdered along all the other people on the island, the
police would not suspect him to be the murderer. This is a question of pride and masculine
conceit: it has been his aim to both punish the wrongdoers and “to invent a murder mystery
that no one could solve” (315; original emphasis). On the other hand, as he has become a
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murderer during the story, his sense of justice and self-assumed role of a detective do not
allow him to escape the punishment he has considered to be just for all the other murderers
in the story. In Christie’s work murder is always a crime that requires a punishment.
Curran discusses a similar point concerning one of Christie’s later novels:
With her customary ingenuity, Agatha Christie resolved the thorny question of legal
justice and moral justice. When Ordeal by Innocence was written, many aspects of
life were more clear cut than they have subsequently become. If a character in a
Christie novel were unmasked as a murderer, the reader could be sure that he or she
would pay the ultimate price. With the death in prison of Jacko while serving a
sentence for a crime he did not commit, Christie could be accused of a disservice to
both natural and legal justice. […] But in Ordeal by Innocence Jacko is finally shown
to have been morally responsible, even if his was not the hand that struck the fatal
blow. (245; emphasis added)
Wargrave is described in the narrative as a person with a black and white sense of moral
distinction, which makes it consistent that he cannot let even himself walk free after
deliberately committing a murder. All of the murderers/victims are morally responsible for
murder, which justifies their deaths in Wargrave’s opinion. He is, to use Curran’s terms,
exercising moral rather than legal justice by murdering the murderers. At the same time,
however, he incriminates himself, which must be resolved by his own death. His situation
is similar to one encountered in the last Christie novel. In The Curtain Hercule Poirot,
slowly dying of a heart condition, decides to kill a murderer who cannot be touched by
law. However, after he has committed the murder, he leaves enough clues for Hastings to
solve the case and allows himself to die by deliberately declining to take his medicine. The
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act of murdering a person is in Christie’s work a point where death is the only possible
resolution. 6
When Wargrave is constructed as well as constructs himself in the text, he acts out
the two basic roles peculiar to the detective story, those of the detective and the murderer.
The third role essential to a detective story, that of the victim, is reserved to the other
characters. Both the detective and the murderer are active roles in the detective story. The
murderer’s actions are central to the plot, while the detective’s actions and rationality are
central to the resolution. The victim’s role is passive, since their function is simply to
provide motivation for the action. Notably, Wargrave does not refer to himself as the tenth
murder victim. When he frames his death with the help of Dr Armstrong, he merely
appears to be the next victim as a ploy to unmask the “real” murderer with the help of the
gullible Doctor. The actual tenth murder victim, necessary because of the parameters set by
the nursery rhyme, is not even present on the island. A shady businessman called Morris,
who helped Wargrave to obtain the island and otherwise set up the scenario, is
unceremoniously given a poisoned medicine capsule before the events of the novel, and his
role in the story is fairly insignificant. Since activity is a masculine attribute, the roles
connected to activity are those that Wargrave claims in the story. Significantly, both roles
are associated with power: both the murderer and the detective have the power to take
away someone’s life, though in different contexts. For the whole period of the Golden Age
of detective fiction, including the time when And Then There Were None was published,
Capital Punishment still applied, which means that the detective’s status as a moral
guardian also extended to cleansing the society of unfit subjects permanently.
6
There are exceptions to this rule, just like any other rule, in Christie’s oeuvre; for example, in Five Little
Pigs the murderer walks free because there isn’t enough concrete evidence for conviction. However, the
narration makes clear that the culprit had led a spiritually/emotionally devoid existence since the murder and
has therefore, in a sense, received their punishment.
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Connell asserts that “[a]t any given time, one form of masculinity rather than others
is culturally exalted” (Masculinities 77) and also argues that in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries a “polarity thus developed within hegemonic masculinity between
dominance and technical expertise” (Masculinities 194), meaning that there are two
distinct ways, one that is more bodily accentuated and one that is more rationally
accentuated, in which a man may strive towards hegemonic masculinity. From a historical
perspective, this divide was seen “[a]s hegemonic masculinity in the metropole became
more subject to rationalization, violence and licence were, symbolically and to some
extent actually, pushed out to the colonies” (Masculinities 194; emphasis added). At a time
when fictional detectives were constructed as heroes and therefore represented hegemonic
masculinity, Wargrave is aspiring to the detective story model to construct himself as an
embodiment of hegemonic masculinity. Since the detective character is the hero of the
story, that is the role which he assigns for himself. This is the rational, metropolitan
construction of hegemonic masculinity. Simultaneously, his divided nature also prompts
him to play the part of the murderer as well. The role of the vigilante murderer acting for
the greater good, disposing the society of unworthy people, is the violent, aggressive
construction of hegemonic masculinity. The combination of the two detective story roles,
and by extension of the two configurations of hegemonic masculinity, allows him to assert
a dominant position in relation to the other characters, both male and female.
In the context of the conventions of the detective novel structure it can be said that
Wargrave achieves a masculine fantasy of omnipotence. He manages to apprehend and
punish all of the uncaught murderers by killing them himself one by one, therefore
fulfilling the “moral guardian” role of the detective. His crime is “justified”, at least in his
own mind, by the guilt of the other characters. He is in control of the situation on the
island, and none of the murderers manage to escape their punishment. When the police
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arrive, they are unable to solve the puzzling set of murders. Although it happens
posthumously, Wargrave manages to escape the legal consequences of his actions, which
makes him a very successful murderer. Wargrave does manage to construct “the perfect
crime”, which can be seen as an ultimate achievement in detective fiction.
3.4.2. Wargrave’s Confession: Constructing Masculinity
The novel, like this analysis, concludes with Wargrave’s confession letter. On the level of
the plot the letter is simply a means for the author to conclude the narrative according to
the conventions of the genre. Since there is no real detective character to solve the murder
and narrate the denouement for the reader, a literary device is used to deliver a conclusion
to the plot. However, from the point of view of the representation of masculinity, the letter
can be discerned as the most prominent piece of masculinity being knowingly constructed
in the text. It is in this letter that Wargrave details his reasons and means for committing
the murders the reader has witnessed in the novel. In it Wargrave constructs his own
masculinity as hegemonic. Simultaneously he also constructs an image of himself in order
to influence the reader’s opinion. In other words, he knowingly portrays himself as the
kind of man that he wants to see himself as.
To begin with, Wargrave’s age is elemental to understanding how he constructs his
masculinity. And Then There Were None takes place after the year 1935 but very likely
before the start of the Second World War. In the present of the novel Wargrave is
described as elderly and rheumatic, but he has been only recently retired from his job, so
his age can probably be placed around 60 years. Therefore we may assume Wargrave was
most likely born in the 1870s or the 1880s, which would make the Victorian and the
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Edwardian periods the most significant stage in terms of his development of behaviour and
ideals. Deane’s argument is that
[b]efore the First World War, only a fraction of Victorian and Edwardian men had
any direct experience of military or colonial life, much less of the rowdy voyages of
colonial adventure fiction, but popular audiences found the dream of imperial
masculinity no less compelling. (7; emphasis added)
Wargrave begins his letter with the declaration: “I have, to begin with, an incurably
romantic imagination. The practice of throwing a bottle into the sea with a important
document inside was one that never failed to thrill me when reading adventure stories as a
child” (301; emphasis added). This shows that Wargrave has absorbed some of his models
for masculinity from imperial literature, and is therefore harking back to outdated models
of masculinity with very little space in modern Britain. Deane identifies qualities and
concepts such as “boyishness” (85), and educating the Natives while exerting authority
over them (115-116) as central to the popular fiction of the pre-war era. These can be seen
in Wargrave’s construction of himself in his narrative. He has retained his contradictory
character traits from childhood, ”the lust to kill” (301), and “a strong sense of justice”
(302), and has therefore retained his boyishness as well. Also, it is significant that he has
chosen a nursery rhyme as the template for his murders, which suggests retaining the
imagination of a child. Education and dominance can be seen in his desire to catch punish
the uncaught murderers, as they have, in a sense, not “played by the rules”.
In addition to the ideals familiar from nineteenth century popular literature,
Wargrave’s perceptions of masculinity and hegemonic masculinity in particular are
produced by the institutions of power he participates in. Hegemonic masculinity is closely
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linked to power. However, power does not necessarily equate violence. Connell asserts that
power as a masculine element can be seen in other ways as well:
It is no accident that the means of organized violence – weapons and knowledge of
military technique – are almost entirely in the hands of men […] Yet ‘naked force’ is
rare. Much more often violence appears as a part of a complex that also involves
institutions and the ways they are organized. Power may be a balance of advantage or
an inequality of resources in a workplace, a household, or a larger institution. By and
large the people who run the corporations, the government departments and the
universities are men, who so arrange things that it is extremely difficult for women to
get access to top positions. (Gender and Power 107)
In the context of this analysis the legal system may be added to complement the list above.
Although Connell’s observation is mainly a contemporary rather than a historical one, it
can certainly be applied here. Power is expressed by both violence and the unseen
workings of institutions. Since both violence and the institutional power are
overwhelmingly male domains, they are associated with masculinity. Judge Wargrave is a
character who has spent his entire life surrounded by and involved in masculine institutions
and institutions of power, such as schools, organizations, and courts of law. Likewise, his
chosen profession in criminal justice is closely connected to violence in many forms. His
decision and desire to wield power over his fellow humans does not emerge from a
vacuum. Rather, it is the result of a lifelong privileged position in society, which in turn is
justified by the centuries-long privileged position of upper class men in Great Britain.
Hegemonic masculinity and power in its different forms go hand in hand.
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In the letter it can be seen that Wargrave wants to portray himself as embodying
hegemonic masculinity. As Connell argues, hegemonic masculinity is supposed to
guarantee “the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (Masculinities
77). He also asserts that “[m]ost men do not attack or harass women; but those who do are
unlikely to think themselves deviant. On the contrary they usually feel they are entirely
justified, that they are exercising a right” (Masculinities 83). A disparaging and potentially
violent attitude towards women is at the core of the ideal hegemonic masculinity, since
femininity is constructed as the opposite of masculinity and therefore to be avoided.
Wargrave is not described as being violent towards women (murder notwithstanding), but
the attitudes he expresses towards women are consistently belittling and abusive. He
considers them to be inferior to men, or at least to himself. Wargrave’s attitude towards
women is consistent with his desire to construct his own masculinity as hegemonic. At the
beginning of the novel, when he contemplates the rumours surrounding Soldier Island,
Wargrave makes the condescending remark that Constance Culmington, the supposed
owner, “was exactly the sort of woman who would buy an island and surround herself with
mystery!” (13; emphasis original). This suggests that he thinks women as being prone to
unnecessary mystification and expenditure. His tenth murder victim, Morris, is guilty of
introducing the daughter of Wargrave’s friends to drugs, and the young woman later
committed suicide. Whether or not Morris is morally culpable of murder is debatable (by
the same logic, the doctor who prescribed chloral hydrate to Wargrave is also responsible
for the murder of Mrs Rodgers), Wargrave’s reaction suggests that he views women as
easily swayed by external influence and needing male protection.
Wargrave’s judgmental approach towards women is most clearly expressed in how
he constructs Vera Claythorne in his narrative. Vera is the most discussed murder victim in
Wargrave’s confession letter. She receives more than a page of exposition, while the other
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characters are established with a single sentence or a paragraph at most. This is implicitly
because her crime can be constructed as being “unfeminine” and therefore particularly
heinous. While the other murderers were mainly impersonally motivated, Vera has
deliberately caused the death of a young boy trusted in her care. Her utter rejection of the
traditional role of the nurturing female causes Wargrave to consider her as one of the most
dangerous among the cast of murderers assembled on the island. Wargrave’s description of
Vera’s death highlights his ideas of women in general:
From my window I saw Vera Claythorne shoot Lombard. A daring and resourceful
young woman. I always thought she was a match for him and more. As soon as that
had happened I set the stage in her bedroom.
It was an interesting psychological experiment. Would the consciousness of her
own guilt, the state of nervous tension consequent on having just shot a man, be
sufficient, together with the hypnotic suggestion of the surroundings, to cause her to
take her own life? I thought it would. I was right. Vera Claythorne hanged herself
before my eyes where I stood in the shadow of the wardrobe. (314)
Wargrave estimates Vera to be more dangerous than Lombard, but still submissive to him
and his master plan. In the space of two paragraphs Vera transforms from an admirably
plucky woman to an impersonal experiment whose purpose is to confirm Wargrave’s
hypothesis about the female psyche. In Wargrave’s narration Vera’s character is
constructed in opposition to himself. While Vera is the un-nurturing female who kills for
personal gain, Wargrave is the active, rational man who kills for the ”greater good”. In the
above quotation, Vera is both the object of Wargrave’s gaze and the subject of his
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scientific experiment. In Wargrave’s narrative Vera is constructed as the weak, objectified
feminine, while Wargrave himself is the active, scientifically rational masculine.
The combination of Victorian upbringing and male-centered institutions and society
contribute in Wargrave’s idea of hegemonic masculinity. He projects himself according to
this idea in his confession. In order to portray himself as embodying hegemonic
masculinity Wargrave builds a specific image of himself in his letter. There are two key
components in this image. The first one is that he wants portray himself as intelligent and
rational. Rationality is a key concept in constructing masculinity, as Connell notes
(Masculinities 164). There are several instances in the letter where he is clearly
congratulating himself on acting particularly cleverly or rationally. For instance, after the
fifth murder he says that “[i]mmediately after this what I had already foreseen happened –
indeed I believe I suggested it myself. We all submitted to a rigorous search. I had safely
hidden away the revolver, and had no more cyanide or chloral in my possession” (311). In
this passage he is simultaneously seen to discreetly influence his fellow guests and make
sure that he himself cannot be implicated in the crimes in any way. His letter ends with the
declaration: “[w]hen the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men.
And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Soldier Island” (316-317).
He is certain that the mystery which he has created is so intricate and contradictory that it
will be impossible for anyone less intelligent than himself to solve it. Wargrave is also
constructing himself as intelligent in opposition to the other male guests: he says of Dr
Armstrong that “[h]e was a gullible sort of man, he knew me by sight and reputation and it
was inconceivable to him that a man of my standing should actually be a murderer!” (310)
This is also an example of masculinity being constructed homosocially: Wargrave is
constructing himself as more intelligent and rational in opposition to other men as well as
women.
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By portraying himself as highly intelligent Wargrave also distances himself from
irrational considerations such as emotions. He aspires to represent himself as rational in his
decisions, rather than being in any way emotional, and he even claims that during his
tenure as a judge “I have always been strictly just and scrupulous in my summing up of a
case. All I have done is to protect the jury against the emotional effect of emotional
appeals by some of our more emotional counsel. I have drawn their attention to the actual
evidence” (303). The repetition of the word “emotional” in a clearly negative context
shows that Wargrave wants to attribute all of his actions and decisions to his intelligence
and rationality. And yet, when describing the case of Edward Seton, he is influenced by
more than facts: “[Seton’s] appearance and manner were misleading and he created a good
impression on the jury. But not only the evidence, which was clear, though unspectacular,
but my own knowledge of criminals told me without any doubt that the man had actually
committed the crime” (303). Wargrave admits that the “unspectacular”, probably
circumstantial, evidence would not have been enough to prove Seton guilty. He is
influenced by other than rational considerations, but he attempts to portray himself as
nothing but rational. Additionally, as was discussed previously in chapter 3.2, Wargrave is
just as affected by the claustrophobic atmosphere on the island as the other guests.
The second key feature in the letter is his desire to portray himself as justified and
right in his actions. He wants the reader of the letter to agree with his assessment that the
people he has killed deserved the punishment. Therefore he represents all of the other
characters as murderers who have escaped justice and deserve to be punished. He also
wants the reader to believe that he is the kind of person who is both capable of, and
deserves to mete out justice to people who have escaped it. However, in this very act of
trying to present himself as an omnipotent figure, able and justified to judge his fellow
mortals, he reveals that he is not such. For instance, he describes the reactions of the other
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guests during the accusing recording like this: “I may say that I watched the faces of my
guests closely during that indictment and that I had no doubt whatever, after my long court
experience, that one and all were guilty” (309). However, the description of the scene
earlier in the novel’s narrative proceeds in this manner:
[t]he voice had stopped.
There was a moment’s petrified silence and then a resounding crash! Rogers
had dropped the coffee tray!
At the same moment, from somewhere outside the room there came a scream
and the sound of a thud.
Lombard was the first to move. He leapt to the door and flung it open. Outside,
lying in a huddled mass, was Mrs Rogers. (58)7
The narrative makes it clear that Wargrave is lying. Since Mrs Rogers was at the time
outside of the room behind a closed door, he could not have observed all his guests and
decided that “one and all” were guilty by their appearance. This can be explained by two
interconnected factors. Firstly, it is clearly a question of class. Since Mrs Rogers is servant,
her non-presence at the scene slips by Wargrave’s notice when remembering of the scene.
Secondly, it is also a question of gender. Since Wargrave is constructing a narrative in
which he himself is the implied heroic male figure, ruling justice to miscreants, he is not
going to let a small fact such as a servant woman’s actual position during the scene stand
in the way of his grand narrative. Mr Rogers’s position in the scene is likewise ambiguous
– he could have been pouring beverages with his face turned away when the recording
started, since he is described as dropping the coffee tray, and therefore Wargrave could
7
In this passage, Christie is using the exclamation marks as well as the short paragraphs (containing only one
sentence) as a deliberate narrative tool in order to emphasize the speed and urgency of the action. This can be
seen in multiple parts of the novel.
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have left him unobserved as well. Since Wargrave has been consistently portrayed as
observant, it is more likely that he altered the facts in his account rather than
misremembered a key scene in his murderous plan. The alteration of facts reveals that he is
not writing a factual account, but a narrative of himself.
In addition to being rational and justified in his actions, Wargrave also desires to
portray himself as capable, as someone who can and does act. Incidentally, this also serves
as the motivation of his actions. Wargrave’s plans for a perfect murder have been
simmering in his brain for quite some time, but it is a reminder of his own mortality which
pushes him to acting.
During all this time of search my plan had been gradually maturing in my mind. It
was now complete and the coping stone to it was an interview I had with a doctor in
Harley Street. I have mentioned that I underwent an operation. My interview in
Harley Street told me that another operation would be useless. My medical adviser
wrapped up the information very prettily, but I am accustomed to getting at the truth
of a statement.
I did not tell the doctor of my decision – that my death should not be a slow
and protracted one as it would be in the course of nature. No, my death should take
place in a blaze of excitement. I would live before I died. (307-308; original
emphasis)
Let us consider this passage in relation to what Connell writes about the failing male body
and how that constitutes in constructing one’s masculinity:
The construction of masculinity through bodily performance means that gender is
vulnerable when the performance cannot be sustained – for instance, as a result of
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physical disability. Thomas Gerschick and Adam Miller have conducted a small but
remarkably interesting study of American men trying to deal with this situation after
disabling accidents or illness. They distinguish three responses. One is to redouble
efforts to meet the hegemonic standards, overcoming the physical difficulty […]
Another is to reformulate the definition of masculinity, bringing it closer to what is
now possible, though still pursuing masculine themes such as independence and
control. The third is to reject hegemonic masculinity as a package […] So a wide
range of responses can be made to the undermining of the bodily sense of
masculinity. The one thing none of these men can do is ignore it. (Masculinities 5455; emphasis added)
Wargrave has been planning his perfect murder for some time, selecting appropriate
victims/murderers and imagining the mechanics of the crime. However, it is not until the
news of his inevitable death, not just by old age but by a debilitating illness, when he
begins to act in earnest. He admits to visualizing committing murder before: “I have
devised for my own private amusement the most ingenious ways of carrying out a murder”
(302). In other words, only after being unavoidably reminded of his failing body does he
actually buy Soldier Island as a milieu suitable for the perfect murder and contact his
victims. Although Wargrave attempts to downplay it in his narrative, his desire to act
before his body fails him constitutes a very large part in his motivation for murder. He is
incapable of ignoring the degeneration of his body, and reacts to it by adopting a course of
action which amplifies his hegemonic masculinity, which is the first response quoted
above. By staging and acting out a complicated murder mystery plot Wargrave is able to
make his exit “in a blaze of excitement” and construct himself as embodying hegemonic
masculinity rather than conceding to the natural way of things. It is also notable that he
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specifically does not wish to succumb to “nature’s course”, since nature is often imagined
as feminine while science and civilization are associated with masculine.
What this analysis shows is that Judge Wargrave simultaneously achieves and fails in
his project to achieve hegemonic masculinity before his death. If his role in the novel is
analyzed through the conventions and character types of the genre, he is successful. He
acts out the roles of the detective and the murderer with accolades. As a detective, he is
able to correctly identify the murderers and how, when, why, and whom did they murder.
As a murderer, he is able to avoid detection and complete his mission of committing the
perfect murder mystery which cannot be solved. The police authorities represented in the
novel are unable to solve the crime, although the reader is given the solution to the mystery
in order to preserve the formula of the genre. Wargrave also fails in his narrative
construction of his own masculinity. He tries to portray himself as supremely rational,
unemotional, capable, and justified in his quest for justice. A detailed analysis of his
narrative shows that he is neither rational, nor unemotional, since he has been influenced
by emotional factors even if he denies the fact. He is not necessarily justified in his quest
for justice, and his failing body does not allow him to be capable in reality either.
Wargrave writes himself as possessing all of the above qualities, while he is lacking them.
To conclude, it can be said that And The There Were None is novel which powerfully
presents a set of male characters who seek to portray themselves as possessing the ideal,
positive attributes which construct hegemonic masculinity. The characters are portrayed as
trying to construct their masculinity through activity, rationality, and heterosexuality.
However, as murderers, they are denied that possibility. The one character who fairly
successfully constructs himself as embodying hegemonic masculinity, “the alpha male” to
use a vernacular turn of phrase, is the elderly criminal mastermind behind the action of the
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novel. While activity, masculinity, and heterosexuality can be considered positive
masculine attributes, the overabundance is portrayed as a failure in the novel. Moreover,
the presence of the female character Vera in the narrative prevents the construction of
masculinity in a homosocial context, and disturbs the construction of activity, violence and
rationality as masculine attributes in many ways. As a female character she is supposed to
be passive and nonviolent in contrast to the male characters, but she claims an active
position in the narrative nonetheless. Therefore it can be argued that Christie has aimed at a
more complicated construction of masculinity. The male characters in the novel are
stagnated in their ideas and assumptions about how they should construct their masculinity.
However, adhering to the older models for masculinity is no longer a viable option in
modern Britain. By observing how the negative masculine attributes are portrayed and
used in this particular novel it is possible to deduce what kind of masculine attributes she
considered positive.
In this study I have focused on the negative portrayals and constructions of
masculinity. The unsaid goal of all the male characters in the novel, hegemonic
masculinity, may therefore appear to be a negative. However, Connell suggests that
hegemonic masculinity can have multiple positive attributes as well:
Abolishing hegemonic masculinity risks abolishing, along with the violence and
hatred, the positive culture produced around hegemonic masculinity. This includes
hero stories from the Ramayana and the Iliad to the Twilight of the Gods;
participatory pleasures such as neighbourhood baseball; abstract beauty in fields such
as pure mathematics; ethics of sacrifice on behalf of others. (Masculinities 233)
Therefore, hegemonic masculinity has positive as well as negative connotations and
applications. Moreover, the hegemonic masculinity of yesterday is not necessarily the
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hegemonic masculinity of today: as Connell writes, it is “a historically mobile relation”
(77). Hegemonic masculinity contains the potential for evolution and change. Newer
constructions of hegemonic masculinity have the potential to be less violent and
misogynistic. In the context of this study I wish to point out that the villainous characters
in And Then There Were None do not negate the non-villainous, and indeed heroic,
characters in Christie’s other novels who also strive towards hegemonic masculinity.
Hegemonic masculinity is therefore not inherently “bad” or “good”, it is a construction
which can have negative or positive attributes and consequences.
4. Conclusion
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The purpose of this thesis was to study the construction of masculinity in Agatha Christie’s
novel And Then There Were None. In the first part of the theory section, I outlined the
definition of masculinity for the purposes of the analysis. Hegemonic masculinity is
constructed as rational, active, and heterosexual, with a number of subservient
masculinities, as well as femininity, as its opposites. The second part presented the cultural
context for the analysis of masculinity. In Great Britain the upper and middle class
masculinities have been traditionally constructed in male-only, homosocial environments
and institutions, such as public schools, clubs, and the army. In contrast, lower class
masculinities have been constructed in a more family-centred environment, but they have
also been constructed as marginal. Upper class masculinities have been represented more
in popular culture, which allies them with the ideal masculinity.
The other parts focused on detective fiction. Firstly, I showed what kind of a genre
the detective story was in the interwar period: plot-centred, self-aware, and somewhat more
prestigious than its literary predecessors in the nineteenth century. The chapter “Detective
Story and Gender” examined the complicated relationship between the detective story
genre and gender. Although it can be argued that the form and authorship became more
feminine, at the same time the construction of gender in the detective story tends to be
traditional rather than liberal. There is an apparent discrepancy between form and content,
but I have suggested that the genre may include subtle renegotiations of gender roles,
rather than overt challenges to the current configuration of the genders. Lastly, I traced the
connection between masculinity and detective fiction. An important part of the detective
hero is his position as a moral guardian. The detective’s job is to preserve and uphold the
“proper way of doing things”, and this includes acceptable gender behaviour. Additionally,
after the First World War there was a shift in what kind of masculinities were represented
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in fiction, and especially in detective fiction. The concept of what constituted a detective
hero changed.
In the analysis of And Then There Were None I have showed how masculinity is
constructed as activity, rationality, and heterosexuality. All of the male characters in the
novel are murderers who have escaped justice, and are therefore unredeemable in the
context of an Agatha Christie novel. As a sign of this, their masculinity is consequentially
constructed as passive, irrational, and non-heterosexual, since they are incapable of
embodying positive masculine attributes. While the male characters may show traits
associated with hegemonic masculinity, all them lack in one or more of the positive
masculine characteristics, be it rationality, activity, or heterosexuality. The characters are
unable to encompass those characteristics because they have forfeited their hegemonic
masculinity status when they became murderers. Additionally, the character of Vera
Claythorne is used in multiple parts of the novel to provide a feminine counterpoint for the
construction of masculinity as active and rational. In the second part of the analysis I
delved deeper into the character of Judge Wargrave. Wargrave is shown to act out a male
fantasy of being a great detective. His actions and characteristics align with the function of
the moral guardian, which the detective plays in society. Simultaneously, Wargrave acts
the role of the murderer and also encompasses the traits of the archetypical Christie killer:
he is arrogant, devious, and lacking in perspective. In his confession letter Wargrave
constructs himself as both the detective hero and the cunning murderer, and endeavours to
portray himself as possessing the qualities which would make him the ideal man. However,
at the same time the inconsistencies in his narrative show that he is not the ideal man he
portrays himself to be. Wargrave’s models for masculinity come from his childhood in the
Victorian and Edwardian periods, which can also be seen in his narrative.
90
The reasons I chose And Then There Were None for the focus of this study were the
enticing questions about masculinity that the novel generated. If all the male characters in
the novel are, by default, merely acting hegemonic masculinity rather than embodying it,
what does that reveal about masculinity? What kind of masculinity is good and desirable
and what is not in an Agatha Christie novel? In the course of this study I hope that I have
produced some possible answers. The study has revealed that Connell’s framework of
hegemonic masculinity is applicable to the analysis of Christie’s novels. The male
characters in the novel strive to construct their masculinity as active and rational, which are
usually seen as the basic building blocks of hegemonic masculinity. Previous genderrelated studies of Christie’s work have been more concerned with the portrayals of
femininity and female characters. Therefore this study has sought to provide an
understanding how masculinity and male characters are portrayed. Since the cast of
characters in the novel are all uncaught murderers, they all represent aspects of masculinity
and femininity that are “wrong” or “faulty”.
This study has concentrated on the negative portrayals of masculinity in Agatha
Christie. What were left unstudied were the various portrayals of heroic, positive, and
acceptable masculinities in Christie’s oeuvre. The diverse portrayals of gender in And Then
There Were None are undoubtedly one of the reasons for its popularity. The novel offers
consistently interesting portrayals of male and female characters that are flawed in some
way. The character of Vera Claythorne has been discussed very limitedly as a feminine
counterpart to the construction of masculinity, although she occupies an important semiprotagonist role in the overall narrative. Apart from the characterization, there are more
reasons for the popularity and fame the novel has acquired, but there is no room to discuss
them within the confines of this study. Suffice to say, And Then There Were None is a fine
example of Christie’s detective story prose and its popularity is entirely justified.
91
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